The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be the first game in the franchise to feature voice acting.
“It’s really difficult to leave an impression on players with just text,” series producer Eiji Aonuma explained to Polygon. “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.”
Even though Breath of the Wild will feature voice acting, Aonuma has stated that series protagonist, Link, will remain silent in the title.
“If Link said something the user doesn’t agree with, that relationship between the user and Link would be lost,” says Aonuma. “That’s why I chose not to go with that.”
Even though games in the Zelda series have never featured fully voiced characters, past games have featured small voice samples. In Skyward Sword, Zelda does sing a bit, and Midna speaks in her made up Twili language in Twilight Princess.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will release in March 2017. The game will be available on the Wii U and Nintendo’s upcoming console, the NX. At this year’s E3, it was revealed that the game will be the largest Legend of Zelda title so far, being roughly 12 times larger than Twilight Princess.