Is it November yet? I am currently overloaded with games to play, but I also really just want to play the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. It’s hitting Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026, which is just over a month away, and that is just simply not soon enough for me. I keep thinking about it!
Ocarina of Time is still fresh in my brain. I actually played it for the very, very first time just this past January, and apart from how clunky and old it felt to control, I really enjoyed it! So I’m rather excited to give it a second shot but with nice, smooth, and shiny modern controls and some of the new updates being introduced with this remake.
Because there are changes, beyond just the visuals. And I’ve watched the trailers a lot and puzzled over them with friends, and I think I’ve managed to identify what I consider to be the 15 biggest ones. Some of them were pointed out directly by Eiji Aonuma in the gameplay presentation, but others are significantly more subtle. Let’s consider, shall we?
Voice Acting
While the original Ocarina of Time had some grunts and yells and other little vocal cues that played when characters spoke, the remake has fully voice-acted cutscenes.
Jump Button
Link can jump now, on cue! No more having to line up sprinting at a cliff’s edge for his auto-jump to work correctly; you can just control it now, and even jump in all sorts of other places, too.
Swimming
Link can also swim now, properly this time, with a little speed boost on a button press, and underwater too! He has a short stamina bar that depletes while he’s underwater, so he can’t go under indefinitely, but you no longer have to do weird maneuvers with the iron boots to hang out underwater.
Free camera
You can rotate the camera around freely now rather than having to rely on a mixture of a clonky targeting system and snapping the camera back behind Link to see what’s going on. This is also the case in areas that used to have a fixed camera, like Castle Town, so you can see a lot more of these areas, including spots that were never visible before.
Sprinting
As before, Link can do a little roll, but if you hold down the A button when you roll he’ll start sprinting out of it and move even faster than before.
Mechanisms
A lot of very smart people have pointed out that Ocarina of Time seems to have tweaked some of the mechanisms in dungeons so that while they are still the same for the purposes of gameplay, the manner in which they function is a bit more in keeping with a world in which actions have a proper cause and effect. The most commonly cited example is in this room, where instead of a floating platform, there’s a log bridge that crumbles under Link. Then, once he has the slingshot, he shoots a switch that causes two stone panels to move and release a ladder. Before, Link just shot some webs and the ladder seemed to mysteriously drop from them as a result. This is a bit more believable!
Hyrule Field
Hyrule Field’s topography is different from what it used to be. Link walking out onto this vista view of the field isn’t a thing in the original just because of the way the elevations work. Lon Lon Ranch appears to no longer be up on a plateau. There’s also an interesting little marshland area in one corner of the map that was mostly just empty land before. These are all pretty subtle changes, but I think most of the ones I’ve seen help make Hyrule Field feel vast and make good use of improved draw distance, acknowledging the fact that players now expect more than just big blank swaths of green terrain.
Bustling Castle Town
This is way more people than were originally in Ocarina’s Castle Town. Neat!
Time Keeps Going
Not just in the field, as before, but time will proceed while in towns like Castle Town, too. This means we’ll be able to see the city transition from night into day, and vice versa!
Town Layouts
In general, some of the town layouts appear to be switched up, or to have more detail added. The most obvious example of this is the location of the construction work in Kakariko Village; it’s not in the same place as it was in the original. There’s also a new area in Hyrule Castle, accessible when Link crawls through the tunnel to the courtyard: he ends up in some sort of sewer. It’s unclear why this was done, but it may make finding what you’re looking for a bit more challenging if you’re relying too much on memories.
Iron Boots
You can just map them to a button now. This was present in the 3DS version of Ocarina, too, but it’s just so nice to see it return.
Lens of Truth
This is a pair of goggles now? I guess that makes sense. Before, using the Lens just put a little view on the camera for the player to see through, and did not actually show Link using the magnifying glass. Now, Link will just put the goggles on, which feels a bit more realistic.
Bigger Wallet?
I’m not 100-percent sure on this one, but some folks have pointed out that in the trailer, Link appears to have a rupee cap of 200 rupees. In the original Ocarina, he starts the game with a 99-rupee cap, and anything above that just goes…nowhere. You can upgrade your wallet through quests, and I guess it’s possible that in the build of the game we’re looking at, Link has already done that somehow, even though he seems to still be at the very beginning. But a higher cap to start would be most welcome.
Loading Screens
In the gameplay preview, Eiji Aonuma pointed out that the team wanted to preserve loading screens between major areas to keep the same feel of the original game. But notably, there are seemingly no loading screens when you walk into buildings like shops, making exploring an individual area far more seamless. We haven’t seen what form this takes in Castle Town, but it at least seems true in Kokiri Forest.
Playing the Ocarina
In addition to hitting the correct button sequence to play your Ocarina, you can also hum, sing, or play a real instrument into the microphone, and the game will register that as a song. So if you’re like me and can hum all the songs on pitch but never remember the buttons, this version of Ocarina of Time will be a lot smoother!
