Voice and Pronouns Included!

**PLEASE READ - Regarding recent events:

Until further notice, names and faces have largely been obscured in descriptions and preview images on this page, to avoid unwanted attention and prolong this project's availability for users' enjoyment. Please do not refer to this project by the character's true name while this notice is in effect.

Please note that the project itself still appears as normal in-game.

Overview

My first comprehensive character replacement project, this mod allows users to play as a femme version of the vanilla protagonist.

The central goal of this project is to emulate the vanilla aesthetics and character of the existing protagonist as closely as possible. The following assets have thus received relatively minimal, yet highly intentional and closely tailored edits:

1. Base visuals - Including, but not limited to, the face and torso
2. Key armors - Including, but not limited to, the Hero's Aspect and the Mask of Awakening
3. Dialogue and text - The player is now referred to as a woman and has she/her pronouns.
4. Voice - Existing clips from a voice actress across multiple video game dubbing roles were each manually edited to create a unique femme voice that closely matches the protagonist's original cadence and character. All sounds were edited by hand in Audacity, without the use of AI.

Multiple cutscenes' audio was also edited to correctly use the femme hero's gender and pronouns, for maximum immersion.

As some applicable cutscenes containing player grunts have not yet been edited, please note that this aspect of the project is still a WiP.

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Triforce Jam - Courage Entry

The Champion of Legend continues to enthrall countless fans, many of whom also relate to and see themselves within the hero. I continue to see the most wonderful reflections and fanworks from players who identify with the hero, across a tremendous range of racial, ethnic, religious, sexuality, and gender identity backgrounds.

Inspired by this real-world impact, this project proposes the concept that anyone—man, woman, or beyond—may take the classic protagonist's role and wield the Triforce of Courage.

In other words—anyone can be L|nk!

Multiplicative Gameplay Criteria Notes

Per this criterion's description, a "new fusible material with a unique combination of attributes is a new challenge-solving tool" would be an example of enhancing multiplicative gameplay.

Reflecting over my understanding of the "traditional" sense of this criteria--This project is not a new weapon or material. However, in a somewhat related fashion, I did want to retain--and even enhance--the ability to mix and match all of our favorite outfits for this character, for a wide variety of armor combinations.

Personally, I am not a fan of a fair amount of colors used for the Ember Headdress hair dyes, and opted for several alternatives that in my experience are both more commonly seen/used in real life, and would more easily go with other outfits in the game:

1. Green is now Emerald (This color matches the Archaic Tunic and is visible in a preview picture above; note that the color names are not actually changed in the game, so as not to affect the other clothing pieces you can dye; these are simply my fan names for them)
2. Yellow is Honey
3. Black is Burnt Umber (The previous color was more grey, while this new one reflects a more natural, real life dark hair color)
4. Purple is Dark Plum
5. Light Blue is Cyan
6. Orange is Auburn
7. Peach is Pink
8. Light Yellow is Rose Gold
9. Brown is Chocolate

Additionally, as the Frostbite Shirt and its generous back window have become a fan favorite, the under armor visible in preview pictures is removed when wearing this piece--for uninterrupted outfit enjoyment and customization.

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Disclaimer

This mod has been tested on ver. 1.2.1 of the game only.

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Compatibility

This project is compatible with game ver. 1.1.0-1.2.1.

Please note that text and NPC cutscene audio edits apply only to the English localization/dub of the game. Edits are applied to both the US and European English text localizations.

The mod is incompatible with other mods that edit the protagonist's face and body textures, including my projects that give the protagonist makeup and brown skin.

As there are a fair amount of mods that alter the Hero's Aspect, please note the compatibility between those mods and this project is untested. Users who prefer to combine these mods must proceed at their own discretion. Always keep a clean backup of your files, in case you make a mistake when merging. I am not responsible for corrupted mods or save data.

Notably, this project is compatible with juliesgloom's Glowing Right Arm mod (screenshot not included)! I highly recommend combining both projects for an extra striking look--even more so at night~

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An In-Depth(s) Look

Visuals

The hero has undergone changes to multiple aspects, including but not limited to the face, torso, and key armors, for more of a femme-coded look. Textures were edited in Krita.

When designing and implementing this part of the project, the one driving thought I had, being quite the fan of the hero myself, was, "I really want (myself and) others to feel like they are still playing as the original protagonist—but just as a femme version of him instead."

The vanilla hero's androgyny—which has been noted by not an insignificant amount of fans—lends itself well to this goal, so with that in mind I made relatively minimal, yet strategic adjustments for a femme revamp that still stays as true as possible to the hero's original look.

Text

For continuity, the majority of the text edits are crafted in the same style as seen in my pronoun editing projects for this game's predecessor, which may be viewed here:

1. The Hero's Pronoun Wardrobe
2. Custom Character Text Editor (CCTE) tool

Overview of primary text edits:

1. Text edits are implemented in English and are compatible with both the American English (USen) and European English (EUen) localizations of the game. I used Microsoft Excel and Bubble Wrap by Lisa Wolfgang for both documentation and correct formatting purposes.
2. The Player is referred to as a woman with she/her pronouns.
3. Instances of gendered terms such as "swordsman," "Mr. Hero," "Master," and "buddy" are thus replaced with "swordswoman," "Ms. Hero," "Lady," and "pal," respectively. In some cases, gendered terms are simply removed entirely to improve the dialogue flow.
4. For continuity with my previous pronoun editing projects, the Desert Town Fashion Police have been brought back—and they're as strict as ever! Women and nonbinary folks are allowed into the Desert Town, but only if they are fashionable enough per Desert standards. Other characters will comment on the Player's sense of fashion accordingly.
5. As implied by the previous bullet point, nonbinary folks now exist within the game universe. The southwestern dialect has been updated to reflect this by including a new word: "Varqso" means "nonbinary person" (singular or plural), and is inspired by the existing words "sarqso," "vai," and "voe" (thank you, woman, and man, respectively).
6. Much of the Deuteragonist-Centric Loading Screen mod is included and has been adapted accordingly to match the Hero's pronouns and gender. A key result of this aspect is that players now have a roughly 30% chance of encountering a Deuteragonist-related fact on the Loading Screen, in place of the usual gameplay Tip.
7. The dialogue from returning characters is rewritten so that these characters remember the Player better, for improved continuity with the game's predecessor. Please note that this aspect of the text edits is still a WiP.
8. In the vanilla game, there is a significant increased emphasis on referring to the Player as a "Savior" once the pirates are cleared from the Coastal Village and the inhabitants' destroyed homes are rebuilt. This language has been softened to avoid playing too heavily into the common "white savior" trope. Please note that this aspect of the text edits is still a WiP.

I completed my own pronoun edits for this project completely independently and from the ground up, partially for my own documentation purposes. In the future, I plan to copy the edited text files from this project, and change all instances of the femme Player's pronouns and gender to "they/them" and "nonbinary" respectively, resulting in a text mod for a nonbinary Player with they/them pronouns.

For the sake of the quality of both this future project and the Femme Hero project, please notify me of any text errors, which include, but are not limited to: Grammar errors, spelling errors, and instances of the Player being referred to as a man.

Voice and Cutscenes

The Femme Hero's voice is provided by voice actor Adeline Chetail, who plays the deuteragonist in the game's French dub. All voice clips were manually adjusted in Audacity.

I chose this actress because after a long time of casually playing as the deuteragonist in French in Age of Calamity, and then playing TotK in French, I was struck by how her voice is simultaneously fierce and pleasantly lilting—not unsimilar to Kengo Takanashi's (the hero's VA) voice, to which I am also drawn for the same reasons.

For the majority of the hero's voice clips, I replaced each with a specific voice clip from within three of Chetail's previous performances: The deuteragonist of Age of Calamity (2020), Mei from Overwatch (2016), and Ellie from The Last of Us (2013). In some cases, I was fortunate to need only to adjust a clean voice clip's pitch, volume, and length to match the hero's. In other cases, I needed to take extra measures to manually remove overlapping sound effects or other characters' voices first. That core philosophy of emulating the original hero as much as possible continued to inspire me, thus I took great pains to closely match the hero's cadence, volume, and tone with each voice clip.

The resulting process was particularly time intensive and required a lot (A LOT) of repeated listening to various yelps and grunts. The fact that Chetail's performance as the game's deuteragonist is a personal favorite of mine out of all of the localizations helped a little bit, at least.

I worked together with a family member to replace the remaining small handful of voice clips—the hero's humming while cooking meals. I am very sentimental and thus very intentionally replaced a few of the tunes with others that are more specific to this game and its two predecessors. My family member provided the singing voice.

Cutscenes where the hero's gender and pronouns are referenced by other characters, were also manually edited in Audacity. I edited in the words that I needed--e.g., "swordsman" into "swordswoman," "he" into "she"--by splicing in other words, or sometimes even individual consonant sounds, from other cutscenes where those same characters were speaking. For the deuteragonist in particular, I had to grab at least one sound from the game's prequel! These characters make me work so hard...but the final result is extremely satisfying.