Nintendo was founded in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. The company went through several small niche businesses before becoming a video game company.
Video game fans have been saying for years that Nintendo is lazy. I have always been one of those people that would defend Nintendo till the very end. Nintendo releases most any game with an insane amount of quality and polish. I fully enjoy most Nintendo titles, but there is always a strange ommission from their games, that being voice acting.
Games like the Legend of Zelda absolutely need voice acting to stay with the current gaming market. Zelda would sell millions of copies with or without voice acting, but such a dialogue heavy gaming experience really asks voice acting. I look at Western studios such as Bioware or Bethesda, which supply spoken dialogue to most of their games. Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic 3 has voice acting for every piece of dialogue in the game. KOTOR 3 also has a much greater amount of dialogue any past Legend of Zelda title. Fallout 3 is one of the largest gaming experiences any one can have, and they supply voice acting througout the entire game. Bioware and Bethesda don't only have voice acting for story pieces of dialogue, but they also have spoken dialogue for every side quest.
I feel like Nintendo is afraid of such advancements, but I think Nintendo wanted to test voice acting in Metroid. Other M is one of the first highly cinematic titles for any major Nintendo franchise. Other M has not been received very well from the standpoint of the voice acting and story. This is worrying because Nintendo may see this criticism, and go to such lengths for a game again. The Legend of Zelda is held in higher reguard than Metroid which means there is a bigger risk of soiling its image.
Other M's biggest criticism is what the story and voice acting has done to Samus's image. If Nintendo would have kept Samus as a silent protagonist criticisms would not have been so strong. Every gamer has there own perception of the personality of their favorite silent Nintendo character. If Nintendo does not change the silent hero formula the Legend of Zelda could succeed with attention to voice acting and story.
I will admit that Nintendo is lazy in multiple areas of game development, but nothing as crucial as voice acting. Nintendo titles are usually single player experiences, and for this reason the player wants to be pulled into the story and world. Voice acting would serve the Legend of Zelda well because you would be more emotionally connected to the game.
Video game fans have been saying for years that Nintendo is lazy. I have always been one of those people that would defend Nintendo till the very end. Nintendo releases most any game with an insane amount of quality and polish. I fully enjoy most Nintendo titles, but there is always a strange ommission from their games, that being voice acting.
Games like the Legend of Zelda absolutely need voice acting to stay with the current gaming market. Zelda would sell millions of copies with or without voice acting, but such a dialogue heavy gaming experience really asks voice acting. I look at Western studios such as Bioware or Bethesda, which supply spoken dialogue to most of their games. Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic 3 has voice acting for every piece of dialogue in the game. KOTOR 3 also has a much greater amount of dialogue any past Legend of Zelda title. Fallout 3 is one of the largest gaming experiences any one can have, and they supply voice acting througout the entire game. Bioware and Bethesda don't only have voice acting for story pieces of dialogue, but they also have spoken dialogue for every side quest.
I feel like Nintendo is afraid of such advancements, but I think Nintendo wanted to test voice acting in Metroid. Other M is one of the first highly cinematic titles for any major Nintendo franchise. Other M has not been received very well from the standpoint of the voice acting and story. This is worrying because Nintendo may see this criticism, and go to such lengths for a game again. The Legend of Zelda is held in higher reguard than Metroid which means there is a bigger risk of soiling its image.
Other M's biggest criticism is what the story and voice acting has done to Samus's image. If Nintendo would have kept Samus as a silent protagonist criticisms would not have been so strong. Every gamer has there own perception of the personality of their favorite silent Nintendo character. If Nintendo does not change the silent hero formula the Legend of Zelda could succeed with attention to voice acting and story.
I will admit that Nintendo is lazy in multiple areas of game development, but nothing as crucial as voice acting. Nintendo titles are usually single player experiences, and for this reason the player wants to be pulled into the story and world. Voice acting would serve the Legend of Zelda well because you would be more emotionally connected to the game.
Make the next Zelda have voice acting please for everyone (especially Ganondorf and Zelda) but not Link. Just charging up to Ganon's castle to hear him laugh at your attempts and his deep voice echo across his citadel would be grand.
Metroid Other M was an amazing piece of game and people need to understand that Nintendo innovates and is being creative. If they made another Prime it would be too easy people would say but if they made an old school Metroid people would tell them its not creative eough. People will always complain but I'll be damned if anyone with a straight face can say that Other M is a bad game. (I'm damned anyway!)
Nintendo needs to make a new StarFox, it's a series known for voice acting (or gibberish on the snes) and along with Metroid could be used very well as a more action oriented series.
I think Ive always admired Nintendos slightly...simplistic take on games. They could easily stick voice acting into any game they want but I think its a choice both derived from the fact that theyve come this far without it and that theyre games always have the feel of knowing their roots.
I also think to some extent sticking voice acting into Legend of Zelda would just cheese it up. Zelda herself would become a typical American damsel in distress. As it is theres some mystery and mystique to the characters. Equally having a silent protagonist in story driven games (which any with voice dialogue have to be) just becomes a difficult mess to handle. As much as I adore Persona 4 there was something so funny about seeing all the characters prepping themselves up in the cutscene before the final battle saying stuff like 'I'm ready to take you down' and 'Let's do this!' and then Charlie just grunting.
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