The biggest annoucement from the summer Nintendo Direct is exactly what was rumoured: a big budget remake of the most beloved The Legend Of Zelda game of all-time.
Normally when it comes to a Nintendo Direct there’s little or no clue as to what new games will be revealed, but ever since the launch of the Switch 2 there have been far more rumours than usual for Nintendo and they’ve almost all turned out to be true.
Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza were, at least in a broad sense, both predicted before they were officially revealed and now a remake of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time has been confirmed as being out this year – although there’s not yet any release date.
Despite its legendary status, the game has only seen one remaster before, in 2011 on the 3DS, but this will be a full remake with much more realistic graphics.
If you saw the Nintendo Direct you’ll know that only a few seconds of footage were shown, so we still know virtually nothing about it. Although if Nintendo didn’t show much of it now that implies it won’t be out until much later in the year.
It also implies a dedicated Zelda Direct later on, although unlike one for Splatoon Raiders, Nintendo didn’t promise one.
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Originally released in 1998 on the Nintendo 64, Ocarina Of Time was for many years considered the best game of all time and was hugely influential for 3D games in general, with Rockstar Games, for example, admitting that they studied it closely while working on Grand Theft Auto 3.
Obviously, that aspect of the game’s legacy is irrelevant in a remake but despite being almost 30 years old it’s still widely regarded as the best example of the classic, pre-Breath Of The Wild, formula – at least in terms of 3D games.
With so little information to go on it’s very hard to know what to expect from the remake although it’s notable that the art style did not seem to be trying to copy the hand-drawn style of the original game but was much more realistic than other Zelda games.
That implies Nintendo is putting a lot of time and money into the visuals and while it’s still not photorealistic there are going to be inevitable comparisons with the Resident Evil remakes, in terms of the general approach.
As such, it also wouldn’t be a surprise if the remake changed quite a bit in terms of the gameplay and level design. It’s impossible to say how much but at the moment it seems unwise to expect a 1:1 match with the original.
The only other thing that could be gleaned from the reveal was that it features voice-acting, although Zelda games have already been experimenting with voiced characters and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll talk outside of cut scenes.
When we’ll find out more is a mystery, as is why Nintendo showed so little in the first place, but thankfully it was a fairly packed Nintendo Direct.
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