The various races encountered throughout Hyrule often have distinct personalities and cultures that become significant to the player as they journey across the land, usually by visiting local shops or embarking on side quests. But the Twili, a new race featured in Twilight Princess, stand out in this respect, as they aren’t presented in the same way that Gorons or Zoras are. Even though the Twili are the flagship race of the game, most are presented as enemies or obstacles, and the few benign ones can only be interacted with in the final chapter of the game. And to make matters worse, they’re very bland compared to members of other races in Hyrule, as they don’t even speak to the player. However, a peek into the game files reveals something interesting: at one point, the Twili were going to have spoken dialogue.
When it comes to extracted artifacts from game files, not all are created equal. Some can reveal interesting things about the game’s development. If they’re lucky, dedicated fans can even uncover some valuable puzzle pieces about the Zelda lore they love so much. But unfortunately, the Twili dialogue doesn’t seem to be one of these cases.
There’s a fair bit of unused dialogue, but even avid theorists like myself would struggle to find anything worthy of in-depth discussion here. Most of the utterances are simply directions for a player who has stopped focusing on the Sol puzzle, and the rest are repetitive comments about Twilight Realm lore, such as the people’s love for Midna or their distaste for Zant.
The two most intriguing pieces of dialogue available are the following: “This is the royal family’s palace! A traitor like Zant can’t have it!” and “The black fog… It stole the sparkle from this land…” This confirms that the Palace of Twilight is most likely the Twilight Realm equivalent to Hyrule Castle, and that the Twili do indeed consider Zant a traitor. As for the comment about the black fog, it might be a reference to Ganondorf joining forces with Zant to truly subjugate the Twilight Realm in a way not previously possible. All in all, these lines reveal very little new information about the Twilight Realm or its people, as they mostly just state facts that could be readily inferred in the first place.
But the obvious question remains: why remove this dialogue? There are plenty of scenarios where this would make sense. For example, the Twilight Realm section may have originally taken place earlier in the game, and when it was moved, the dialogue had to be taken out by necessity. But the far more likely explanation, at least in my opinion, is that the Twili dialogue proved to be an overly redundant addition to the game’s lore, so it was removed in order to smooth things out. And ultimately, its absence did positively contribute to the overall atmosphere of the Twilight Realm, as the passive Twili being a silent yet sentient race adds a powerful layer of mystery to the Twilight Realm and its people.
