As The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild will be the first Zelda title that will include voice acting, with the exception of Link who will remain voiceless, fans may be wondering what motivated producer Eiji Aonuma to make this change.
Polygon had the chance to get a further insight into Aonuma’s decision in a recent interview, here’s what he had to say:
“It’s really difficult to leave an impression on players with just text, it’s not that I made everything voiced. But I have these moments where I want to leave impressions on users. I add voice there”. Aonuma also expanded further by saying that the first time he heard a character with a human voice it “touched his heart and was really striking emotions”.
The upcoming title, that will be released on the Wii U and the NX in the future, will have voice acting but will not be fully voiced.
Thanks, Minibitminibit
Makes you wonder who they’ll bring aboard for this. I hope Troy Baker and Matthew Mercer get involved for the English version.
No troy Baker please. He’s been in way too many games. Zelda needs someone unique sounding, not someone who has been in nearly every triple A blockbuster game made in the last five years.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Tara Strong for example, she’s everywhere, but I still love her voice acting.
||Now make the main villain a challenge…||
All the villains. Tired of stupid enemies in Zelda that practically wait for you to attack.
||My main focus is on the bosses, they are always pathetically easy in all 3D Zeldas, MM were somewhat enjoyable though…||
And all of the countless villains (in various games) who keeps giving you the items that’s killing them. Instead of getting wise and realizing that they’re causing their own death/defeat.
To be fair, villains are always doing something that fucks them over. If they aren’t leaving their enemy for dead, they are essentially giving the good guy motivation to kill their asses. In fact, this is a good thing that villains are just as human as everyone else. Otherwise, the hero would be screwed 90% of the time.
DARK SOULS style bosses would be great
||I’ll have to scan some records of them before I pass judgement first…||
they are all about dodging at the right time and attacking at the right time and not find eye to hit, slash at eye, repeat 3 times.
That’s something I hate about Zelda bosses way to fucking easy and simple just look at that rock mini boss in the demo I’m going to kill that thing on my first try with sorry gear. In order to have a challenge in this game I’ll probably have to challenge myself in not collecting any heart pieces.
From what I understand the Rock Golem destroys your weapons pretty fast, so he’s not easy to beat, or even beatable at all with poor gear.
Ok nevermind I just seen someone destroy the Rock Golem in the demo…. But on the bright side even the Boss’s in the Dark Souls demo were beatable…. Im sure there will be a difficulty setting in new Zelda anyways…….. I hope…
||I just scanned the bosses, they are almost as useless…||
||Too stale, too slow and repetitive, no challenge at all…||
||Still too repetive, even some Zelda bosses have more variation..||
No challenge? You weren’t playing Dark Souls then. Must have been a different game.
||I expected some Sonyan or Xbot to defend a non Nintendo game even when it’s easy…||
Funny as I can beat you in five minutes.~
Also, why is my icon gone?
Annnnd now it’s back. Sickr! Can you fix the facebook linking?
||I killed you at least once on your first try…||
No challenge? Come on commander you should know better than that. The souls series is my third favorite game franchise just behind Metroid and Zelda but the bosses are definitely challenging the first time you play them and they do have variations but I’ll give you that they aren’t as creative as Zelda bosses.
||Perhaps one or two, still, the repetitive attacks is like battling Demise…||
Kind of like Quadraxis once you get over the initial surprise if its size.
||I have saved records where it says otherwise…||
||But then again, that was my original form, now I’m way more powerful…||
Even though the last time they gave Link a voice actor was a huge disaster (CDI), I still do hope they give it another go someday in a main game. Link has always been characterized as a smart character yet he can’t speak.
Gee, sure is boring around here.
Well, EXCUUUUUSSSEEE ME, princess.
CDI Link is best Link
die a slow death
Nah
too bad Link will remain silen.
I agree. Link to the Past was probably the last game to have decent boss fights. Love that game lol
Speaking of Zelda. I’ve been playing Minish Cap. It’s actually really good. It has elements of Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Even a little Wind Waker I think. Although I got through almost the whole game without dying once. The final boss is where I died and only because I didn’t realize certain things that made my fight last a lot longer than it should have. Haven’t played it since that one defeat like two days ago, but will get back to it soon. Of course there are some side things I didn’t complete yet, but main game is pretty much done.
It’s on the low end of 2D Zelda games for me. I love the artstyle and spritework, but it’s way too short.
The only other 2D ones I’ve played are the original, LTTP, Link’s Awakening, and ALBW. Well, and like literally five minutes of Four Swords Adventure. I would put it below all those (Four Swords I can’t judge, although I didn’t like the five minutes or so I played of it). But I mean, those are all amazing games, so it’s not really fair haha. Are Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass 2D? I know they are cel-shaded, but I don’t know much else about them.
They are. They’re rendered in full 3D, but the games are played on bird’s view most of the time. The overworld is 3D, but it’s very railroaded (literally, in the case of Spirit Tracks). I’m not very fond of them, even if I like some of the ideas they brought to the table.
Is that all the 2D games then? (Well, besides the second game, but that isn’t top down aside from the over world if I remember correctly).
Nope. You’re forgetting the Oracle games too. They’re pretty good, probably better than Minish Cap, but not as good as Link’s Awakening or A Link to the Past.
Oh yeah. I did forget them haha. I heard they are pretty good. Are they on Wii U virtual console by chance? I don’t think they are.
I don’t think so, no. They’re on 3DS, though. Other than that, you can emulate them on a potato if you’re in a hurry.
Eh. I don’t game on PC (assuming that is what potato means. I’m not hip on PC lingo). And 3DS I’ve played ALBW and the five minutes of Four Swords I mentioned. Home console is the only real gaming I do these days.
Aonuma also expanded further by saying that the first time he heard a character with a human voice it “touched his heart and was really striking emotions.”
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6c0vDTMKlP0/maxresdefault.jpg
Point made, and this should be a major reminder why the Made up Hylian voice used by Fi and Midna should be used by all voiced characters in Breath of the Wild rather than English!
Bad English voice acting will ruin this for me, they should have stuck with the made up Hylian language like fi and Midna use! This was one of the reasons why I didn’t mind the western releases of Zelda, because there was no English voice acting, unless you count “HEY, LISTEN”, which is the only English I didn’t mind because it fit that character perfectly, but this is worrisome! If you think bad voice acting can’t ruin a game just look at the countless localized Japanese games released with English dub, they are horrendous! I seriously hope they choose to stick to the made up Hylian language, because English voice actors in video games today are terrible as hell!
quick to judge aren’t you
I just seen too much bad English voice acting that I no longer believe it possible to exist in any kind of localization! The English voice acting is so terrible here that I notice it in games made here in the states! These voice actors today are not believable at all. I’m not saying that there aren’t ANY good voice actors, I’m just saying the bad ones far out number the good ones, and Nintendo isn’t known for for making good choices lately, I mean look how they butchered the English dialog in FE Fates, countless cut dialog that may have gave background story to other characters, and one of the damn characters kept mentioning pickles, or some damn food for some odd reason, and none of that garbage was in the Japanese version, and you think this doesn’t validate judgement in the slightest!? I wouldn’t be surprised if Aonuma was talking about that CDI garbage when he said the first time he heard a character with a human voice it “touched his heart and was really striking emotions”, and I have damn good reason to worry about Nintendo’s choice in voice acting after that nonsense, hell , you should be worried too, lest we have another Destiny/Peter Dinklage voice acting scenario, even if he is my one of my favorite GOT characters, that was just god awful!
well I share his view and we all have to suffer the retarded US voice (over)acting. When possible I put the Japanese voice cause I really can’t stand the US accent (same apply for some US players when they hear British accent). Voice acting is fine to a limit because when you release a game World wide and in Europe especially, 46 countries does not want to hear English language. There is not right or wrong but it just come down to a matter of preference or taste or culture.
They are taking the option to choose Japanese audio from us in a lot of localized games now, just look at the majority of the Japanese localized games on Wii U and 3ds, hell they are even taking this option away from us in one of the one games I wanted localized (God Eater ps4 series)! Now I refuse to buy that garbage because they are forcing bad English dub on us! I don’t pretend to understand Japanese, but anybody can tell that Japanese voice actors are more believable than the English dub garbage forced down our throats with every localized game or anime that’s released today.
I would, at the very least, appreciate if Nintendo gave fans the option of choosing the made up Hylian voice acting or real spoken language as an in game option! I understand fans want real voice acting, but can I get some damn fan service over here too Nintendo! I prefer the made up Hylian language, and that was more fitting than English voice acting, well to me at least!
So? You are a sub only elitist? Ok then. :)
Funny. Overacting is the exact reason why I can’t stand Japanese voice acting. They are the kings of overacting.
I don’t have a problem with English voice acting when it’s good English dubbing done right, like Zatch Bell/Gash Bell, I prefer the English version over the original, but when you have terrible voice acting, and a lot of recent Nintendo titles are guilty of implementing terrible English dubbing, then yeah, Japanese voice acting, in this case a made up Hylian voice acting, is the better choice!
stop beig such a weeaboo there’s nothing wrong with the english lanuage. Wait until you play it before bitching about it!
The N64 is 20 years old now! :D
Seeing as Digital Foundry said the Wii U version is dropping frames a lot, it seems the NX is the way to go for me.
http://www.thewebgraffiti.com/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-nintendo-nx/
expecting or suggesting link to ever get a voice is just an example of how people don’t understand why he doesn’t have a voice, and don’t know what they want lol. just dumb
Because it’s 2016 and there is no reason why a developers flagship title is populated by mutes. Link I understand but it’s about time there will be speech.
Good call :D
I’m glad they’re not making Link talk, I still have nightmares about Wand of Gamelon -shudders-
I could just imagine it…
Mysterious Voice: Link, please wake up. We need you, the world nee-
Link: WELL EXCUSE ME, PRINCESS!
The one thing that’s good about voice acting in a game (aside from not having to get dizzy and tired from reading text) is that it will let everybody know the true way to pronounce certain things. When it comes to Zelda games, everybody seems to have their own way of pronouncing different items and characters.
That is, unless even the voice actors pronounce things wrong as well. Then it’s no help at all. I wish Paper Mario would use voice acting. Because in the Thousand-Year door, there was just FAR too much text. It was eye-straining.
Wow…….
Yet Link remains mute. The main character who carries the entire plot of this adventure. Its hard to have character growth or exposition on that character’s motives when he doesn’t even utter so much as one word.
I generally agree that he should be able to speak at least a few words. But Nintendo has quite good reasons to mute him. Especially in the 2D era of gaming, a user could connect more with a videogame, because its kinda bad graphics, text instead of voice acting etc. were demanding more fantasy to be put into the game while playing. So every player pretty much had his own feeling when playing a game. And this is exactly what Nintendo wants to achieve with this. Mario and Link aren’t real characters for Nintendo, but avatars of the players controlling them. Thus they shouldn’t come with a strong character, asking the player to play as Link or Mario. It’s more like interacting with the world through these characters who should become pretty much transparent. And letting them tell their own story would pull a player out of this.
But after every other character is speaking now, this still doesn’t feel right. Especially after the text-options you can choose from are given anyways. I also don’t believe it would really harm the experience, when link woul at least just speak the sentences you tell him to speak. Especially in a game, that looks and sounds so refined, it doesn’t leave too much space for your own interpretation anyways.
The movie Wall-E was all about a robot that could only speak his own name and another robot’s name. I don’t see the problem.
When it comes to it, the true protagonist was The Captain.
Also, this isn’t WALL-E. That movies is no excuse. And because you said that, Link DEFINITELY needs to speak now.
who fucking cared about the captain tho
Then this movie is perfect for people like you. I bet WALL-E is the ONLY reason you even watch that movie.
Someone tell this guy how wrong he is about one of the most core characters to drive the plot.
Have fun pretending you’re Link……
In previous games, it felt a bit odd, when characters were blabbering like waterfalls and Link was always just nodding and smiling like a disabled guy.
With voice acting, this gap might get even worse. In games like Shadow of the Colossus, the protagonist wasn’t talking that much either and left enough space for the player to make his own story, but didn’t feel odd either. I’d prefer it that way. It would be OK if Link would just be a man of few words. Now hew’s pretty much mute while able to shout while fighting. Feels odd.
Can I add that text base games allow people to make less grammatical mistake and allow foreigners to learn a language(well depend on the quality of the game) . Here the cons of having voice acting.
I’m surprised. I honestly expected more comments whining about voice acting in a Zelda game. Oh well. 2017 needs to hurry up & get here!