The Ocarina of Time remake is only a few weeks away. In addition to a new, in-depth trailer showing off more of 4K Hyrule than we’ve ever seen before, hands-on previews are starting to trickle out for the game which, for some players, will be their first introduction to a classic many of us already know and love. Scanning the previews, it seems Nintendo is aware there’s a cohort of Ocarina neophytes on the way, raised on later games including Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and it has crafted an experience better suited to modern conventions. One that’s also so startlingly pretty that it has the potential to drive seasoned players to literal distraction.
A common thread among all of the previews are the game’s quality-of-life updates. Unlike in the original where Link would automatically jump off of appropriate surfaces as needed, here Link can jump on demand with a dedicated button. He can also finally sprint, which will no doubt be a boon to speedrunners who rolled everywhere in the original, eliminating the need for headphones to drown out the constant cadence of “hyah!” that he emitted with each roll. “Swapping between items and weapons no longer requires hopping into the pause menu, as it did in the original,” wrote Cameron Faulkner at The Verge. “Holding a shoulder button halts the action, and you can navigate with an analog stick to find what you want in near-realtime.” Some of these elements have become standard in the 20+ years since Ocarina‘s release, but as Matthew Castle wrote in The Guardian, while the control scheme might be familiar, “it’s undeniably striking to enter familiar territory with a hero who feels this different under the thumbs.”
The QOL updates aren’t just mechanical, they’re narrative too. Chris Scullion of VGC recounted how the original Ocarina was miserly with rupees, making the quest to buy the Deku shield a bit of a slog. “The remake is comparatively generous with them,” he wrote. “Indeed, I found that by simply heading up to the higher part of the forest and entering the tunnel to find the sword, I had already collected enough rupees along the way to buy the shield without having to actively go looking for more cash.”
The previews also cannot help but gush about how dang pretty the game is and how the improved visuals really do make for a new experience with an old game, one that’s seemingly as easy to get caught up in today as the original was almost 30 years ago. “Link traverses rooms in the dungeon that have red stained glass windows, and as he passes through beams of light, he is cast in the color of blood,” Faulkner wrote in The Verge. “The visual evolution frequently made me stop playing for a second while I took in the changes.”
In NPR‘s write-up, James Perkins Mastromarino detailed his time in the Forest Temple. At one point he thought he was on track to complete the dungeon, one he said was his favorite, in the time allotted, but it turned out he’d actually missed a critical key chest. “A Nintendo representative pointed me in the right direction, acknowledging that the rich details could overwhelm the eye and make it hard to know exactly where to go next,” he wrote.
