Project #2 - PART 1 - Initial Sketching

From looking at those case studies, it became apparent that many games in which the main character has a sibling, involves said siblings needing to be saved. Of course, this is a good motivator for the character and the player since, as already stated, family is a common thread amongst many people, however in my brief I wanted to try and investigate other ways in which a sibling could be significant without that cliche.

Part 1 of this project involved designing a big brother for Link, the Ocarina of Time iteration to be specific.
Since I already know the back story - how and why Link ended up in Kokiri forest in the first place, I found it unnecessary to try shoehorn in a 'damsel-in-distress' situation for a sibling, especially since Link is indicated to have been an only child. So, imagining that he wasn't an only child was a challenge given his situation.

The best way I determined that Link's brother could exist smoothly was that if he did not reside in Kokiri Forest with him, but rather had remained in Hyrule during the time Link's mother ran away to the forest with him.

So, I considered what Link's brother would do for a living.

 

I considered that he could be an ordinary merchant or a farmhand at the Lon-Lon ranch, however these kinds of roles would prove to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He would play no particular role or have any sort of impact on the game space, Link himself and thus the player. 

 With this in mind, my brainstorming took me to that of the Hyrulean Soldiers. The Soldiers feature in several of the installments, making the concept of Link's brother potentially transferable. They are also recognizable and have the potential to be more important on a more central scale. So I played on this idea.

As initial design work goes, I'm happy with the concept. Link's brother could easily have remained in Castle town. Older than Link, his age could indicate that he would remember his mother running away, and as such could have decided to join the military in hope that it might be able to help him seek out his missing family.
The idea is plausible since we know nothing else of Link's family in OoT other than that Link was brought to Kokiri forest by his mother, who then passed away.