Breath of the Wild offers a lot freedom in how you play. Even with your horse, you can many of them and name them whatever you like, where as in the past it was always a single horse you could sometimes name. However, that horse in the past was always known as Epona, with the ability to change that name. Just like the hero has always been known as Link, with your ability to change that name literally from the very first game in the series.

This time around, that has completely changed for the hero. In a new gameplay session that features Eiji Aonuma talking about the game, he notes that in this game the hero is “explicitly called Link from the very beginning”.

This is extremely interesting to note, as it suggests we do not have the ability to rename the character, a first in the series. It also very much suggests, maybe more than ever before, that this version of Link is indeed his own character. In the past, Nintendo has always walked the line of Link being a character and Link being an avatar, but with that one simple sentence it very much seems like Link is a character this time around that we play, versus an avatar that we project ourselves into.