Legend of Zelda devs tried to make Link talk for the first time in Echoes of Wisdom, but it felt too wrong
Link has been a stoic and silent protagonist for the entirety of The Legend of Zelda series, and although we get to read his inner monologue and dialogue with NPCs from time to time, we’ve never heard him speak.
It seems this was almost changed in the latest entry to the franchise – The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Eiji Aonuma, the producer of the Zelda series, and Satoshi Terada, the director of Echoes of Wisdom, recently talked about the topic in an interview with Famitsu.
As Princess Zelda took the role of protagonist in Echoes of Wisdom, it also became her turn to go silent and allow players to project themselves onto her and immerse themselves in the setting. “After all, in the Zelda series, the protagonist does not speak. This is why Link doesn’t talk either,” Aonuma commented.
However, this made things tricky in terms of development. If both Zelda and Link were to not speak, there would be no way to make the story progress. That’s why Nintendo and Grezzo decided to add Tri – Zelda’s companion who is the source of her powers as well as most of the game’s dialogue.
But it seems that making Link talk was an alternative Echoes of Wisdom’s developers briefly considered. “We made Link talk a bit at first (…) but it felt really wrong.” Aonuma admits. “We kept thinking ‘he’d never say that!’ (laughs).” To this, Terada adds that “whatever we tried to make him say, it just didn’t feel right.”
The team’s qualms about making Link talk resulted in part of Echoes of Wisdom’s story being designed to explain why he’s still quiet. “No one knew the answer to the question – What would Link say? And of course we wouldn’t, he has never spoken before! (laughs) Because of that, we needed a setting where he couldn’t talk, and that led to a part of the game’s storyline being formed.”
It seems that Link’s three decades of silence in the Zelda games are hard to break, even when he’s not the protagonist anymore. However, the possibility might not be completely off the table either. There’s also a live-action feature-film adaptation of The Legend of Zelda in the works, so we may finally get to hear Link speak.
