There are spoilers ahead for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
While he’s had a (relatively) more defined personality in recently, Link is still a blank slate, cipher, famously silent protagonist. That is also true in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The result of this is that, while we spend the whole game playing as him, we never actually learn much about Link himself.
We know he was a knight for Princess Zelda, as well as that he is the wielder of the Master Sword. We know that he has relentless courage, and that he gave his life to protect Zelda 100 years ago, which caused him to be placed in the Shrine of Resurrection.
But the new Zelda artbook, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Making a Champion, the same one that had Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma confirm that Breath of the Wild’s timeline placement will never be revealed, shares some more information about Link’s past.
Per Dorkly, the book actually flat out confirms something that the main game implies, but never explicitly states—that Link’s home town was Hateno Village, the thriving and jolly countryside village in eastern Hyrule. The interesting thing is that the excerpt is accompanied by a picture that implies that the home you end up buying in Hateno is actually Link’s old home—it belonged to him, and was abandoned after he went to Castle Town to enlist in service, and then never came back.
It’s a minor piece of trivia, but it once more shows how Breath of the Wild, for all its narrative flaws, manages to tell so many stories in subtle ways.
