In a recent interview with Famitsu Magazine, producer Eiji Aonuma, Grezzo director Satoshi Terada, and Echoes of Wisdom director Tomomi Sano sat down and revealed quite a lot of fascinating information about how the development of Princess Zelda’s adventure came to be. As one could imagine, many times they had to think outside the box in order to approach saving Hyrule from Zelda’s point of view. When they did so, the team almost broke one famous golden Zelda rule in the process. But the rule doesn’t center around Zelda per se – this time it concerns our fair Hero Link.
Spoiler Warning:
The rest of this article may contain spoilers for Echoes of Wisdom about the story, gameplay mechanics, and other details that you might not wish to see. Continue reading at your own risk.
In the interview, Aonuma explained that since the protagonist traditionally does not speak in Zelda games of the past, the team decided that Princess Zelda would not have speaking lines either in Echoes of Wisdom. But having a silent princess presented a new problem: another character would need to speak in order to guide her and the player through the story. This meant that Nintendo finally broke their 38-year-old golden rule. They gave Link a voice with lines. “In fact, Link was speaking at first,” admitted Aonuma in a rough English translation of the interview. But the freedom of Link’s vocal chords was short-lived. Terada stated, “I had Link talk a little bit” but “no matter what he had to say, it just didn’t feel right.”
Aonuma laughed and admitted that he kept thinking, “Link would never say something like that. It felt really strange.”
The team made multiple attempts to have Link talk at different angles, but finally gave up. “Nobody knew what Link was going to say. Of course we wouldn’t. He’s never spoken before!” Aonuma laughed. “So we needed a setting where he couldn’t speak, and that ‘s how part of the story came about.”
So for the first time in 38 years, the team officially declared Link to be mute. This is important to note because there have been cutscenes before with evidence of prior Links talking to other characters in past games without speaking lines. Only the Hero of Winds has been able to “audibly” speak thus far, albeit briefly. Link in Echoes of Wisdom wasn’t born mute, however. Instead, he lost his voice after stumbling into the horrors of the Still World and came back alive with other children he rescued from its clutches.
But making both Link and Zelda speechless still did not solve the issue of needing a talking character as a guide. “That’s why we needed Tri,” said Aonuma. “We were very grateful to have Tri,” emphasized Terada.
“Tri has a different position from previous navigation characters, and since Tri is not a person but [an ethereal being who] suddenly appears, we were careful about what Tri knew when we had Tri speak,” Sano explained. “In order to guide the player, Tri needed to give out a fair amount of information, but if Tri knew too much, it would raise suspicion. Tri has almost the same information as Princess Zelda. However, we were careful about how we gave out information, so there were [certain] things that only Tri knew.”
Initially, Tri had more human-like characteristics but by the end of development, Tri’s role and look changed significantly. “…in the end, [Tri] also served as the UI (user interface) that displayed the cost of potable items, so Tri was given a simple “manju”-like shape that didn’t interfere with the function,” said Sano. “According to the designer, [Tri’s] texture was also inspired by water manju. When you look at it up close, it glows faintly, so it looks like a shining water manju!”
Water manju is a type of Japanese dessert that consists of a translucent jelly encasing a sweet bean paste at its center. Aside from its translucency, its form resembles its cousin mochi, another wrapped Japanese dessert that is becoming popular in the United States.
“By the way,” Aonuma teased in the middle of the interview, “did you get that thing at the end? I feel like there are quite a few people who didn’t notice it. I think it was a very subtle production.”
That “thing” Aonuma referred to involves something rather important about Link, by the way. Players won’t know what it is, however, unless they complete the game story all the way to the very end. “If there are any readers of this article who haven’t noticed, please go through it again,” Aonuma chuckled. Many other points about Echoes of Wisdom were mentioned in the Famitsu interview, too. You can find the original Japanese interview here.
