According to the ever-reliable NateTheHate, a bunch of exciting titles, including a new Star Fox game, are set to land on the Nintendo Switch 2 this year. Of course, all anyone can talk about right now is Nate’s statement, corroborated by VGC, that a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is set to launch exclusively on the Switch 2 in summer 2026.
Now, if you ask me, this is exciting, but I’m also a little wary of the prospect. For many, Ocarina of Time is a sacred game, so you’d expect a remake of it to be extremely faithful. But, then again, is there much point in remaking a game, rather than remastering it, if everything remains exactly the same as the original?
Of course, this is all working under the assumption that said remake isn’t just some kind of port of the Nintendo 3DS’ The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, as Nate wasn’t entirely certain of the scope of the project. However, if it were a full-blown remake of Ocarina of Time, what would we feasibly want such a game to borrow from the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom?
A seamless open world
When you venture between, for example, Kakariko Village and the Graveyard in Ocarina of Time, the screen will fade out and obscure the loading screen as you transition into a new area. Obviously, this is 30-year-old hardware we’re talking about here, and the Nintendo 64 wasn’t powerful enough to generate the type of truly open world that the Switch 2 is capable of.
But I’m not just talking about removing loading screens here. In the case of that Kakariko Village/Graveyard transition, the way the path accurately twists into the Graveyard implies that Ocarina of Time’s map was designed with interconnection in mind. It would require Nintendo to take a few creative liberties with certain areas, but most of the legwork has already been done in the map design department. And as Breath of the Wild proved back in 2017, even the original Switch (and the Wii U for that matter) is powerful enough to handle a truly seamless open-world Zelda game.
A harder master quest mode
Hardcore Zelda fans will definitely already know this, but the original Ocarina of Time on the N64 didn’t actually come with a Master Quest difficulty option. Instead, this version was later offered as a pre-order bonus on the GameCube for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, titled The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest.
Playing the Master Quest version of Ocarina of Time sort of feels like watching the edited-for-TV broadcast version of a familiar R-rated film. Enemy placements have been moved around or swapped with new enemies entirely, and collectables are in different places, but it’s mostly the same game. In many ways, it almost feels more like a romhack.
Instead, for a remake, I’d prefer they go the Breath of the Wild route for a Master Quest difficulty mode. Master Quest difficulty in BotW added new enemy variants and moved a bunch of stuff around, but, more importantly, it also changed things mechanically. Enemies detect you much quicker and regain health, plus you can be one-shot, and you can’t even manually save (instead having to rely on one autosave).
More importantly, I feel like Ocarina of Time purists probably wouldn’t mind if they made huge changes to Master Quest either, as it’s an optional experience in the first place (that a lot of people probably never even played).
Add voice acting (but make it optional)
The very, very limited voice acting in Ocarina of Time is oddly part of its charm. I know saying that Navi is incredibly annoying isn’t exactly a revelatory statement in 2026, but not hearing every other NPC talk is strangely comforting in a weird way, and I’m not entirely sure that’s something I’d want them to change in a remake.
That being said, I do kinda want to hear what certain characters sound like. The likes of Ganon and Zelda were well cast in Tears of the Kingdom, so I’m not against them reprising their roles… just, maybe, give us an option in the settings to completely turn the voice acting off. Just made sure that there’s no option to turn Navi off. I put up with that shit when I was eight years old, and the new generation will have to suffer too.
Interactive elemental effects
It wasn’t exactly revolutionary stuff at the time, but I have a lot of fond memories of discovering all of the unique ways that elemental effects and weather conditions impacted the gameplay in Breath of the Wild. Accidentally creating sweeping forest fires, destroying my wooden weapons by setting them alight, slipping down a cliff face to my doom in the rain, and getting struck by lightning because I was wearing metal armor… all good stuff (in retrospect, but laughably annoying in the moment).
Now, I’m not quite sure to what degree I’d like a system such as this to be implemented in an Ocarina of Time remake, but I do know it would be extra fun to mess around with once you unlock the Song of Storms and the Song of Sun. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be quite as in-depth as Breath of the Wild, but I would really love to summon a big storm and yeet an Octorok off a cliff.
Expanded enemy AI
Just to get ahead of you on this one, I’m not saying I need enemies in an Ocarina of Time remake to be smarter. What I actually want is just some more silly little interactions between enemies.
You know how in Breath of the Wild, you’ll often see different enemies fighting each other, or Bokoblins sitting around a campfire chatting? That’s all I want to see, really. Just some extra cute little interactions.
For instance, Lizalfos in Ocarina of Time like to attack in pairs. What if you could see them interacting with each other beforehand? Being pals or whatever. Maybe we could find out that the Lizalfos you fight in Dodongo’s Cavern were married and you killed their spouse in front of them, you monster.
Enhanced Epona combat
This is a real straightforward one, but honestly, this really annoyed me when I played Ocarina of Time for the first time as a kid, and I think it would kind of annoy new players in a remake too; let me swing my goddamn sword while I’m riding Epona.
This isn’t specific to Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, as you could swing your sword on Epona in Twilight Princess. And, yes, it’s not mechanically necessary, as you can just ram into enemies or shoot them with your bow in Ocarina of Time while you’re on horseback, but I do not care. Let me swing my sword while I’m on my cool ass horse.
Let me pet the damn dog
This is really more of a critique of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom than anything, but those games do offer more expanded options to interact with animals than Ocarina of Time does. You can’t pet them or play fetch with them, but, hey, you can feed them.
There are some contextual ways you can interact with animals in Ocarina of Time, like picking them up or playing on the ocarina for a cow, but I’d like to see a remake one-up BotW and TotK in this respect. Let me pet Mamamu Yan’s dog, Richard. Once I’ve become Adult Link, I want the option to travel back in time and pet Richard until the buttons on my JoyCons break. This one is non-negotiable, Nintendo.
