A Link Between Worlds feels like the Resident Evil 4 of Zelda games. Mechanically it is superior to pretty much every traditional Zelda game before it and retains the overall high quality. I have a feeling that if you start with A Link Between Worlds some of the older games may be more difficult to return to, but considering A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game in its own right there probably isn't too much wrong with that.
The biggest thing that stands out to me playing for a bit is that the Pikmin in this game feel so excruciatingly slow (or perhaps it is the player-characters that are too fast for the Pikmin) compared to the older games. The Pikmin used to keep up better and use of the C stick in the GC games helped even more and gave you better control over the pack. I'm missing that extra control when the Pikmin trail off in a long conga line, making annoying pathing losses more likely, or simply trail behind so far that you have to wait for them to catch up before you can do anything else. Perhaps it will become less of a problem later as I multitask more.
Also, the "I have black/gay/transgendered/etc friends" is the classic go to defense for a bigot. All Gabe did with that blog post was to try to make himself the victim.
Fight those reductive generalisations with your own reductive generalisations.
You say that the game's narrative would've been more resonant if Kat had been a young man instead of a young woman, but how is that the case? Because of her history with abuse, Kat being a young man would have been more shocking? More provocative? It wouldn't have complied with narrative norms of a young woman facing abuse (and eventually overcoming said abuser via hardcore murder) so therefore it's immediately better than what is displayed on screen? I'm trying to follow your logic loops but I'm hitting a ton of speed bumps here.
Yes, I think that the game being original in its storytelling would have been better. I don't have much more to add to this. It's not just because it would have been less sexist, it's just that it would have been a more unusual, more daring touch. Which in itself speaks of institutionalized sexism, you know, that male child abuse would be more shocking than female child abuse - that's pretty fucked up, but not the game's fault.
Saying it is a crime of hate when something terrible happens to a female in fiction and then glorifying it when it happens to a male is such forward thinking. All in the name of equality.
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