Aonuma talks realistic Zelda

Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has spoken of the difficulty in using "realistic graphics" for the basis of the series' latest GameCube instalment, Twilight Princess, and explained why there will be no voiced dialogue in the game.

Speaking to Wired News at E3, he said: "When you shift to realistic graphics, you can't fool the player any more. It no longer makes sense to have the player swing a sword with their left hand, killing an enemy that's on his right."

And there are a number of creative reasons that it still doesn't make sense to include the work of voice actors, he said. "When the player is reading text on the screen, they're inserting a part of themselves, their imagination, into the reading. They fill out the world. But with fully spoken dialogue, everything about the character becomes fixed in place, and you lose a bit of that imaginative aspect."

However, he added, Nintendo has "some ideas" about how to use vocals in a new and interesting manner, although nothing's been finalised yet.

Aonuma also said that the game's sense of realistic visuals would carry through to other elements of the game - like the physics. "You have to be able to feel the weight of Link's sword as he swings it," he told Wired News.

Although Aonuma wouldn't say much else about the game, he was prepared to say that one of his other projects - a Nintendo DS Zelda title - would make use of the stylus. Although we could probably have worked that out for ourselves.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is due out on the Cube later this year. You can read what we made of its E3 showing here, and the full Wired News article, which also quizzes other noted Japanese designers, can be found here.