‘Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ Switch 2 hands-on preview: Strange, beautiful, and surprisingly thoughtful

As fun as it is to be an iconoclast at times, one of my most basic opinions is that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 is one of the all-time greats.

There is, of course, a rose-colored tint to that take. Seeing the vast, explorable world of Ocarina for the first time as a child is basically why I love video games now. I was so taken with the idea of looking out onto an expansive horizon and knowing that anything could be out there that I became obsessed with the medium and, well, now I play video games for work. It hit me at just the right time in my life to make a permanent impression on me, and I’m still chasing the high of the first time you step out onto Hyrule Field to this day.

All of that is to say I should, in theory, be as scrutinous as anyone regarding the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2. But after playing it for about an hour at a recent Nintendo press event, I came away confident that there is a vision here beyond just “let’s remake an old Zelda game so we have something to market alongside the upcoming movie.”

The Ocarina of Time remake feels tangible and hand-crafted

Nintendo’s chosen visual style for this Ocarina remake has been divisive among fans. It’s undeniably an impressive technical showcase for the Switch 2 hardware, featuring many advanced graphical techniques at a ridiculously smooth frame rate that the original Switch could never have dreamed of. However, it ditches the mildly anime-coded look of the more recent open-world entries in favor of exceptionally high levels of detail across nearly every texture, juxtaposed with characters who resemble puppets or action figures more than people.

It’s admittedly an odd look at first, but after seeing it running natively on a TV in front of me rather than through a YouTube window, I see what they’re going for. Nintendo is taking what is, by contemporary standards, a very small video game world and filling it with as much detail as possible, as opposed to the less-defined look of the huge open-world games. It’s not dissimilar to Yakuza, a series known for tiny open worlds that feel impressively real and lived-in.

The end goal, I think, is to take a fantasy world originally rendered in the foggy, blurry form on Nintendo 64 hardware, and make it feel tangible and believable. It’s not photorealistic, but it does look like something that could exist in a very high-quality puppet diorama. Link’s wooden Deku Shield looks like something you can reach out and touch, for example, while his green tunic looks like a bunch of forest children wove it using plant fibers.

Seriously, the texture on that shield is nuts.
Credit: Nintendo

To me, this brings the player a little closer to the world than they might be otherwise. Going back to believability, the artists have reimagined parts of the world to operate less on dreamy video game logic. One example is the game’s very first dungeon puzzle, which involves using a slingshot to drop a ladder down so you can exit the room. Originally, the ladder was just fixed to the ceiling, and you shot it with the slingshot to change that. Now, you shoot a switch to activate a stone-based mechanism to drop the ladder.

Acknowledging that basic physics exists in a fairy-tale world is not strictly necessary, but I do appreciate the thinking behind it. Other details I enjoyed included some cleaning supplies sitting outside the Temple of Time, because, of course, some guy’s job is to make sure the temple grounds are presentable. NPCs are also impressively reactive here, as I noticed the denizens of the densely packed Hyrule Castle Town wincing in horror as Link was being attacked by chickens after I provoked them with my sword.

At this point, I’m in favor of the art style in this remake, even if I get other people’s misgivings about it. If nothing else, though, there’s absolutely zero room in my mind for accusations of it “looking like AI” or otherwise being lazy or thoughtless. It’s very clear upon inspection that many people spent a lot of time thinking very carefully about all of this, and the result is a look that Zelda has never really had before.

But there are some changes I’m not sure about

The tree talks now.
Credit: Nintendo

I haven’t spent much time in this preview talking about gameplay because, well, this new Ocarina is more or less the same game as it was in 1998. It’s not a total 1:1 recreation of the original; I noticed some topographical changes in Kokiri Forest and Hyrule Field, as well as at least one building in Kokiri that was present in the original but not present in the remake, as far as I could tell. But basic area layouts and puzzle solutions remain nearly identical to what they were nearly three decades ago.

The changes Nintendo did choose to make were hit-or-miss for me in the demo I played. Including a sprint button to reduce the need to somersault everywhere is fine, especially since the sprint itself is not that fast, thereby maintaining the original game’s pace. Adding a jump button, on the other hand, strikes me as a bit odd. Maybe it’s because I’m just used to the way it worked before, where Link would automatically jump a set distance off any ledge the player ran towards, but I found myself wanting that mechanic instead of having to remember to jump myself every time.

Some cutscenes have also received voice acting, which, by and large, sounds pretty cartoony and a tad cheesy. I don’t hate it, but I’m not sure this game needed that, either.

A couple of minor misgivings aside, I really enjoyed my brief time with the Ocarina of Time remake. These dungeons and puzzles are all still great, and seeing everything rendered anew in a somewhat bizarre but gorgeous style is exciting to me. It isn’t the same as a brand new Zelda for Switch 2, but it’ll do until the time comes.