Nintendo has explained the puppet-like look of its Nintendo Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with art director Aya Shida saying the team deliberately chased “a puppet-show feel” rather than plain realism, three days before the game’s November 5 launch.
A look built on nostalgia, not horsepower
The remake’s character designs have divided longtime Zelda fans since their reveal. In the latest entry of the company’s Ask the Developer interview series, published November 2 on Nintendo’s own site, Shida said the studio started from what the hardware could do and then stepped away from it. “When we first considered how to leverage the capabilities of Nintendo Switch 2 to explore new forms of visual expression, a fairly natural direction seemed to be to create a richly detailed world that felt as though it could truly exist,” Shida said. “But our goal wasn’t simply to make everything realistic.”
Shida said the art direction was guided by two keywords: “a puppet-show feel” and “the analog feel of practical effects films.” To sell the concept, the team sketched Link, Zelda and the other characters, built a 3D model of the Great Deku Tree with carefully tuned lighting and textures, and presented the whole package to producer Eiji Aonuma.
Aonuma, who worked on the 1998 original, said the puppet direction grew out of the current team’s relationship to a game that is now nearly 28 years old. “Back when we were developing the game for Nintendo 64, we thought we were making something cutting-edge for the time,” Aonuma said. “We weren’t trying to create anything nostalgic. But after all these years, the current development team feels a certain sense of nostalgia when they look back at the original.”
Shida added that the contrast between a dark, beautiful Hyrule and the game’s colorful, quirky characters is what gave the original its “mysterious, almost dreamlike charm,” and that finding the right balance between the two became a central theme of the remake’s art development.
A bigger wallet, and a question for completionists
Separately, preview coverage has raised a question about one of the original’s signature side quests. Kotaku reported in October, citing IGN’s hands-on preview, that Link can now carry up to 200 Rupees from the start of the game, more than double the 99-Rupee wallet he had in 1998.
That matters because, in the original, 200 Rupees is exactly what the Adult’s Wallet gave players for collecting 10 Gold Skulltula Tokens in the Gold Skulltula quest, which asks them to gather 100 tokens across Hyrule and return them to a cursed family in Kakariko Village. Nintendo has not said whether that first milestone reward has been replaced, and the only new items previewed so far are an additional bottle and the ability to summon a Business Scrub merchant, with no evidence either is connected to the quest.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026.
