Because I'm a glutton for debates.
I'll be frank; it will be completely and unequivically unacceptable for Nintendo to release Zelda U without full voice acting. Instead of listing all the reasons why there should be voice act, because there are very few and they apply to almost all video games, I'll instead counter common arguments against them in the hopes of spurring a discussion.
DISCLAIMER: I may be blunt with debating your opinions, but it doesn't mean that I don't respect them, or you. (Unless you think that Metroid: Other M or the Sonic Adventure games are good. Then I can't respect your opinion, because you're obviously crazy.) It just means that I think you're wrong, and more so, because I know why I'm, in turn, right. If I didn't respect your argument, I wouldn't respond to it. If I do, it's because I can see why you've to, what I see as, your incorrect conclusion. But I do respect you. Uness you like those games. Then you're crazy.
Now common arguments against voice acting in Zelda are as follows:
1. The voice acting might be bad.
This is not a valid argument because in can be applied to anything. Music shouldn't be in Zelda because they could hire shitty musicians? No. The entire argument for voice acting goes under the expectation that Nintendo should be compitent enough to hire talented voice actors, write a good script, and implement them in a tasteful way.
I often see people bring up things like Metroid: Other M, the Zelda CDi games, or the Zelda show as arguments against voice acting in Zelda. Again, these are not valid examples. They were poor because of their quality, not their existance. No one ever said, "Battlefield 4's online was shit. That's proof that the next Battlefield should not have online multiplayer." That would be stupid. If something lacks quality, the solution is to improve it. Destiny's story wasn't good. The next game should have a better one, not none at all.
Zelda U needs voice acting, but obviously that means that it needs good voice acting.
2. Reading is more immersive.
No, it's not. In fact, it's the opposite. Reading is a visual medium. You prossess information you read by looking at it. Video games are also a visual medium. When you watch a cutscene, you're focus is supposed to be on the actions being portrayed on screen. Reading text breaks that focus completely.
Reading works in books because your focus is completely on the words. There's nothing breaking your focus. Reading works in comics because the images are static. You're dividing your attention between what you read and what you see. That's why there are no more silent films, and more so, that's why when there were silent films, the text never shared screen time with filmed content. It was always on a blank screen.
Video games are unlike any of those. They are, in cases like Zelda, like movies. You, as a player, talk to people or watch cutscenes where people are speaking to each other. Focusing on reading takes away attention from the actions the speaker performs while doing it. This mean that either the animations become limited, like in any of the 3D Zelda's, or you'll miss parts of those animations entirely. Either way, consessions are being made on one end because of an antiquated system of story telling.
Early on, no voice acting made sense because technology, acting talent, and script writing talent put a restiction on how and how effectively voice acting could be implemented. None of those three things should be an issue anymore. Now its rare to find video games without voice acting, and in the AAA space, its becoming rarer and rarer to find games with poor voice acting through out.
There is no reason a AAA game like Zelda U, in 2015, should have any problems finding and funding good voice actors, good script writers, and good localizers. With full voice acting, cut scene quality can be improved, because developers won't need to build cut scenes and NPC dialog around stop and go animations, just so that players can read everything and not miss out on the visual parts of the scene.
3. Voice acting would ruin Zelda's identity
No it wouldn't. It would improve it. Zelda may be "unique" in that it's one of the last AAA franchises to still not adopt full voice acting, but that is lowering the quality of the games. It lowers the animation quality, the efficiancy of processing information, and the pacing.
4. Zelda is doing good enough without voice acting.
Again, no it is not. It is doing worse without it. There's an entire part of the games that are less than mediocre, directly because voice acting isn't being adopted.
5. Voice acting will only be acceptable if the actors speak Hylian.
This argument especially makes little sense. If the actors are speaking Hylian, then you can't understand them, which means you'll need to read text to understand what they are saying, which means that every problem listed above still stands. If there is voice acting, it needs to be in the native language of the country the game is localized to.
Now it is here that people bring up subtitles in foreign visual media, most usually japanese anime. Here's why that argument doesn't stand up. First of all, the subtitles are being translated from a real language. That means that someone, somewhere in the world, is meant to understand what is being said. In japanese anime, it is supposed to be consumed in japanese by someone who has a complete or near complete understanding of the japanese language. That is the target audience.
Subtitles are a tertiary consession made because, of course, not everyone who may want to consume japanese anime has that understanding of the japanese language. They are, knowingly, accepting a sub-optimal experience so that they may, in some way, be able to enjoy the foreign content. If given the choice between reading subtitles, or being able to fully understand the japanese dialog being spoken, most would chose the latter, and those who would choose the former should read this post on why that's completely stupid.
I say tertiary, because a secondary, and often times superior, consession is to watch a dub of that anime in your language. Many anime watchers forgoe watching dubbed anime because they believe the quality of the dub work is poor. In cases like that, I again point out that it is a matter of quality, not the existance of the dub. There are many anime out there with fantasic dub quality.
In japanese anime, japanese speakers are the target audiance. That's why subtitles, in the absense of a quality dub in the viewer's language, are acceptable. The audience who plays Zelda games are not Hylians. The audience is meant to fully understand what is being spoken. There is no justafiable reason why gamers should suffer through subtitles for a language that no real person can understand.
6. Link should remain silent.
Yes. He should. Link is silent, by characerization. Why would the addition of voice acting change that?
7. Voice acting would ruin the way the characters sound in my head.
No, it wouldn't. In a brand new Zelda game like Zelda U, the characters can't sound like anything in your head, but what their voice actors sound like when they first speak. They're all new characters. You have no impression of any of them yet. The only way I can see this argument being valid is if voice acting were added to a remake of a Zelda game that originally didn't have voice acting.
Now that's not really related to voice acting in Zelda U, but I'll address that too. Get over it. People who read books, a media where reading text is actually justified, deal with movies doing that all the time. People who read comics, another media where reading text is actually justified, deal with shows any movies doing that all the time. No one complains that the obvious solution to that would be to have none of the actors speak, and just present the movies with subtitles so that their precious head voices can be preserved, because that would be stupid.
8. Text is a Zelda tradition.
No, it's a bad habit. Bad habits are meant to be broken.
9. If everyone speaks but Link, he will seem out of place.
This is something that has been said ever since Aonuma brought it up in an interview (where he later said "we'll see" to voice acting). There are many fully voice acted games with silent protagonists, and they get along just fine. The stories are still strong and the protagonists are still believable. The games don't need to ignore that he isn't speaking either. A simple line saying "You don't say much, do you" is enough to make it it believable that the people around you are aware, but unfazed by Link's silence.
10. Voice acting is okay if it's optional.
No, it shouldn't. If it's optional, then compromises will be made to the quality of the way it is done. I would be voice acted, but still have shitty stop and go animations during cut scenes, or something like that. There needs to be voice acting, and they need to go all out with it. If you really want to read, turn on the subtitles.
And now, I pass the microphone to you! Tell me why my counter arguments are invalid! Slam me with that c-c-c-counter breaker I know you all want to hit me with!
