[1] http://www.cracked.com/article_21462_6-bizarrely-sexual-east..., scroll to #1 (last)
Is this game conditioning me to be rapist?
Why, honestly, do you presume the gender of these characters? Link wears very tight clothing for much of the game and it is crystal clear that either he has no penis or else he is horrifically mutilated. Perhaps a future game will explain how he was emasculated by Gannon or something. Oh, hey, what about Gannon? He's kind-of male right? Why not map him onto all men and start fearing your dad is going to morph into a demon horse-thing?
When it comes right down to it, most people who seek to "analyze" videogames fall flat on their face. They pick and choose only the barest threads of concepts out of a game, refuse to follow any of them to any serious degree, and extrapolate ludicrous conclusions without ever addressing why those conclusions are any less valid than extrapolating out the other details of the world in exactly the same way.
Every member of the group of heroes in the story is a realized character with their own motivations (borne out more in the DLC), and all of them, if you are looking for a relationship - notice _you_ not the game, would be potentially interested in the player character.
That said, in the Zelda games, I was always reading the story more about doing it for the sake of making the world better. Not due to Zelda at all. I actually don't remember the story of the original one, just that there was a bad guy that you use the triforce to defeat.
I'm currently 80 hours into "Zelda Breath of the Wild". It's a beautiful game, and the heart of the story is basically a typical "save the princess" dynamic.
But I've killed hundreds of dragons and other beasts in order to save Zelda... with the full expectation that my character (link) will be getting laid at the end of the game. Princess Zelda has no agency in my ideal game. And worse.... I don't want her to.
If I found out the end of the game resulted in me requesting a relationship from Zelda and it only potentially happening, I would be so beyond upset. But shouldn't Zelda have a choice? I would like to be a person who was at least OK with her having one.
Is this game conditioning me to be rapist? Or at least the type of man who thinks he should receive sexual reciprocation for purchasing dinner & drinks on a date?
Maybe I'm just overly invested in this game's story line. But games do contain meaningful experiences that you can remember for a lifetime. I think it's good to think about how those stories effect you.
We know video games aren't turning kids into mindless zombies, but the narratives in this games can become part of the lenses we see the world by. Some video games may even make you think differently not just about the outer world, but how you see own your place in it.
EDIT: I've got a lot of good responses here. The consensus is that these thoughts say more about me, than the video game, which I think is a fair assessment.
I'm a 'sort-of-bad' person who would like to 'become-a-better' person, and I also really love video games. So I think about the evolution of my moral character in the context of the games I play.
Maybe I think too much about it like you guys are saying, but don't put me in the camp of blaming video games for societies problems. I'm just saying video games are fun, but they can also get in your head and be more than that. They can open up dialogues and make you think about things in new ways.