The director comments on voice acting in Twilight Princess and Zelda DS controls.
A recently published article from Wired News, based on interviews at E3 last month, includes some new information on upcoming Zelda titles, including the mysterious DS incarnation of the series.
Eiji Aonuma, who is the director of Twilight Princess for GameCube and is directly handling the next handheld Zelda, spoke with Wired's Chris Kohler about the games. Aonuma mentions that he doesn't think voiced dialogue is a good fit for the Zelda series, but...
"That said, I've always felt that if we can use voice in a way that's new and unique, it could be very positive for the Zelda series. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do that in time for the E3 demo, but we do have some ideas that we're thinking about."
Several previous Zelda games have used short voice samples for various grunts and shouts, but the story has always been told through text. It seems that Aonuma may have some ideas that will change that tradition, but it doesn't look like Zelda will be going the way of Final Fantasy X any time soon.
E3 2005 brought the surprising revelation that Aonuma is working on an internally developed Zelda game for DS that is not part of the Four Swords spin-off series, as had been widely expected. However, no other information about Zelda DS was announced. In Wired's article, Aonuma does say that the game will be "primarily controlled with the system's touch screen and stylus pen."
For more comments from Aonuma and other prominent Japanese developers, check out Wired's article at the link above.