Ubisoft Milan almost made a Zelda game starring Ganondorf

Ubisoft Milan once pitched a Zelda spin-off to Nintendo — internally codenamed Goliath — that would have starred Ganondorf as the playable protagonist. Nintendo rejected the prototype in late 2023, and the project quietly died.

According to Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, Ubisoft Milan began developing the concept shortly after Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope launched in 2022. Former Ubisoft developer Gian Marco Zanna described the ambition behind Goliath as a "new big bang in the video game universe." The original concept featured a brand-new, never-before-seen character set in a fresh corner of the Zelda universe — not a sequel or prequel, but a standalone spin-off. Nintendo reportedly stepped in during the early concept phase and asked the team to swap that original protagonist for Ganondorf, which would have marked the first time the series villain was a central, playable character. Ubisoft Milan was given a deadline of late 2023 to deliver a prototype, but Nintendo turned it down — no official reason has been given.

Ubisoft Milan earned serious credibility with Nintendo fans through Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, which scored a 9/10 from IGN and was widely praised as a genuinely great tactics game. That track record made them a plausible candidate for a Nintendo collaboration of this scale. The Zelda series has experimented with spin-offs before — Hyrule Warriors handed the keys to Koei Tecmo, and Cadence of Hyrule came from indie studio Brace Yourself Games — but a Western studio building a full Ganondorf-led adventure would have been something else entirely.

Ubisoft declined to comment on Henderson's report, though he noted the company internally acknowledged a journalist had been asking about Goliath. What Ubisoft Milan's original protagonist would have looked like, and exactly what kind of story Ganondorf would have anchored, remains unknown — and probably will stay that way.