Link almost had dialogue in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
, by Thibaut
In The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Princess Zelda is the game's heroine. She must save Link, whom the player can briefly control at the start of the adventure.
In an interview with Famitsu, director Satoshi Terada and producer Eiji Aonuma revealed that the famous green-coated character could have been endowed with speech. Indeed, the original plan was to offer Link written dialogues, which would have been a great first in the series apart from choices during certain conversations.
Terada stated that he had created a few dialogues for Link before reconsidering his decision because "it didn't feel right ”. Aonuma also clarified the context of this choice.
Link would never talk like that. It was really strange. Nobody knew what Link could say. And that's normal, since he'd never spoken before. So we had to find a setting in which he couldn't speak, and that's how we invented part of the story. “
Source: famitsu.com