I’m thinking Nintendo should deliver a voiced Link but I don’t think they’ve ever delivered quality voice work in the past. They’re scared they will fail.
Link doesn't speak because they are beholden to this idea that he's your heroic cypher. They don't want to give him a voice to supercede whatever the player might project instead.
Personally I think this is dumb and outdated but Nintendo loves that traditional bullshit.
Technically, Monolith Soft has been owned by Nintendo for some time. I've enjoyed the voice work, English or Japanese, in the Xenoblade games to varying, mostly high, degrees. The English VO for the first Xenoblade game holds a special place in my heart. The Japanese VO in Xenoblade 2 has some of my favorite seiyuu.
The English VO for Fire Emblem: Awakening I thought was alright. Competent anime dub from (I think) the LA talent pool.
I am playing through guardians and i just imagine a peter quill with no voicework. Voicework makes this game. Good voicework in a zelda title could make the game. Typical nintendo cop out.
@sometingbanuble: "Could make the game"? Make the game what? The series is revered by most people that play video games, and a large percentage of those people that revere it consider the games some of greatest, if not THE greatest games, of all time.
Why would voice acting push it over the top? People love Breath of the Wild and the voice acting is fine, but nobody says "Boy, I tell you what, the thing that made Breath of the Wild truly great was that characters now speak during cutscenes."
Fire Emblem Three Houses has pretty great voice acting across the board. In the school, there’s maybe 35 or so main characters and they are all pretty distinct and memorable in my opinion. Some are more generic (like the protagonist, but they are also supposed to be a husk, so oddly appropriate with how they are bland), however, all told that game has solid voice acting.
They should voice Zelda, make her the playable character.
I mean...sure, I would like Link to have a voice too, because silent protagonists tend to be kinda dumb, especially in games where npcs are talking to them (with maybe the exception of Gordon Freeman). But if BOTW 2 is going to be as good as the first one, or even better, I think I can live just fine with yet another mute Link.
Obviously the voice acting makes the game with something like the Guardians. It's probably the best thing about that game, while the gameplay is just ok at best. BOTW as an example has terrific gameplay, so the protagonist lacking a voice is hardly an issue.
Are we talking about English voice over? I don't think Nintendo of Japan would base much of their design process/decision making around English localisation.
I also think Nintendo has plenty of great voice work in their games, they just use it a bit differently, using it sparingly and in some more non-traditional ways.
Luigi Manson 3 for best VO award. "Marrrriooo" "Luigi Time!" "Oh Yeah!" " Oh Nooooo!" and much more hits. Even Mario has more speaking lines than many of his main games.
Anyway... i don't know if it's just because i'm a huge Half Life fan but i'm totally ok with silent protagonists, the only example of an annoying voiced protagonist i can think of is Aloy.
Kid Icarus Uprising has phenomenal English voicing acting, featuring a lot of amazing voice talent giving great performances. The funny conversations between Pit and Palutena are one of the best parts of the game.
Charles Martinet is a treasure good sir, and I will not have his name be besmirched thusly!
Seriously though, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Kid Icarus Uprising all have quality voice over work. I don't think you'll get a voiced Link anytime soon because, ultimately, he probably better as a silent protagonist reacting to the world around him. Especially with the direction they seem to be taking the series with Breath of the Wild.
It would be great if famicom detective club were voiced. But WE KNOW ITS NOT. Ace attorney too (though not Nintendo) would be really great as well. There’s really no excuse with people with work from home set ups. Just waiting for the day when we can say ‘memba when they didn’t?’ Can’t wait.
@sometingbanuble: Famicom Detective Club is fully voiced. All of the Ace Attorney games have initially been released on GBA/DS where full voice acting may have not even been possible due to hardware/storage constraints.
Also, just because games can have voice acting from a technical perspective doesn't mean that they have to or should. A lot of games won't benefit much from it or it would potentially be cost prohibitive.
Yeah Ace Attorney has a tremendous excuse for why it isn't fully voiced and its that it would cost a lot more money and probably wouldn't meaningfully change how many people buy those games.
Despite that those games ARE getting more and more voice acting, the later ones all voice important cutscenes and the like. So while I don't think we'll see one of those fully voiced anytime soon I wouldn't be surprised if important parts of trials start getting voicework added in.
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