While speaking with Nintendo Enthusiast at E3, Nintendo’s Julie Gagnon commented on the use of voice chat in certain games and the annualization of franchises.
You can check her statements below:
“The thing with Splatoon is that the game is so visual and we really feel that the people in the game do not need voice chat in order to communicate with each other because we have ‘oh, stay here’ or ‘come here’ icons. We have many ways to communicate in the game. Plus, with the gamepad and the view, you can easily see if one of the members of your team is in trouble, or if there is a part of the map that you need to cover. So, this is something that we made a decision on so that the game can appeal to the maximum number of players. So, ultimately, the developers need to decide, depending on the features and the game itself, whether voice chat is included.”
“It really depends on what the developer has in mind for the franchises. Sometimes you have Zelda sequels and what we have today with Zelda: Triforce Heroes is completely different and not in the timeline of Zelda. So, it really depends on what the developer has in mind and what they propose. So, I think it’s more a coincidence that we have all these great franchises that people like for each year. This isn’t necessarily something we will see for all the years in the future.”
NOTE: While she says the game isn’t in the Zelda timeline, the game’s director said he simply isn’t sure where in the timeline it fits. So I guess we will have to wait until they figure out if the game is canon and belongs somewhere in the timeline or not…