This Breath of the Wild mod that turns Link into a girl is so good it could pass for official DLC

While The Legend of Zelda hero Link has never a rippling mountain of muscle and chest hair, a trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from 2014 depicted him a bit more androgynous than what we'd seen in previous games. This, plus producer Eiji Aonuma claiming that "No one explicitly said that that was Link," caused quite a stir - prompting some to speculate that this go 'round, perhaps Link would be a girl or we might play as Zelda herself.

That ended up not being the case, of course; while Link has some pretty wide hips in Breath of the Wild and you can effectively crossdress at will, he's still canonically a dude. But if you really want genderbent Link in Breath of the Wild, maybe take a look at this mod by Dario Rolle, which turns Link into Linkle:

Unlike Sonic the Hedgehog or other, more random character mods, Linkle actually fits in pretty well with Breath of the Wild's world. Dario also added facial expressions and voice audio to help complete the transformation, and the implementation is quite well done. If it weren't for the awkward crossbow weapon and the way Linkle's cape occasionally clips through her model, I'd have little trouble believing this was an official piece of DLC. (But, to be clear, it is definitely not, and runs on the Cemu Wii U emulator.)

If you're not familiar, Linkle is a non-canon character who was created during the development of Hyrule Warriors. Originally designed to be Link's younger sister, she was scrapped from the full version. However, her concept art surfaced shortly after the game's initial release, and fans made a passionate plea for her to be completed.

Now she exists as a random do-gooder hero with a somewhat coincidental name; she's not related to Link, and she doesn't possess a piece of the Triforce. She's a girl who thinks she's the reincarnation of the legendary hero and lives in a non-canon alternate universe (though really, getting bogged down in Zelda canon is a whole other headache).

But hey, maybe fans showing their support through mods like this will be enough to clue Nintendo in on the character's popularity, and she'll show up in something more official? After all, there's always the next Zelda game to look forward to and speculate on.

Get the best games and entertainment news, reviews, tips and offers delivered to your inbox every week by signing up to the GamesRadar+ newsletter today. 

Sam Prell

Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.

Latest in The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask screenshot showing the deku mask
After a year of trying, Zelda: Majora's Mask streamer becomes world's first to pull off randomized no-hit run where even blocking causes a game-ending Mooncrash
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time screenshot showing Link, a young boy with elf-like ears and blond hair, with a surprised expression on his face
"I can't go through [with] this": The weirdest Zelda ad didn't get Nintendo's approval, but it probably happened anyway because the marketing execs were already on-site
Link and Epona
A Zelda movie is finally happening, but Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto used to adamantly oppose the idea even "if Steven Spielberg himself" wanted to do it
A screenshot of the moon in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
Despite Zelda: Majora's Mask basically being a horror game, one of its key devs didn't think its creepiest features were scary at all: "People on the team were like 'whoa!'"
The Witcher 3 next-gen
Zelda and Star Fox legend Takaya Imamura would "love" to make a Star Wars game with The Witcher 3's CD Projekt Red – and now I'm desperate to make it happen
Botw
Legendary Zelda dev "wasn't too pleased" about working on A Link to the Past as it robbed his enjoyment of playing the finished game: "I still really don't want to play that game"
Latest in News
A screenshot from MindsEye showing a character leaning out of a car, shooting another car with a gun.
GTA veteran says the games industry needs to "get smarter" about what people actually want: "There are so many games, and I think we're starting to feel the effects"
Posing with a rifle in the Fallout 76 Ghoul update
Fallout 76's art director "had to fight really hard" so Bethesda would make the MMO's map bigger than Skyrim's
Minecraft movie image of Jack Black as steve
Don't expect Minecraft to go free-to-play anytime soon, as Mojang says "It doesn't really work with the way we built it"
Yasuke looking over the water to a shrine during sunset in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows has an entire island stuffed with adorable kittens you need to check out, and it's based on an actual Japanese cat paradise
phase zero key art showing zombies in a hallway
Former Witcher 3 and Dying Light devs reveal their Resident Evil homage, complete with PS1-style fixed cameras
Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System was only created because WB Games wanted something to combat Batman Arkham Asylum's second-hand sales, exec says