The Reason Why Link Never Talks
The Legend of Zelda is a series that has changed drastically over its many decades, but there's always been one constant, even has Hyrule has taken many different shapes: Link hasn't spoken. You might be wondering, why is that? We think we now know the reason why Link never talks, so without further ado, let's dive in.
In most Zelda games, Link is the lone player character. Regardless of which evil is presenting itself in the world at the time, or when that time is, there is always a Link who is able to rise up, wield the Master Sword, and meet that evil head-on. As you might have guessed by our use of "a Link," however, that Link is not always the same being, so to voice Link would be to voice one version of many. And that one Link could never be representative of the past Links that came before, or the Links to come in the future.
Nintendo's constant Link spawning also comes with a pretty significant perk; it enables the company to keep him silent in the name of player identity. Because Link is quiet, players can essentially project their personalities onto him, turning the Legend of Zelda hero into whoever they want him to be. It's a formula that's worked out pretty well so far; In fact, when asked about it years ago, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said he had no interest in changing it.
"Personally, I don't want to have Link speak in the game," Aonuma said. "We haven't had him talk at all up to this point. It's part of the series history. It would just, to me, break the image of Link to have him speak."
For a bit of context: that interview was conducted before Skyward Sword, so Nintendo stuck to its "silent Link" guns in both that title and Breath of the Wild.
Will we ever see a Link who talks? Never say never. Nintendo has been known to throw out its older playbooks from time to time, and there may come a day when a chatty Link is what Nintendo sees as the best path forward for The Legend of Zelda. Until then, you at least have some idea of why Link doesn't talk in all of his various Zelda titles.