Absolutely volcanic take but the Penn quests in totk should have been about Link as well as/instead of Zelda. Penn should have been following rumours about them Both. It should have been the player’s opportunity to connect with Link’s quiet personality as it was established in the previous game. He likes cooking and eating, he’s an equestrian, he’s a bit chaotic with a fondness for puns and sarcasm. So he was the one who tamed the golden horse, he founded the cooking group. The Foothill Stable lads are naked because they heard a rumour Link fought in his underpants. Link takes the farm tools to help Zelda replant Magda’s garden, because they’re both working together to restore Hyrule. Pointing out things Link did before the game started would have grounded the player into the world in a way totk really needed, and would have given a more impactful, focused view of Zelda’s character - instead of her having a scattered, jack-of-all trades personality, the rumours would have told us that she was bookish, had a penchant for natural science, a sense of duty to help her people. It would have been the chance to show how her core personality from botw helped her thrive as a leader of a post-apocalyptic world, how her range of knowledge and pursuit of experimentation was helping Hyrule re-discover lost trades and skills, and it would have shown the gap that was created when she disappeared. Instead Link was an empty shell with little connections to the land and only fleeting references that he was the hero who fought the Calamity, and Zelda was a one-note matyr who characters only missed and urged you to find because of her status as a Princess and that made her good at Everything.