There’s a new video out from GameXplain showing off differences in how certain locations appear between Breath of The Wild and the Switch 2 Ocarina of Time remake. The video features side-by-side comparisons of locations shared between the games—the Temple of Time, Lake Hylia, Lon Lon Ranch, and more. And while there’s much to be said for the graphical improvements of Ocarina 4K Electric Boogaloo over BotW, what’s more fascinating is how the similarities reinforce the idea that the worlds of OoT and BotW, separated by different game mechanics and stories and thousands of in-world years, are nevertheless the same.
We know, thanks to the Hyrule Hystoria as well as any one of the many attempts by content creators to sort out the Zelda timeline, that Hyrule is one place. That despite the many games with their differing mythologies, including that time the world was totally flooded for like forever, we’ve always been in a singular Hyrule. But this video is perhaps the best illustration of what we’ve always, up to this point, had to take on faith.
Look at the Temple of Time. Yes, in Breath of the Wild a whole façade of the building has been shorn off by calamity and time, but looking at it, you could believe it’s the same structure that a distant ancestor of Link brought three spiritual stones to when he was little boy. The interiors of the buildings are slightly different, possibly indicating that these aren’t the same assets, but even if so, it’s hardly uncommon for buildings to be remodeled or restored, leaving them slightly changed from what they were.
I like the stories these similar but slightly different structures tell. Death Mountain stands tall in Ocarina of Time, but has been worn down to a nub in Breath of the Wild. And all that’s left of Lon Lon Ranch by the time Breath of the Wild occurs are a few long-abandoned remnants of the place that Malon and Talon once called home.
It’s really neat to see this kind of continuity. The Zelda series has obviously achieved that in other ways, too, like having the same characters pop up over and over, but to see it in the structures themselves is a nice little visual reminder that the worlds of these two very different games are really the same world, changed by time.
