The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Is Surprisingly Different From What You Think

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is far from a 1:1 recreation. When I played it, I found familiar rooms with redesigned challenges that change how the world and the player operate. I spoke with longtime fans who had new things to say that added texture to Hyrule and its people. And I explain how its updated controls and meticulous art direction reshape its classic combat and puzzle-solving for today's players

This isn't a 1:1 remake: expanded dialogue, revised puzzles, and a detailed new art style prioritize adding depth.

Some structural changes suggest a more logical world.

Hyrule is a stage: Remake takes on a theatrical style that reminds me of one of the original inspirations for Ocarina.

Taking my first steps out of Link's treehouse and into the Kokiri Forest, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake came to life. Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma described it as a "faithful interpretation" of the Nintendo 64 original, and that term stuck with me as I explored Hyrule for over an hour. It's far from a 1:1 remake: I found familiar rooms containing redesigned challenges that change how the world and the player work. I talked to old friends who had new things to say that added texture to Hyrule and its people. And, I explained how its updated controls and detailed art design redefine its classic combat and puzzle-solving for the modern day. This renovation is not about domain. It's About Depth The Zelda series is full of old stories, and the Ocarina of Time remake tells itself like a legend, with clear theatrical inspirations that completely changed my approach.

First, a quick word about spoilers. I know some of you have never played an N64 game, which means Ocarina of Time will be a whole new experience. So, I just want to be clear about what happened in the three episodes I played during the preview. The two parts are split over the first 90 minutes of the adventure, while the third and largest part takes place in the first dungeon you play as Adult Link, which takes place about a third of the way through the story. So, there won't be any spoilers for anything outside of what Nintendo has chosen to show us.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time preview screenshots

Return to Kokiri forest. Excluding last-gen updates or spinoffs, this is the first proper game in the Nintendo Switch 2 series, and the leap forward in quality immediately drew me in. Moss and fungus grow on dried skin. Our hero's tunic is hand-embellished - and all run at 60fps. A pleasant musical performance recreates the original forest MIDI theme with what sounds like a handful of real musicians. Hyrule has never felt so close.

This also applies to dialogue. Later, one of the citizens of Castletown looks at Link's outfit and treats him like a foreigner from a distant forest: "Intricate stitching that shows the whole thing is handmade!" he says excitedly. The forest shopkeeper apologizes to Link for his empty shelves and blames the stubborn leader of the Kokiri, Mido, for blocking the path to the large Deku tree, where the staff go to stock up.

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No matter how hard I try to humor Mido, she won't let anyone pass without a sword and shield. Here, the remake shows its tendency to change the design of the level of Ocarina. After crawling into the secret area that contains the Kokiri Sword, I noticed that the challenge to reach it had been revised. The treasure chest used to be in the back corner of the maze with a giant boulder - now it's on a high platform in the center of the room with the boulder rotating around it. The fact that it's different is interesting in itself, but the way this change affects what this room now asks of you reveals a lot.

This renovation is not about domain. It's about depth

On the N64, it was a hurdle to learn to change the camera behind Link by tapping Z to see around corners and avoid rocks. It taught you how to play one of the first 3D action adventure games ever made. This rebuild no longer carries that burden, and the lesson is unnecessary because the proper stick provides full control of the camera. Instead, since Link can now jump with the press of a button, this room is the first time you have to jump to get to the treasure. It removed an outdated tutorial and replaced it with a relevant new tutorial. My watch on Ocarina was full of nuances like this.

Now that I have the sword and shield, I'm fully equipped and controlling Link is awesome. His movement was immediately familiar to Link in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, with a dash, a jump, and a snappy third-person gyro aimed with projectile-based weapons like a slingshot. I was running, jumping, and shooting spiders like a professional sniper in the first dungeon, inside a large deco tree.

I went to the area I was most looking forward to seeing. Ever since Aonuma's gameplay demo, I've been interested in Ocarina's apparent fascination with a more logically constructed world. As seen in one of the rooms in Inside the Great Deku Tree, a floating platform from the N64 game has been replaced by a collapsed bridge that is now built into the environment. I went in with the idea that the remake cares about explaining every element of its world, and my preview session only reinforced that theory.

Before the Ocarina of Time remake on Switch 2, here are my top 10 Zelda games. Only my favorite version of each game is included. This was so hard! I love several games that didn't make it.

I was looking for more examples of this in the jungle temple. Atmospheric fog covers the land in this old haunted mansion, where Adult Link hunts four souls. After two open-world 3D Zelda games that strayed so far from the franchise's traditional dungeons, pushing blocks around, navigating twisty corridors and collecting small keys felt great. I was reminded of how the classic design of Zelda welcomes different types of logic and reasoning than the open approach of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

While the overall layout of the Forest Temple was largely unchanged, it included new cutscenes that fleshed out the dungeon antagonists, and again featured differences in how certain moments were handled. The field where Link fights Stalfos used to have a giant hole in the middle. The link was necessary to avoid it or risk falling to the floor below, but Stalfos could ignore gravity and float over the gap. You could explain it as part of the dungeon's supernatural shenanigans, but it always felt out of place to me.

Here, that hole has been replaced by a shallow pool of acid. Skeleton enemies can still walk in it - they have no flesh to lose - while Link takes damage if he walks into it. This means that the fight plays out like before: Stalfos has access to the entire room while Link is limited to the edges, but the way it's built makes more sense. And when the two Stalfos arrive as reinforcements after Link takes out the first, they bring a platform that fills the room. Now, they only spawn from acid, creating a challenging mini-boss that forces you to fight this limit the entire time.

The fight against Stalfos was my best look at combat so far. The sword cuts through the ground with a crisp THWAP, like a loud, powerful, backhand slap with a dazzling burst of light to match. The enemy's attacks rattle Link's shield and knock him back, before his final spinning attack causes Stalphos to explode into a pile of bones. These battles are done with beautiful dance.

beautiful dance atmospheric fog Handloom flourishes. Ever since the preview, my mind goes back to this anecdote told in an interview with Iwata Asks before the release of Ocarina of Time 3D in 2011: On a hot summer day during the development of Zelda for the Nintendo 64, designers Toru Osawa, Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Jin Ikeda needed some inspiration. They were trying to figure out how to make fencing work in a 3D space. Where should the camera focus? How can the player engage multiple enemies at once without getting overwhelmed? These questions prompted a field trip to Kyoto's Toei Studio Park, a theme park attached to the Toei film studios, where visitors can see theatrical period drama performances, often involving samurai.

The heat made them come to a playhouse to cool off. Inside, they watched a stage show where a samurai was fending off some ninjas. They noticed that in this battle, the samurai locked eyes with one enemy at a time. They circled each other as if connected by an invisible leash (or in some cases, literally by a chain scythe), and fought while the others waited their turn to enter. This observation, among others, helped spark the development of the Z-lock targeting system in Ocarina of Time.

I bring this up because it's clear that Live Theater was inspired by the original Ocarina developers in at least this one key way. When I played their remake, I often felt like I was experiencing Ocarina through the lens of a period drama in a playhouse.

Fight, for example: Locking onto an enemy limits the lighting of the scene, dramatically emphasizing that invisible bond that binds you and your enemy together. Link weaves back and forth in a dance-like motion, as enemies you don't target hoot and holler in the background. They are also waiting for their turn to strike.

Opening a chest to reap your rewards puts whatever treasure you've just acquired into focus. Similarly, Floormasters – the iconic hand enemies that pull Link from the ceiling – are now telegraphed by a glowing spotlight that shines on Link and changes color just before the hand comes down. These lighting cues are intentionally demonstrative.

The more I thought about this frame on my flight home and in the days that followed, the more I realized how many design choices fit this theme in some way. The fog covering the ground creates an atmosphere as if from a foggy car. Link's meticulously detailed costume attempts to place us in an era as if it were a work of historical fiction. Logically crafted puzzles add a hands-on, hands-on feel to the collection. A handful of musicians could perform live while the orchestra pit was placed just below the stage.

The quest logs are written in the past tense and tell an old story: "Once upon a time there was a young boy named Link who lived in a forest called Kokiri Forest." Even the first reveal trailer opened with the narrator reflecting on ancient events: "A long time ago, there was a land called Hyrule..." Okarinamese is a play: Hyrule, its setting. dungeons and villages, its collections; The enemies and people of the city, its actors; And Link, its chosen hero.

When I spoke to the villager in Castletown who was stunned to see a boy from Kokiri Forest, I couldn't help but think that it took less than 90 seconds to run across Hyrule Square to get between the two towns. A few Peahat enemies litter the landscape, a crack in the ground begging for a good bomb, but so far, this once large and open space feels small and strange in a modern context.

Ocarina of Time is a play: Hyrule, its setting. dungeons and villages, its collections; The enemies and people of the city, its actors; And Link, its chosen hero.

Narratively, the characters act as if the kingdom of Hyrule is very large, when in reality it is very small. Instead of reimagining this version of Hyrule by making it larger than we remember it, it reframes each area as a fictional representation of a world much larger than we actually see. If you've watched The Wizard of Oz on stage, you know that the Yellow Brick Road is a lot bigger than the set shows us. That doesn't necessarily make up for the shortcomings to be found in a Hyrule Field that ultimately feels lackluster by today's standards—it's too early to judge based on the few minutes I spent with it—but it's one way to think about how Nintendo changed the meaning of these areas without fundamentally changing their scope.

I was surprised when Aonoma said the team decided to keep the loading screens between areas, but it makes a lot of sense when viewed through this context: Kokiri Forest, Hyrule Field, and Castle City are different sets, and the loading screens between them represent the group switching between them before the next scene begins. There is only so much space on stage.

All of this marks the Ocarina of Time remake as a loving retelling of a legend: it's old, it's important, and it's worth revisiting. Storytellers feel there is still something we can learn from it. After seeing just a few classic cities and dungeons reborn in this inspired way, I totally agree.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've reviewed recently!

And, check out a special episode of Nintendo Voice Chat where we go deeper into our Zelda preview.

Logan Plant is IGN's senior editor, playlist and DB, and host of Nintendo Voice Chat. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game series of all time, and he's patiently waiting for the day when Nintendo introduces an all-new F-Zero. You can find new NVC episodes on the IGN Games YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.