Ocarina of Time Notes

Whenever a Zelda title releases, whether that's a new game, a remake, or a major spin-off, I usually share my first time impressions. It's the primary purpose of this blog. And the remake to Ocarina of Time shall be no exception, where I'm calling this series the "Ocarina of Time Notes". There will be individual entries for the different parts of the games, starting with Kokiri Forest and the Great Deku Tree, but first I wanted to cover some general things.

One of these things is the title screen. I was worried that the remake might just throw you right into the game, like how the last three Zelda games did it, but that's not the case. And it's an important first impression to have with that lovely music, based on the classic flute tunes from The Legend of Zelda.

They have also removed the Spirit Temple cutscene that would appear after the title sequence as some sort of "demo mode". Instead, it will linger now around different places of the overworld, like Gerudo Valley. And I think this is a good change, because that scene was just confusing without context. And it was a bit of a spoiler, though it did create a sense of accomplishment when you finally made it to that sequence within the game.

Now, there only seems to be one save file... Which is odd, since they deliberately upgraded both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom to have a second save file per account on the Nintendo Switch 2. Echoes of Wisdom has a second one as well, so why not this? With a game so short and replayable you just want to start over eventually, without losing all progress from your first playthrough.

You also can't name Link any longer. Well, that's a consequence of the voiced cutscenes, where Link gets called by name a number of times, so it couldn't be helped. But the days of naming him "Dude" or "Penis" are definitely over. Well, I usually use "Tourian" on my first file and "Tourist" on my second, but there isn't even a second file here...

It also let's you access the options right from the title screen and activate or deactivate Zelda Notes. It's off by default, but you probably want to activate it right away to not miss any statistics. I will use it during my first playthrough to unlock everything in the app, but probably keep it off in the future...

Likewise, I will use the normal HUD mode for now and probably switch to either the Pro or Master mode later, once I have seen enough of the new interface.

Now, these options don't include a Hero Mode, sadly. A simple toggle like in Echoes of Wisdom would have sufficed here, but maybe they are saving this for a potential Master Mode later, which they can sell together with that second save slot.

That's it for the basics. With that out of the way, see you in Kokiri Forest! 

Got Ocarina of Time

It has just arrived: the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And I've already found all three Spiritual Stones, that was quick!

This is the first print release, but you can't really see the foil cover on the photo, because it's only noticeable with changing light reflections. It's a nice detail, but so subtle that you won't notice it on first glance, so I wouldn't really worry about it if you were unable to find one now. Though, ideally Nintendo would just keep producing them like that, instead of making this another FOMO item. They should set a signal for pretty physical releases in times of digital-only.

The inside of the box also shows the new map, but since the Nintendo Switch 2 boxes are made of that red, translucent plastic you don't really see much of it either.

As for the Spiritual Stones, they were a limited preorder bonus on the Nintendo Store. They also come with a small, black casket with the remake's logo on it entirely in gold, which is nice and makes it feel less cheap.

 

PS: I still haven't received the 40th Anniversary Edition Pro Controller yet, so my trusty Tears of the Kingdom controller will have to do the trick. Nintendo recognized that the package got sent back to them and offered my a replacement or a refund. Naturally, I went with the replacement, which has yet to happen... They went into radio silence after that, making me a bit worried.

Nintendo Switch Online: Ocarina of Time Launch Day

It's release day! And if you're still waiting for your copy to arrive (like I do), then you can use the time to set up your Nintendo Switch Online profile with some fresh icons from the game. Though, I'm personally not the biggest fan of the new character arts.

There were also seven more tracks added to the special release in Nintendo Music, like Hyrule Field and all of the major settlements, including Gerudo Valley. So, you can pass some time with that as well.

Finally, I like how they have set up the animated Zelda artworks in Nintendo Today. For the first five days you get the first five games in order and this now led to an artwork for Ocarina of Time on the 5th, which is perfect.

Actually, they go through the entire series in order, but this includes all the remakes and remasters, which is why you will get Link's Awakening again tomorrow instead of Majora's Mask to represent Link's Awakening DX. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to fill the month.

Ocarina of Time Remake: No Master Quest

If you go on r/zelda, you will be flooded with spoiler posts from people who have acquired the new Ocarina of Time somewhere early. Some of them have the remake since Saturday already and have beaten it by now. So, you can pretty much find out everything about it at this point if you really want to know...

Well, I have been avoiding most of this as best as I could, but there was one thing that I wanted to be confirmed: the remake does indeed not contain the Master Quest mode. It's good to know this already, so this spares me the disappointment after the credits. And I've expected this to be the case anyway, because otherwise they would have definitely featured it in last month's overview trailer.

Not all hope is lost, though. It still could return later, added to the remake as either as a free update or as paid DLC. This could even go hand in hand with the release of the two upcoming amiibo or the ocarina accessory, where we don't have a release date yet for either. Such an addition would be a natural way to keep Ocarina of Time in the news, since this is Nintendo's biggest hit this year.

They could also mix and match things with their own ideas, where not everything of what was effectively just a ROM hack will translate well into the remake, e.g. cows sticking out of walls and serving as switches. They could even introduce changes to the overworld, making this worthy of a proper add-on.

Or... they simply don't care or won't bring it back. In that case I hope that Ocarina of Time - Master Quest will be added to the Nintendo Switch Online library at some point, so it's not completely lost in time.

Ocarina of Time Remake: Ask the Developer Insights

Nintendo has released a new volume of their "Ask the Developer" series, this time for the remake of Ocarina of Time. It has four chapters in total, which got released yesterday and today. And it features the two producers and four members of the Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development Group No. 3, EPD3 in short.

That's the main Zelda team, which was also responsible for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom during the last years, where it certainly must have been refreshing to work on something simpler. And this is pretty much the most important fact coming from this interview series – the remake was developed inhouse, unlike most of the Zelda remakes and remasters in the past. Only The Wind Waker HD got made by Nintendo alone, but that was practically a one-man-job.

Like other remakes of Nintendo games, however, this served as a training grounds for the newer developers, who are mainly familiar with the recent open world titles. This is what Aonuma had to say:

By learning the game structure and development style behind the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and by actually rebuilding it as a full remake, it may trigger new insights that they can carry forward into future development. 

And this is a good call. The open world direction is here to stay, because it has simply been too successful for the series to return to its classic formulas, but many fans are hoping for more of a compromise between the different formats, especially when it comes to dungeons. Echoes of Wisdom already showed how this could look like, but that game got developed by GREZZO, yet another Zelda team that got trained by various remakes over the years.

But this isn't just about new developers learning what made such a classic game so beloved, because it goes both ways. The two old-fashioned producers also stepped back to let the younger developers bring in their own perspective and ideas into the remake. And this led to one of the bigger changes, the manual jumping.

Now, this also raises the question how this will actually affect the development of the next 3D Zelda game. Ideally, these projects were running in parallel, or else it might take until 2030 before we see a new game. And while there haven't been any news about this, it's still possible that Monolith Soft has been helping out here, e.g. with developing graphical assets. We will probably find out tomorrow when the reviews embargo gets lifted.

We also learn that they have recreated everything from scratch. It's not like Ocarina of Time 3D or the recent Star Fox remake where they had used the original game's source code as basis. This already seemed clear with how different everything feels and looks, but it's good to have the direct confirmation from the developers.

They have also confirmed a popular theory from IGN by Logan Plant, who had the impression that this remake is supposed to be viewed from the perspective of a theater. The art director, Aya Shida, had the following to say:

We wanted to rebuild Hyrule as a rich, dense world that felt as though it could truly exist, while retaining the feel of the original. At the same time, we wanted its colorful and quirky characters to feel like a natural part of that world. Figuring out how to strike the right balance became one of the main themes of the art development. To help the team understand what we were aiming for, early in development we used phrases like “a puppet-show feel” and “the analogue feel of practical effects films” as keywords. Neither puppet shows nor practical effects films reproduce reality exactly as it is. Even so, both create a convincing sense that the characters truly exist within their respective fantasy worlds. 

Something that I will always love about the Zelda series is how diverse it is in different art styles, much like with its gameplay ideas. And it's great that Nintendo is even trying something new with remakes, instead of just playing it safe, which was also the case for Link's Awakening and its cute toy diorama style. It is certainly not to everyone's taste, but I appreciate that they try to create something unique.

And like with Echoes of Wisdom, this may even lead to a new Zelda game in the same style. But it would be also pretty much perfect for a hypothetical Majora's Mask remake, because stage play and performances are an actual part of the game's story, setting, and theme.

We also learn that there will be over 150 pieces of fully orchestrated background music, though not all of them go with a full orchestra, and some of them make use the old Nintendo 64 tunes, kind of like how the Link's Awakening remake did it. As a reference, the original soundtrack has 82 titles in total, so they have almost doubled it. These are mainly for new cutscenes, but probably also for different variants of the existing themes.

Google Celebrates Ocarina of Time

If you currently search for "Ocarina of Time", or simply "Zelda", then Google will give you a neat, little gimmick on its webpage: the Master Sword and its pedestal will appear in the bottom right and clicking on it will let you time travel back into the early days of the internet, at least visually.

Nintendo will certainly appreciate the free advertisement. After all, they are probably paying Google entire fortunes for SEA. And this little stunt plays with the power of nostalgia, much like the Ocarina of Time remake.

Underestimated Demand for the 40th Anniversary Collection

Happy Halloween! If you want to go through the thrill of a harmless nightmare, then when not try to get your hands on one of the above products? I double dare you! The promised restocks by Nintendo on launch day were sold out within seconds again and scalpers are having a pay day. Nintendo has completely underestimated the demand for this 40th Anniversary collection and even admitted in doing so (see GamesRadar), so what exactly went wrong?

Well, special edition hardware pieces around The Legend of Zelda have been problematic in different ways for over a decade now, which has created this weird sine and cosine curve relationship of what Nintendo anticipates and what fans actually want. And I'm not sure they will break out of this cycle any time soon.

It basically started with the Nintendo 3DS, where they overdid things. There were more Zelda-themed editions for the Nintendo 3DS family than actual Zelda games. At first, each of these provided a meaningful upgrade, from a Nintendo 3DS to a Nintendo 3DS XL and then to a New Nintendo 3DS XL. But things got weird and even nonsensical with the "Hyrule Edition" of the New 3DS XL and the "Hylian Shield Edition" of the New 2DS XL. Nintendo did not stop making these Zelda editions, creating a bubble that would burst.

Naturally, the demand became lower and lower, but Nintendo took this "insight" into the Nintendo Switch era. Well, whatever their reasons were, they refused to make another Zelda edition for years, which has caused some confusion and internal conflict amongst the Zelda fans who were anticipating such a thing. You can even find an article about this topic here on this blog, from the time when the Link's Awakening remake was about to be released:

Where is the Nintendo Switch Zelda Edition? (September 2019)

You had to wait a total of six years for a Zelda edition to arrive, which was the one for Tears of the Kingdom in April 2023. I know only of a single Zelda fan out there who has actually been this patient; everyone else already bought a Nintendo Switch. At least the OLED model provided an upgrade of some sorts, but it still didn't sell as much as Nintendo had hoped.

And this shouldn't be a surprise. The target audience for Tears of the Kingdom was players who have enjoyed Breath of the Wild to its fullest and who wanted more of that. And while the game also had a Wii U version, 95% of that player base was on Nintendo Switch already. So, as a result, these Tears of the Kingdom Editions sat on shelves for months. And that's not something Nintendo likes to see, that's for sure.

But things became even worse with their next "Hyrule Edition", which was about as pointless as the first. One year later, for the launch of Echoes of Wisdom, they released a golden Nintendo Switch Lite... Because that's the thing Zelda fans really needed in the final year of the Nintendo Switch. I'm not joking when I say that I can still go to a media store today and potentially find one of these. They have been that unpopular.

And that golden Switch Lite is not even bad, just too little, too late. If this had come out together with Link's Awakening back in 2019, then this would have seen the proper demand. Heck, I probably would have used this as my primary way of playing Switch games for a little while, until Age of Calamity at least.

Now, the best course of action was to release such a special edition earlier for the Nintendo Switch 2. And they did. They made one for the 40th Anniversary, which even could be anticipated by the fans, right before the launch of the remake of one of the most beloved Zelda games, and one of most beloved games of all time. It wasn't entirely ideal, because they also released a new Hyrule Warriors game last year, but it's somewhat understandable that they wanted to wait for Ocarina of Time, especially with how popular this remake has become.

However, this was not the only conclusion Nintendo had here after the Nintendo Switch. They also saw a shrinking demand for Zelda-themed hardware in general and may have adjusted their projections accordingly for their 40th Anniversary collection. If they have produced 500,000 of the Tears of the Kingdom OLEDs back in 2023, then they might have reduced this to 200,000 for the 40th Anniversary Edition. These number are just freely made up, of course, but it's the mindset of "better have a sellout than to overproduce". They don't want to see "Latest Zelda editions collecting dust on store shelves" in the headlines again. 

But if there is too much of a shortage, then the headlines won't be positive either. If you are fan who really wanted the 40th Anniversary Switch 2 for the Ocarina of Time remake, then you might be out of luck. And now you have to make a choice between getting a plain Nintendo Switch 2 or buying from a scalper on ebay. Either way, you lose. Or you wait.

The good news is that these aren't meant to be limited editions, just special editions, so they are still producing more. But it might take some time to fulfill the demand out there, long past the release of Ocarina of Time. You could also wait until the new, big 3D Zelda game gets released in two to three years, because that's likely where the whole cycle repeats itself for a turn.

Nintendo has now learned that there is still a big demand for these Zelda editions, much to their own surprise... So, they might decide to release another one for the next Zelda game and adjust the projections accordingly once more, only then to overproduce again, because they didn't think about all the Zelda fans who have bought such a system for the 40th Anniversary already and are not in need of another.

Funnily enough, with these Zelda editions there is only really one system where Nintendo did it right: the Wii U, their most unsuccessful home console. But you got a Zelda edition in its first year for the first Zelda release – The Wind Waker HD, it was easy enough to find one of these, and it was the only Zelda edition for the Wii U. It wasn't the prettiest, but it was handled in the right way.

That's not going to happen with the Switch 2, because it's potentially going to receive other models in the future – a Nintendo Switch 2 Lite, or a Nintendo Switch 2 OLED model, where each of these could see a Zelda edition of their own at the end. And this may even produce another "Hyrule Edition" nobody asked for, starting the cycle all over again.