40th Anniversary Direct Roundup

This was it, the first ever Zelda Direct, going for 30 minutes. You can watch the whole show on Youtube and you probably should, before you keep reading this blog... Though, there is not much to spoil here, really. In fact, even after yesterday's expectation management from Nintendo, I'm personally somewhat underwhelmed.

The beginning with the orchestra was very beautiful and certainly getting me in the mood, where I especially liked that they showed a clip of every single mainline Zelda games, all 21 of them. Now, they are bringing back the orchestra concerts all over the world, which is good news. The last ones have been over ten years ago and I'm looking forward to visit such an event again, given that there will be one in a city close enough. But we had this before with the 25th Anniversary, so this wasn't some mind-blowing reveal.

Then they just briefly talked about the movie, which surprised me probably the most, but not in a good way. I fully expected to see some casting news and a first real trailer, likely as the ending of the Direct, but we will have to wait a little longer. Of course, the movie will miss the 40th Anniversary, but I still think that the anniversary will mainly serve to hype both it and the Ocarina of Time remake. The only real news here was that it's just going to be called "The Legend of Zelda", which most had assumed anyway.

Don't care about the museum and café announcements. Maybe one day I will go to Japan, where this will be relevant, but I have no plans for that. And afterwards they've quickly skipped over some new merchandise, but most of it was just a bunch of collaborations with a variety of companies:

• a new LEGO set, another smaller one for Ocarina of Time 
• an electric Ocarina by Hori
• some Tears of the Kingdom figurines by Hasbro, called "Heroes of Hyrule"
• an electronic Master Sword
• A Hylian Shield statue by Huzzle
• The Legend of Zelda trading card collection by Panini 

The only two things from the Nintendo in this reel were the already announced Mineru amiibo and a playable Ocarina, which is going to be exclusive to the Nintendo Store.

Aonuma then took the time to play some Ocarina of Time. There have been lots of discussions about whether this is going to be a 1:1 remake or a re-imagining, but somehow it's neither. It's quite faithful, but they have changed and expanded the environments to a degree where they are almost unrecognizable at times. There will be also more character interactions, but for the most part it looks to be the same game, with the biggest change being that Link now can sprint and jump at any time.

The visuals, however, are certainly divisive. Some will love them, but to me this looks exactly like one of those ambitious Unreal Engine fan projects. It is impressive on first glance, but it lacks the soul that you would expect from a Nintendo game. It just doesn't have the same charm and some of the characters look awfully artificial. But more on that later on.

Something that probably no one saw coming is that the game will make use of the Zelda Notes app, just in a different way than Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It will automatically take photographic evidence of all your Game Overs, because that's what everyone always wanted. There is also some Hyrule Guesser thingy (which would have been a lot more interesting with the open world games), as well as an actual quiz about the game, and a guide for playing your real life ocarina.

As already mentioned, they will release a physical ocarina, though they haven't given it a date yet. There will also be two new amiibo, for Young Link and Young Zelda, which do actually unlock new masks in the game. And we also finally got the official reveal of the 40th Anniversary Edition Nintendo Switch 2 and Pro Controller, which both got leaked a month ago.

This hardware gets released on October 29th, one week before Ocarina of Time on November 5th, which is similar to how they did with Tears of the Kingdom. This way you have one week to prepare your shiny new Zelda system for the game. Fortunately, Nintendo has abstained from also releasing a special Collector's Edition of Ocarina of Time, because our wallets will bleed enough as it is.

Finally, the Nintendo Direct ended with a first real trailer, which was really awesome and showed a lot new details, where I probably could spend the rest of the week analyzing it all if I had the time. But individual posts about all these topics will follow in the next days.

All in all, the 40th Anniversary feels like a lite version of the 25th – it's the same ideas without the fanfare of a new Zelda game. There is going to be another Ocarina of Time remake, we will get a new live orchestra tour, and you can buy some special edition hardware. Now all it needs is an Anniversary Edition of Four Swords Adventures, but maybe we will get that later in early 2027.