Kondo/Aonuma on voice acting in Zelda, Aonuma thinking about making Zelda his own
Posted on December 3, 2011 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News
Voice acting in Zelda games is a fairly controversial topic. Some fans support the idea of including voices for all characters other than Link while others would prefer to leave them out entirely.
To date, we’ve never seen voice overs in any Zelda title. Nintendo has been dead-set on avoiding voice acting, and they maintained that stance once again in a new interview with Game Informer.
First, Koji Kondo offered his thoughts about voice acting in Zelda:
“The most important thing about the Zelda series is that the player becomes Link. One of the challenges with full voice is that if we’re trying to convey the player’s emotion through Link, but you hear Link talking in somebody else’s voice, that creates a disconnect between you and the role that you’re taking on.”
Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma also weighed in:
“…if you create a game where everybody else in the game speaks but Link doesn’t, it emphasizes the fact that he is silent and draws even more attention to it.
“Of course, this was the first time we went with fully orchestrated songs in the game, and we’ve seen what that can do to help bring the world alive and make the game that much more fun. We’re continually looking at ways that we can evolve the series. We’re not confident that we can find the right balance with full voice, so we’ll see. Everyone would be speaking Hylian, so even if you heard them speak, you wouldn’t understand them.”
Aonuma also talked about the future of Zelda. The main point here is that he’s been starting to “think a lot more about how I can take the series and really make it my own Zelda and evolve it further.”
“I started working on the series not at the beginning but part-way through its history. I think because of that, early on I was more looking objectively at the series and how we could change small, individual elements within it, rather than looking at how the series should evolve. As time has passed – particularly in the last few years – I’ve started to think a lot more about how I can take the series and really make it my own Zelda and evolve it further. As Mr. Miyamoto has allowed me to take the reins on the Zelda series, ultimately that’s what I need to do. Perhaps some people will think it’s a little bit late for me to start thinking about that, but as time goes by, that’s becoming more of a theme in how I’m approaching the series.”
