Nintendo has lastly proven us a correct have a look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on Switch 2, and Zelda followers have instantly discovered one thing to argue about. The announcement additionally got here with a primary have a look at the brand new Nintendo Switch 2 Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition, which was much less contentious – everybody loves it.
Personally, I feel the brand new The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake appears to be like beautiful, but it surely additionally appears to be like very completely different from the N64 authentic, with rebuilt environments, rather more detailed supplies, trendy lighting, a free digicam and redesigned character fashions. Naturally, that’s how issues ought to be for a Swap 2 remake of a basic retro game. Throughout this week’s Nintendo Direct reveal, Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma known as it a “trustworthy interpretation utilizing trendy applied sciences”.
The large response from followers who’ve been eager for the return of Ocarina of Time? It appears to be like like an Unreal Engine fan undertaking. That is not essentially an insult, both, though fairly just a few persons are positively utilizing it as one.
On Reddit, one fan wrote: “Actually, I’m not an enormous fan of the way it appears to be like. It appears to be like like a fan undertaking made in Unreal Engine 5 to me,” reads one response to the brand new trailer.
One other fan instantly pushed again, arguing: “We have seen OoT fan remakes in UE5. None of them regarded near this good.”
Ocarina of Time a UE5 fan remake?
I feel that’s a greater manner to take a look at the comparability. No person severely thinks Nintendo simply took someone’s Unreal undertaking and shipped it; the comparability is de facto about trendy recreation engines: reasonable supplies, volumetric lighting, tender shadows, detailed vegetation, and all the opposite bits of rendering wizardry we have got used to seeing in high-end Unreal demos.
Ocarina of Time is completely loaded with that stuff now, and whereas that provides it a brand new lease of life, it may well therapeutic massage out among the authentic’s quirks and persona, or at the very least, that’s how some followers really feel. The issue, for some followers, is what occurs when that trendy rendering wraps round these very acquainted Nintendo character designs.
Younger Hyperlink particularly has grow to be the point of interest of the complaints, with one Reddit reaction saying: “Hyperlink appears to be like like a kind of creepy dolls. The setting appears to be like nice, however the faces are simply not working for me.”
You possibly can see why the face is inflicting a lot dialogue. Nintendo hasn’t turned Hyperlink into some fully new interpretation of the character; it seems to have retained the proportions and acquainted shapes of the N64 model whereas giving him dramatically extra reasonable pores and skin, hair, eyes and lighting. It’s a contemporary replace that may work superbly in a single shot after which look unusually uncanny within the subsequent.
There is a related criticism in regards to the recreation’s characters extra typically, with one fan saying the general model is working for them however that the faces really feel “virtually mask-like”.
The opposite response to Ocarina of Time’s remake
However this is the opposite half of the story, and it is a fairly necessary one as a result of there are many Zelda followers who completely love what Nintendo is doing, and after seeing increasingly more of the remake, I’m sitting comfortably within the ‘I adore it’ camp.
Some of the common reactions to the remake says on the forum: “It’s precisely what I predicted, precisely what I needed, and is the best-case situation for this remake. Completely wonderful. Rapid preorder.”
That is a very completely different studying of the identical footage revealed on the Direct. For these followers, Nintendo hasn’t misplaced the plot in any respect, and as an alternative there’s a sense the developer has lastly been in a position to realise the type of reasonable fantasy world Ocarina of Time was making an attempt to create again in 1998, solely this time with out the N64 having to render all of it via just a few blurry textures and a heroic quantity of fog.
That is why the environments are getting a lot reward, and for me this has been the true star of the remake – lovely, detailed, pastel-hued grassy fantasy. One current discussion on Reddit describes the remake as “technically unimaginable”, particularly praising its vegetation, supplies and shader work, whereas nonetheless questioning among the lighting and character rendering.
There’s a superb argument right here too, as Ocarina of Time wasn’t Wind Waker, and it wasn’t attempting to be a cel-shaded, stylised cartoon, and it wasn’t constructed round intentionally exaggerated character proportions in the identical manner some later Zelda video games had been. Nintendo was attempting to make Hyrule really feel like a convincing 3D fantasy world; it simply occurred to try this on {hardware} that couldn’t completely match the ambition. The remake is making an attempt to make the unique imaginative and prescient a actuality.
There’s additionally a humorous generational factor occurring right here. Followers who grew up with Ocarina of Time typically bear in mind wanting Zelda to look extra reasonable, extra cinematic and extra technically spectacular, whereas youthful gamers have grown up with Nintendo’s rather more stylised method and are not essentially satisfied that realism mechanically makes Zelda look higher.
Which implies Nintendo has one way or the other managed to create a remake that provides one group of followers precisely what they at all times needed whereas giving one other group one thing that feels barely off. However that is a superb place for an Ocarina of Time remake to be, as a result of the environments look spectacular, the unique visible ambition is far simpler to see, and Nintendo has clearly put an unlimited quantity of labor into rebuilding Hyrule somewhat than merely giving the N64 recreation a lick of high-resolution paint.
Nintendo is getting the steadiness proper
I am much less satisfied by among the faces, significantly Younger Hyperlink, however that is additionally the bit I might count on Nintendo to spend the subsequent few months sharpening, tweaking and customarily attempting to make all people cease gazing his barely unsettling eyes.
So no, Zelda followers aren’t all saying the remake appears to be like dangerous. They’re all saying it appears to be like completely different, and that distinction has cut up the viewers fairly neatly between individuals seeing the Ocarina of Time they’ve at all times imagined and people seeing a really costly Unreal Engine demo (they’re flawed).
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches solely on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026.