The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has legit voice acting, but not for Link

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As you may have noticed from that woman telling you to "open your eyes" in the E3 trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it will be the first Zelda game to feature voice acting - voice acting beyond grunts, gasps, and insincere "Thank youuuuus!", anyway. And the game is making a point to subvert Zelda traditions like overbearing sidekicks and kicking open treasure chests. But at least one recurring element of the Zelda franchise will remain: a (mostly) silent Link.

"If Link said something the user doesn’t agree with, that relationship between the user and Link would be lost," series producer Eiji Aonuma told Polygon. "That’s why I chose not to go with that."

If Aonuma's worried about changing the relationship between players and the game, you may wonder why he decided to go with narrative voice acting at all. The answer to that question is layered, like a dungeon map.

"It’s really difficult to leave an impression on players with just text," Aonuma said. "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."

So don't expect everything that every character says to be delivered via voiced dialogue - just the moments where it would really make an impact. And yes, this is the most Nintendo way possible to approach an idea that has been otherwise standard to the gaming industry for the last decade.

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Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan
Former GamesRadar+ News Writer

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar+.