Ocarina of Time Remake: Visual Style

Let's talk about the horse in the room, which is the new visual style for the Ocarina of Time remake. Like various art styles in the Zelda series before, e.g. The Wind Waker or the Link's Awakening remake, it is quite divisive. Some love it, some hate it, some don't know what to think about yet it.

My personal reaction really ranged over the full spectrum. The environments look phenomenal. I love how much attention to detail went into everything and how much they've added, going way beyond of what was already done in Ocarina of Time 3D. Like, in the shops they have pinned those paper notes under the items, which tell you the bundle sizes. Okay, maybe this is a very random detail to obsess about, but there is so much new to look at. Take the Zora River, for example:

There have been structures here before, but it now really looks like ruins of Zora architecture. And they have done a lot like this all over the world, where this feels like a whole new game to explore, even if it follows largely the same map. And this has me amazed...

Enemies look great. The tongues of the Deku Babas are now like roots and they also have these root collars on their heads, it's impressive. Can't wait to see what they have done with the Redeads.

The character designs on the other hand look so uncanny that I just downright hate them. Ocarina of Time 3D managed to capture the style of the original artworks perfectly, but this new Ocarina of Time has gotten so realistic that the unrealistic proportions simply stand out.

And what's with young Zelda's face? It looks so bad that it probably scares me more than any Redead ever could... What is this? Why is her nose bigger than Ganondorf's? She doesn't look cute anymore, she looks like a little freak! It totally ruins the moment. And the characters also look too "plastic", especially when they are wet, which is a general problem with the lighting.

It all makes this feel like one of those super ambitious Unreal Engine 4/5 fan projects somehow got adopted by Nintendo and turned into a full game. The realism clashes so much with the character designs that it just looks weird.

And as impressive these graphics are for Nintendo standards, where this is going to be the graphically most advanced game released by Nintendo so far, it won't age very well. Naturally, this is a common problem for games that aim at such realistic graphics, instead of a more timeless approach (which is normally the way to go for Nintendo). But I guess they can just remake it again in 15 years...

Still, a part of me can't wait to see Termina in the same style in 2030. This level of realism offers a good chance to make Majora's Mask creeper than ever. And Clock Town in the same level of detail as this new Hyrule Castle Town would be amazing.