Character Development

[Sovereign]

In future games, my bet is Link will speak and things will change due to new hardware and innovation. A few years ago, Mario didn't have a name and could only do three things. Now, his character is starting to show and his interests being slowly laid out. Where are our beloved Nintendo characters going in a few years. Will Link become sarcastic? Will Mario get married? Will Samus take off the suit and walk away?

What do you guys think?

[HolyPaladin]

In future games, my bet is Link will speak and things will change due to new hardware and innovation. A few years ago, Mario didn't have a name and could only do three things. Now, his character is starting to show and his interests being slowly laid out. Where are our beloved Nintendo characters going in a few years. Will Link become sarcastic? Will Mario get married? Will Samus take off the suit and walk away?

What do you guys think?

By "a few years ago" I assume you mean something along the lines of "twenty-five", right? I just wanted to note this in case there's somebody out there that isn't aware of how far back this character goes.

The characters of these franchises haven't lacked voice acting because of hardware limitations. They lacked voice acting largely because no voice is going to satisfy everybody's expectations. If the characters were just now appearing for the first time today, they could be given whatever voices the developers wanted and nobody would complain, but these characters have been around for two decades, give or take depending on the character, and have went through those years without a voice. To give them voices now would be sort of like painting the Statue of Liberty so that she isn't solid green anymore. People would hate it.

It's not just voices, either. Fleshing out these beloved characters that some of us have been gaming with for a couple decades now could ruin them. Nintendo has to be very conservative with their character behaviors, interjections, emotions, and such. If they portray the characters in a way that doesn't suit our expectations of who those characters are, we'll hate what they've done with them.

[Generosity of God]

i dont think Link will develop too much. He will ever stay the silent hero. finding the right voice would be pretty hard. plus it saves Nintendo alot of voice acting money. not to mention that it will ruin the whole Hyrule language as they would have to make it in various real languages.

he's developed alot as a character but the thing is, it is never the same Link. the next Link may be a bad ass street kid who accidentally gets swept into the shoes of a hero. but one thing is for sure, he will always have courage as a characteristic. and i think he will always be a child or youth without parents. but they could change that and make him an adult in the next one.

i think the best development to come out of Twilight Princess was the love interest between Link and Llia. in past games it was always a toss up between a few females. this time it was clear he liked her most. there was no "ooh maybe he'll get with Zelda". well there sort of was with Midna after she got rid of the curse and Link got to check her out proper but i liked the depth of the relationship between Llia and Link.

Where will Nintendo's old characters go? well i think they will stay fairly similar. Link will always be couragous and quiet with just grunts while he fights. Mario stays comical while running around with his 'wahaaa's and 'here we go's. Bowser with his evil laugh. Yoshi and Donkey Kong would sound weird with anything but animal sounds.

of all the old characters, Samus would be the most suited to get proper dialogue. she is the most realisitic of the lot and wouldnt sound weird if she would say stuff like "fucking bugs" as she blasted a few beetles into ash.

i'd expect the new characters from Project HAMMER and Disaster to get voice acting. the setting of the games just wouldnt work well without voices. the guy from Disaster should be a husky Leon S Kennedy. the guy from Project Hammer should sound like The Thing.

but all that is about voice work. i havent go too much thought on personalities. but i think they wouldnt change too much.

[Boggy700]

Regarding voice acting in Zelda games, I sure hope they never do it.
One of my favorite things about the Zelda style is those vocal noises the characters make.
Just with a gasp or a sigh you can tell what that character is feeling.
And also the way that the NPCs seem to be able to read the player's minds at times.
Even if they do ever use voice acting in Zelda games, I hope, at least, they never make Link talk.

As Generosity said, character development for Link would never go far, being that each Link in each game (mostly) is a different one in the timeline.
But even so, I don't want the game to tell me who Link is.
I already know who Link is, fundamentally.
Link is the quintessential 'good guy', and a conduit for the player to act through.
If Link had his own distinct personality, most players would be acting against it.
I, for one, could not relate to many personalities they could fit Link with, and that would alienate me from the immersive experience to an extent.
I want to recieve a clean canvas, not one that someone else has drawn their own idea of Link on.

[the poe collector]

I hope Nintendo never uses voice acting in a Zelda game, and if they do then don't make Link talk. Reading text doesn't really bother me, each NPC is able to have personality without having a voice. In games like KOTOR or Jade Empire when I am playing through the game again I usually get tired of the voices and just read the text while they are talking to get whatever information I need.

[Phoenix]

Remember when Bowser could talk in Super Mario Sunshine? They won't do that to Link. I'd love voice acting in Zelda games, just not Link.

[Gookanheimer]

Remember when Bowser could talk in Super Mario Sunshine?

Ergh, that pissed me off so bad! >.< And Bowser Jr's voice was annoying too.

Bowser was awesome when he just made dinosaur sounds, but once they gave him that voice and his growls were done by that same voice, he became less badarse and more dumbarse. Same with DK and his change of voice (compare MK64 and Mario Golf on Cube).

[Sovereign]

What if the voices were better, could it make the game better? (As opposed to them not talking at all)

[Ch1cago88]

Kirby starts puberty, then watches Kinsey and learns about Wii’s.

[Phoenix]

Ergh, that pissed me off so bad! >.< And Bowser Jr's voice was annoying too.

Bowser was awesome when he just made dinosaur sounds, but once they gave him that voice and his growls were done by that same voice, he became less badarse and more dumbarse. Same with DK and his change of voice (compare MK64 and Mario Golf on Cube).

Didn't they take away his voice when they realized how lame it was?

[Gookanheimer]

You mean Bowser? He had it in Sunshine, then had it again in Mario Kart, Mario Golf, and possibly Mario Tennis and/or Strikers/baseball too (haven't played those last three). Has he been in any other games since Sunshine, and did he have a voice/the same voice in it?

I hope he still has the dinosaur roars in SSBB.

[TheGreenElf]

Link won't speak. Period.

[Zeep]

Part of the reason everyone remembers classic games so fondly is because with limited technology, so much is left to the imagination. Now that technology is not nearly as limited, they could make Link, Mario, or Samus into as real people as they want, but they would lose that special charm that they have BECAUSE so much is left to the imagination, so they have to keep the games modern while still leaving things to the player' imagination, and they will continue to do so.

As for voice acting, the problem doesn't lie with finding a voice actor that people like. It's not that everyone has a different idea of what Link's voice sounds like, it's that everyone's idea of Link's voice IS silence.

Let me put it this way. Everyone know Phoenix Wright, the text adventure for DS? Someone online made a radio show of that where they voice acted the lines from the game. It was very well done and sounded great, except the voice for Phoenix was... just not quite right. I got to thinking about what Phoenix's voice should sound like, and I realized it's not that his voice should sound like anything specific, it's that his voice shouldn't sound like anything at all. Your mind gets used to not knowing the voice and simply associates that character with silence, or in Phoenix's case, little beeps. The particular voice they used was not the wrong voice, it was just as good a voice as any. But your mind doesn't expect him to have a voice at all, so all voices sound "wrong". That'd be the problem with giving Link or Samus a voice.

[Boggy700]

Part of the reason everyone remembers classic games so fondly is because with limited technology, so much is left to the imagination. Now that technology is not nearly as limited, they could make Link, Mario, or Samus into as real people as they want, but they would lose that special charm that they have BECAUSE so much is left to the imagination...

YES!
That's exactly IT!
It's like when a book is adapted into a movie!

[Vishus]

It's not so much the imagination. YOU are the character. These characters never had a personality other than what you as a person put into it. It's okay for Cloud Strife to have a voice, because well you're not him and the devs are the ones that decides what kind of character he is. With Link you don't want to lose that. I would like Link to have more dialog to choose from and more options to accomplish the same goal. If Link had a voice like Bioware/Obsidian's RPGs then that's fine. He would strictly say things such as "Attack", "Hey", "Hi", "Oh", "Ooh", "Aah", "Hmm"

[Pro A.]

The big three seem to have carved an unusual niche when it comes to voice acting, which is peculiar, but it seems to work for them in the idea that it makes them unique. There are times when the sound effects do become downright annoying, but after twenty to twenty-five years of having it one way, I do find it almost unfathomable that they would reverse direction and try voice acting. Samus would probably be the only acceptable choice and she has had dialogue before (see Metroid Fusion as an example), but that wasn't voice-over work and during gameplay we don't expect her to talk because most of the enemies she fights are brainless monsters. I guess they'll always remain an enigma on some level.

[Vishus]

Pro A. I don't believe there is any enigma at all. A lot of nintendo gamers hardly play anything outside of Nintendo so they do not know the possibilities. There's also the dev's lack of inputing simple features. If you don't want to hear Link say anything they can give you the option to turn it off. Nintendo could have given us an option to turn off rumble and controller sounds for Zelda so we can save battery, but they didn't. That should have been a given even on the Wii system itself w/o a game. Devs can even have the npcs say something small in the beginning, but everything else text for the player to read. Give the player a journal to type on to avoid talking to the person multiple times because you can't figure it out at first. If you can sit down through cinematic sequence then you can sit down through hearing somebody's voice.

Every single one of Nintendo's characters played by a player have the exact same personality. The player's. If Link says automatically says "I should have dropped a bomb on that rock" in text with no sound without the player choosing to say that dialog that would be more devastating. If Link says "Hi" when he talks to a certain person and it's expressed as a sound then there's really nothing to cry over. In an ending movie for Zelda when you read P. Zelda's text instead of listening to her that's shit. Her personality isn't yours so why do you have to worry? Everybody does have their own imagination of what P. Zelda would sound like, but if that's the case go to some forum RPG. I'd hate to watch Star Wars if I have to read text.

[Phoenix]

I can only think of one respected Nintendo franchise with voice acting, and it's memorably bad. If Nintendo would go out and hire good voice actors for their games, I wouldn't mind, but they have other priorities. If they're not going to spend the money, we're better off without any.

[Zeep]

Nintendo could have given us an option to turn off rumble and controller sounds for Zelda so we can save battery, but they didn't. That should have been a given even on the Wii system itself w/o a game.

You CAN do that, in the controller settings in the HOME menu.

But having an option to turn off voice acting is still different. It's like reading a Harry Potter book after seeing one of the movies. Yeah, you're free to imagine he looks and sounds like anyone you want, but once you've seen and heard what the movie studio thinks, that image gets stuck in your head.

And the Star Wars example is a terrible comparison. Star Wars is a movie. YOU are not any of the characters in Star Wars. All of the characters are themselves. In a videogame it's implied that you are one of the characters, so your personality should carry into theirs.

[Vishus]

But having an option to turn off voice acting is still different. It's like reading a Harry Potter book after seeing one of the movies. Yeah, you're free to imagine he looks and sounds like anyone you want, but once you've seen and heard what the movie studio thinks, that image gets stuck in your head.;

That's not true for everybody. The more you experience one thing over another the more of what you experience stays in your head.

And the Star Wars example is a terrible comparison. Star Wars is a movie. YOU are not any of the characters in Star Wars. All of the characters are themselves. In a videogame it's implied that you are one of the characters, so your personality should carry into theirs.

Do I always have to use a widget? I'm talking about movies in general. The only difference between a movie and a game is that you have control over something, but every time you lose control and watch what is happening in the story it's the same as a movie. I'm talking about the NPCs NOT your PC self. Watching P. Zelda at the end of TP would have been better if she talked with sound. Growing up not hearing any voices in certain game franchises doesn't make it a good thing in latter games. If you grew up with crap then you'll like that crap, but that's no way to judge anything, because you'll have new people experiencing it. The problem is not quality of the game it's you.