When Eiji Aonuma showed off gameplay for the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake back in September, one of the features he highlighted was Link’s new ability to sprint, saying it had been added explicitly after he observed players spamming Link’s dodge-roll ability to move faster in the original.
But unfortunately for Aonuma, the verdict is in: rolling is still faster, even than Link’s new sprint.
In the original game, Link ran at a single speed, with Epona serving to speed him up in the later game. However, speedrunners and even regular players would frequently spam Link’s dodge-roll ability to move faster before Epona was available, because rolling constantly was faster than just walking.
This dodge-roll spamming has apparently been on Aonuma’s mind ever since, because while showing off the sprint in the gameplay demonstration, he said, “In the original game, I believe some players rolled to get around faster. Now, if you hold down the A button, you roll, then dash like this. Dashing is recommended whenever you’re traveling longer distances.”
However, speedrunners of the remake have already timed everything out, and rolling is…still faster.
Aonuma didn’t explicitly say that the rolling bothered him, but it’s funny that he called it out in the presentation. His citing of this specific player behavior suggests that he’s had this on his mind for years as something he wanted to change, right up there with his statement that fixing the Water Temple was “overdue homework.”
I do think Aonuma has likely succeeded with his sprint even so, as it’s not much slower than the roll—certainly there’s not the same gulf between it and the roll as there once was between Link’s regular speed and the roll. Most normal players will probably embrace the sprint this time around. Speedrunners, well, I expect they’ll be doing far weirder things than rolling.
Oh, wait, they already are. It turns out that doing a front hop and then a roll is even faster. Sorry, Aonuma!
