The Nintendo Direct has concluded and Ocarina of Time was demonstrated for us by Aonuma-san, showcasing all of the new features and the slick new graphics. While I detailed my hopes in yesterday's editorial, unsurprisingly, the remake essentially amounts to a nice new coat of paint and a variety of quality-of-life upgrades. Of course, each area, NPC, and more, have been fully rethought and brought up to modern standards, providing lots of visual flourishes to feast your eyes upon.
Coming on November 5, the remake will feature a foil finish for its cover art, preserving the long running tradition of fancied-up releases for the series. A Switch 2 system and Pro Controller with a special stand will also see release shortly before the game, on October 29.
If you've never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there's no doubt that this is going to be the ideal way to play, but for veterans, your mileage may vary. While the graphics and sound are a huge improvement and offer something befitting of the modern age, like Star Fox, the core experience mostly appears unchanged.
Now you can freely jump and move the camera, switching items has been improved, offering something more akin to the selector found in the newer mainline entries, and playing songs with the ocarina can be done by humming the tune into your controller. Additionally, rolling will activate a dash to make getting around quicker, motion aiming is incorporated to quickly point at your target, as well as the external notes app integration, as seen in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, will also be available.
Outside of the game, there's also a special quiz mode that you can play once a day, or by using 20 rupees from in the game, you can make multiple attempts based on the amount of rupees you're willing to spend. According to Nintendo, 2000 questions are built into the app, providing lots of trivia for eager fans.
No price was disclosed on the stream, so we'll have to wait and see if this is clocking in at full price. In the meantime, check out the game in motion below and see what you think for yourself.
Update: Nintendo has revealed pricing - the remake is going to set you back $59.99 in digital form, or $69.99 for the physical edition.
Kind of a bummer that Nintendo didn't choose to do anything more with the game other than some really simple quality-of-life stuff. It looks gorgeous and seems to play much better overall, but I was hoping for a bit more out of this. The price will probably determine whether or not I pick this one up. Chances are it'll be $60-$70 and I don't know that I care enough to jump on at that price.
EDIT: Yup, that's the price, and so far, looks like there's no discount at Walmart or Amazon. $70 for this game is too much money for me. I want to want it, but at that price I'll pass. If I can find a discount on the cart at some point in the future, I will wait till then to grab it.
Last Modified 17 hours ago
I'll get the Ocarina remake and I'll enjoy it. But I was more excited about the Link's Awakening remake over this. But then, Link's Awakening is my favorite Zelda game.
One good thing is that I never played Ocarina of Time to death like many others have. I played it through when it first came out and replayed it again on the Collector's Disc you got with Wind Waker, but that's it. I never even got the 3DS version.
My favorite Ocarina of Time memory actually happened many years after the game was released. My younger cousin got a used N64 and the Ocarina game. She wasn't as much of a gamer as I am, but she LOVES horses. But she was a little too young to make much progress in the game. So one day when I was in Alabama visiting them in the summer, I spent the day with her playing Ocarina of Time and getting her to the part where she could freely ride the horse. She was so happy. A few months later when I came back to visit at Christmas, she was still playing the game but hadn't made any progress. She was just happy riding the horse around. To her, Ocarina of Time was just a horse riding simulator and she was perfectly fine with that.
Looks great. I won't be getting it, but I think for newcomers it's looking like a great way to experience OoT. It's one of those games that you must play at least once in your life, specially if you're into action-adventure games with puzzle elements.
