There Will be Voice Acting in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, But Link Stays Silent
- Thread starter Lizzy Finnegan
- Start date
I'd be most happy with this, but either way I'm mostly just pleased that Link will remain unvoiced. Not only does it feel kinda weird if he had one (The Games that Shall Not Be Named, for example), but I'd like to encourage more unvoiced protagonists in modern gaming. Much more flexibility in writing and possible responses.-Dragmire- said:
I don't really care either way. Voice acting, even only for some key characters and lines, would be an update the franchise has needed for a long time, but I've been fine with the dialog boxes for the most part. There's only been a few times were the shape, color, speed, and timing of the dialog text wasn't able to fully convey the emotion voiced (and decently acted out) dialog could have, like the scene near the end of Wind Waker where...
If they did ever give Link a voice, they would be wise to test it out with the localization teams in different markets to see how well it works and be prepared to scrap the voice or the whole idea if it doesn't work, or let the localization teams change what needs change to make it work in their region. This is a good baby step if that is LoZ's future, but I don't think Link needs to have much more than a few spoken lines if Nintendo does eventually run down that route.
Whatever they do should be good, as long as Link isn't delivering horrible monologues stating the obvious or not speeking up when being told by his guide to go into Death Mountain Crater without wearing the Goron Tunic (when he has one). I'm just thankful that, so far, stupid stuff like the chanting of everyone in Malo Mart wasn't voiced.
Ganondorf explains what he sees in Tetra's dreams, then screams "You Gods betrayed you!"
If they did ever give Link a voice, they would be wise to test it out with the localization teams in different markets to see how well it works and be prepared to scrap the voice or the whole idea if it doesn't work, or let the localization teams change what needs change to make it work in their region. This is a good baby step if that is LoZ's future, but I don't think Link needs to have much more than a few spoken lines if Nintendo does eventually run down that route.
Whatever they do should be good, as long as Link isn't delivering horrible monologues stating the obvious or not speeking up when being told by his guide to go into Death Mountain Crater without wearing the Goron Tunic (when he has one). I'm just thankful that, so far, stupid stuff like the chanting of everyone in Malo Mart wasn't voiced.
So, is his campfire cooking is really nasty, or is he a Dragonborn?Saulkar said:
I agree. Link and Samus are player avatars. They don't need to talk a lot, since the player is supposed to know what they know. (Although, I do like the intro dialog Samus gives in a few of the games and Fusion's closing dialog. I just prefer that the writers keep anything like that at only the very beginning and very end of a game.)Alex Baas said:
They should just pull a Fallout 4 and go for a voice-acted Link. Except give him only one option.
Good, voice acting is something the series has needed for a VERY long time. It always helps any given series to have voice acting that didn't have it before because of how voices greatly aid the emotion presented in the dialog, and if the voice acting is bad enough as a whole that one preferred if it stayed silent then most games that have it have the option to turn them off entirely anyway.
As to whether Link needs it or would be detrimental with it, it's not as though he's much of a player avatar in the first place. The player just runs him through one dungeon after another killing things usually in a predetermined sequence until the game is over, they are only very rarely allowed to choose his responses to anything and the other characters never act like he says anything, even outright ignoring what he says when the player gets to choose and looping the dialog until you say what you're supposed to say. Link is basically a functional mute as far as the plot or any characterization for him is concerned, with Skyward Sword being the only Zelda game that so much as tries to allow the player to give Link an actual characterization. An actual player avatar would be able to actually do and say things the player wants them to even in a limited fashion, rather than be forced to do and say everything.
The problem with Silent Protagonists is they are intended to allow the player to step into the shoes of a given protagonist, but then by necessity said protagonist has barely any input or actual relevance to the plot that every other character just orders around while almost always at the same time ironically pretending said character is important somehow. In the end, if Link is one day voiced the player base would probably complain endlessly just because what they wanted Link's characterization to be isn't what the voiced Link's was and called it awful on the basis that alone even if it was the best voice actor and the best characterization in the history of video games, but that's a ridiculous reason NOT to give any character a characterization and voice. Whether Link being voiced would be good or not would depend on the effort Nintendo put into hiring a competent voice actor and script writer, it could never be bad on it's existence alone.
As to whether Link needs it or would be detrimental with it, it's not as though he's much of a player avatar in the first place. The player just runs him through one dungeon after another killing things usually in a predetermined sequence until the game is over, they are only very rarely allowed to choose his responses to anything and the other characters never act like he says anything, even outright ignoring what he says when the player gets to choose and looping the dialog until you say what you're supposed to say. Link is basically a functional mute as far as the plot or any characterization for him is concerned, with Skyward Sword being the only Zelda game that so much as tries to allow the player to give Link an actual characterization. An actual player avatar would be able to actually do and say things the player wants them to even in a limited fashion, rather than be forced to do and say everything.
The problem with Silent Protagonists is they are intended to allow the player to step into the shoes of a given protagonist, but then by necessity said protagonist has barely any input or actual relevance to the plot that every other character just orders around while almost always at the same time ironically pretending said character is important somehow. In the end, if Link is one day voiced the player base would probably complain endlessly just because what they wanted Link's characterization to be isn't what the voiced Link's was and called it awful on the basis that alone even if it was the best voice actor and the best characterization in the history of video games, but that's a ridiculous reason NOT to give any character a characterization and voice. Whether Link being voiced would be good or not would depend on the effort Nintendo put into hiring a competent voice actor and script writer, it could never be bad on it's existence alone.
Almost all games voice acting is lost on me as I tend to read everything before the voice actor is able to speak their lines. This just makes it to where you hear small bits of dialogue and make them sound like they have some sort of speaking disorder.
I'm ok with this. I have a feeling should they made him able to speak properly, people would complain how he sounded like and aswell the usual pro/ against the vocal.
These are the same sort of people that give some very arbitrary game as a limit to the where the series should have stopped. The series has always had voice acting from day one, the addition of voices for the main characters was a natural and much needed step for the series to take, one nobody would have whined about in the first place if it had always been that way. One can argue that they didn't take advantage of this as well as they could have, but one cannot argue that it's implementation in itself is a bad idea.rgrekejin said:
I don't know what games you've been playing, but I can count on one hand the number of games I've played that haven't let you mute voices specifically. In fact, it happens so frequently I barely notice the option is there anymore.
