Why Link Should Talk
in Addition to Audible Dialogue

This is my personal opinion, so that doesn’t mean I’m right or wrong. Discussion is all I’m looking for…

I love what Nintendo does. They have a vision, and their vision is to make video games the way they like it and the way they think is right. But there is always room for progress, no one is perfect.

Judging from the title of this thread, you have surmised that I obviously want Link to speak out in the following “The Legend of Zelda” title. I will explain why I think it would be the right way to go.

Nintendo and the people in charge of the direction of Zelda state that the character commonly known as “Link” is kept silent and you can choose your name as his so you can project yourself as him, or immerse yourself into the game more closely. But I believe the direction they are going at the moment contradicts those statements.

My first argument is a simple one; simply that when we see a character, or witness the events of a character from the third-person perspective, we expect to see them show personality. Especially when there are cut scenes or FMV’s, we aren’t necessarily controlling the character anymore and therefore expect them to do their own thing, since they are already doing most of their own thing anyway.

Obviously we are controlling the character most of the time, but the only thing we control are their movements and physical actions. We can’t speak to other characters in the game for them. There is no way for us to truly project one’s self as that on-screen character interacting with others.

A few games actually are closer to taking Nintendo’s philosophy for Zelda more closely. Namely, The Elder Scrolls series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series, and Fable all give you a bigger voice and choice in the matter when playing the game. Projecting yourself as that on-screen character means making their choices as well. Link makes all his own choices ultimately; sure, we decide how and what to cut with his sword, but his greater goal isn’t for us to choose. We can choose whether to play the game or not, and that’s about all the choice we get.

My second argument branches off from the first one; we obviously have a character who makes his own decisions in the game, whether it be completing temples to gain items to advance or saving Zelda by defeating Ganon, but then we don’t understand why he does it. Are we expected to come up with a reason “as Link” for doing all this from nothing? In other words, do we have to make up a reason for why Link does the things he does? It is more of a distraction really, and not very immersive.

Being a unique character, Link has no real personality, besides being that of a [assumedly] good guy. We aren’t given any choices on how or why he is a good guy. He decides to do the things on his own, but no explanation is given why, mainly because Link doesn’t voice his own opinion. The player can’t be expected to relate with a character making his own decisions for no apparent reason. I am sure most of us find ourselves relating more closely to supportive characters in the series. We can say we relate to Link since he is the strong, courageous good guy, but how else do we relate to him? That’s just about it, he is a shallow character, we can’t be him since he does make his own choices, but we are “expected” to come up with our own inner feelings as to why Link makes his choices, which is more of guess work than relation.

My final argument is that Nintendo should grow with the times. They talk of innovation and growth, but sticking to old formulas won’t get you far with that philosophy. Adding dialogue to a game (and not just audible dialogue in “The Legend of Zelda” series, but having Link speak as well OR making it more Knights of the Old Republic based, where Link has a reason to be silent since we simply talk for him) could essentially be catching up with the times and technology.

Back when the first The Legend of Zelda was released, there was the same format of choosing your character’s name and not seeing/hearing Link speak. That is understandable since it simply was not possible to put lots of personality into a character with the limited technology. A decade later, Ocarina of Time is released and there is no audible dialogue or FMV’s at all, which is understandable since sound and movie files still were fairly large compared to the space the more primitive graphics took. But now that there is a huge amount of space for dialogue and plenty of tricks to fool our minds into believing a character on-screen is a breathing, living person, why not take advantage of that?

My conclusion: Nintendo can and will do what they like, but taking advice from the consumer is important since we know what we want and like. The Legend of Zelda is a franchise that we expect things from. The expectations should definitely be met, but exceeded as well. Twilight Princess came about because we all wanted to see Link as he was in Ocarina of Time, and we all expected - or wanted - it to be perfect. Perfect means whole, and Twilight Princess was missing fundamental things that we expect in this day and age. There is not any reason for avoiding our expectations unless they purposely want to disappoint.

The greatest goal is to do something the way you think is the best for it, and if Nintendo continues to do that, then I’m pleased. But most of us like to see those around us succeed, and we ourselves definitely want to succeed as well. I have one request. I would like Nintendo to experiment at least, and put audible dialogue into “The Legend of Zelda” and to even take it up a notch; give Link spoken dialogue, and his first ever dialogue ever in any of Nintendo’s Zelda games.

So please, voice your opinion and criticize any fault you find in my reasoning or reasons. I'm not looking for "You're stupid", I'm looking for explanations on what you think is wrong. Thanks.