LogFAQs > #974132456

LinkPizza posted...

I believe I read somewhere thats what the developers intended Hes our link to the game, and so hes there in our place. And it works with many games (I started to notice after reading that article). So, while we dont hear him, hes saying the stuff we would in his position Hes always explaining whats going on and stuff

Yeah, there are countless times in TotK (to use the most recent examples in my mind) where an NPC will ask Link a question, and he'll gesture as though he were speaking in a world where it's impossible to speak without gesticulating, and the NPC will respond according to the answer that we know Link would give. "What happened?" *Gesture* "You saw the princess, but then she disappeared? Whoa!" He has no actual dialogue, but everything about the scripts of those interacting with him suggests that he is actually speaking, and he's saying more or less what we would.

This also isn't unique to Zelda. To use my next-most-recent example, Xenoblade has numerous scenes where an NPC will ask about recent events, and rather than making the player sit through an explanation of something that they already fully understand because it just happened, the scene will just cut out and resume with the NPC reacting to that explanation that the player knows the party gave in the cut. It helps to keep things flowing by not taking the time to reiterate redundant information. Zelda's just relatively unique in that Link doesn't say anything except (meow) in response to people (and an implied greeting when we talk to NPC's), which frames the story as unfolding around him (and the player) instead of him being an active participant beyond what the player is doing.

Of course, that's awkward to translate into a movie, where stories unfold around characters onscreen instead of around the viewer. This is most likely why they opted to have him talk for the TV show.