Yesterday evening I mainly spent my time with running around Hyrule, before going into the town and castle. This included a visit to the Lon Lon Ranch, Lake Hylia, and Gerudo Valley. I call this the "heart run", because you can find exactly four Pierces of Heart on that tour, letting you obtain another Heart Container very early in the game. But I've also had some interesting discoveries...
The game now saves on the spot, like in Breath of the Wild, so you're not thrown back to your house each time. That's certainly an improvement, but it also means you won't be able to return quickly to the forest with a simple save & quit.
Leaving your home was much more heartfelt, so they've done a great job with Saria's cutscene. And it's also cute how Navi interacts with the other fairies, where in this case the two fairies also seem to like each other quite a bit. It was adorable how Saria's fairy kept following Navi for a bit. "Nooo, don't leave!"
Stepping out of the woods and into Hyrule Field was always one of the defining moments in Ocarina of Time. And I'm not talking about the owl, who trapped you into hearing his words again, which isn't even an issue in the remake any longer. I'm talking that sense of freedom and adventure this moment creates.
In the original you were basically just staring up a hill, where you never could truly see it all, probably due to the limitations of the hardware. This has changed and right at the forest's exit you can see Hyrule Castle, its town, Kakariko Village, the Lon Lon Ranch, and even Gerudo Valley in the distance. The terrain is much flatter, more similar to the Hyrule Fields in Twilight Princess, but not as small and much more open.
And it comes with 100% more ruins than before, taking a big inspiration from Breath of the Wild here. You can even find some little places where people camped for the night, which is all new. And it makes sense for the setting, since this game takes place after a long civil war in Hyrule. It's the reason why Link was brought into the forest.
These little campgrounds are usually where you can find the new Fairy Thoughts. But they don't get marked on the map, so they may only be interesting the first time, much like the Gossip Stones, where I'm still hoping that those will now be marked on the map to give you a bit more to do.
The first bigger thing I checked was going into the Zora River. I was really hoping that they might expand that freedom by removing the boulders here, but they haven't. You still need the Bombs to progress here, which always seemed unnecessary, because you didn't really need them anywhere else in the area ahead. It was just pure item-based gatekeeping for the sake of it, where this would have been a chance to offer more of that juicy non-linearity that drives modern Zeldas.
Despite my detour, I arrived at the gates to Hyrule Castle Town still during the day, so I've decided to see how far I can take this. And it quickly turned out that I could take this anywhere, because the time is still frozen. It was in Kokiri Forest and it still is when you first enter Hyrule. And it stays frozen until your audience with Princess Zelda.
The reason for this is probably the quest with Malon and Talon, who are delivering milk to Hyrule Castle. In the original they could stay there for days. You even had to wait through one night yourself to let the "Wake-Up Cucco" hatch. It was a bit silly, and in today's times you might even criticize how someone could let his daughter wait alone in the dark at the outskirts of town, so they wanted this whole quest to take place on the same day, during the day. But this means that you won't catch Malon singing during the night any longer.
It also removes this sense of urgency on your first trip through Hyrule. You wanted to get to the town before nightfall, because otherwise you would end up stranded in the field, fighting endless waves of Stalchildren at night. That threat isn't the case any longer. You can take as much time as you need.
And I've used that time for a first trip to the Lon Lon Ranch, which now got seamlessly integrated into Hyrule Field, making this a very different place overall. You can even inspect the ruined buildings at the southern edge from the outside, which all looks so perfectly realistic. And it now looks a lot more like an actual ranch, where they even have some vegetable patches behind the barn:
It's very reminiscent of all the stables in Breath of the Wild, where this remake may even re-use some assets here and run on some newer version of the Tears of the Kingdom engine, but with the cel-shading removed. Well, it would make sense. And they may even be using the same thing for the next 3D Zelda game.
Anyway, it's just Ingo at the farm for now, already complaining how lazy Talon and Malon are. He's now also including Malon into his rants, where originally it was only Talon. "That girl is just singing all day long, so useless." At least Ingo now has his own room, which resides underneath Malon's and Talon's bedroom. In the original he basically had to sleep in the barn... Not that he was ever sleeping.
The Pieces of Heart now work like the Heart Containers, meaning that you can't accidentally pick them up. You have to press A to do so, which is considerate of all the three-heart-runners out there. Not that you would go out of your way to the hidden piece at the farm in such a run... And I still love how shiny they look.
While wandering in the south, you'll run into Kaepora Gaebora again, much like in the original, but he's now also scolding you for not directly going to the princess, thinking that you might be lost. Well, what's the rush when the clock isn't even ticking?
Next stop was Lake Hylia, and my gosh, the water is so beautiful in this game. It makes me want to go swimming at the nearest lake myself, but summertime is over... Well, the area got changed quite a lot. It now connects seamlessly to Hyrule Field, where they also removed the annoying fences. And you enter the lake from the northeast, a lot closer to the fishing pond.
And the fishing mini-game is fantastic now. The original was a pain, where I could never tell what I was doing wrong (which was mostly because I didn't have a Rumble Pack) and it never felt intuitive. Sometimes the fish would just escape and that's it. It wasn't fun and I hated it.
Here it's much more intuitive: simply move your fishing rod in the direction the fish goes, and then reel when it's exhausted. I got a 56cm fish on my first try, scoring me the Piece of Heart right away and making me super happy how much more fun this now is. I'm not a fan of dumbing things down, which this remake seems to do occasionally, but in this case it's more than welcome.
And there is still a proper challenge here with the Hylian Loach. That's one thing I have never bothered with in the original game or the Nintendo 3DS remake, since there is no permanent reward for it and it was very abstruse of what you had to do to even lure the legendary fish. Like, it only appeared every fourth time you've visited the pond and played, and it then took minutes to ever swim up for air.
In the remake it's there right away and you can spot it surfacing regularly, making it a much more prominent target. Maybe there is even a unique reward now for catching it, but I wasn't able to do it yet, because it's super fast and basically this mini-game's "expert mode". But I will certainly try again later.
Another interesting change was the secret grotto under the tombstone on the island connected with the two bridges. There only used to be some Deku Merchants down there, but it now has a torch puzzle, which seems to require Din's Fire to solve. That's new and something that I secretly wanted, though I failed to mention this before.
The secret grottoes were essentially the predecessor to the shrines, but like with the shrines you got a bunch that just were copy-and-pasted. There is this room with one treasure chest that you see all the time, as well as two types of grottoes that just had Deku Merchants in them, either two or three of them. This here used to be a room with three Deku Merchants, but now it looks like this:
It would be fantastic if the remake removed all the duplicate grottoes and replaced them with new ones. This even takes me back to a post I made back in 2016:
The Most Disappointing Secret Grotto in Ocarina of Time
It's the one in Goron City where you have to make some Blocks of Time appear and where you even need the Longshot to enter it, only to find another cave with three Deku Merchants. It was a joke. But hopefully some of these will come with unique rewards, like Gold Skulltulas, and not just Rupees. Which leads me to the next topic...
There is a new tiny tunnel at the edge of the lake, which leads to one of the golden spiders. That was definitely not here in the original, which either means there are more Gold Skulltulas to collect than before, or that they have relocated some of them. I'm hoping the former, but I'm guessing the latter. Or maybe it's both. If you told me that the game has now 200 Gold Skulltulas to find, I would be super excited, because I always loved searching for them. But it seems more like they have relocated some of them (more on that in the next entry).
Finally, I also had to pay the Gerudo Valley a first visit and listen to the music there. It's perfect. The whole area is so pretty and much more natural. There is a whole staircase now behind that waterfall on the way to the Piece of Heart, so you don't have to be so accurate, while it's now much more hidden at the same time. You can't easily spot this behind the massive waterfall.
The Gerudo guard at the bridge will now shove you away, so you don't even try to jump anywhere up there, though I haven't really tried yet. Would be interesting if you could still go there as a kid, maybe even with some intentional changes to deal with such an intrusion. It's also funny how you can anger the guard by calling their ruler "Danondorf".
It might be that the Gerudo now have more individual designs, but it's hard to tell from the two I've seen. They certainly have more individual personalities now, where the one at the river bed is now obsessed with that cow down there.
And jumping down the valley really feels truly life-threatening. Since I didn't have any bottles or fairies yet, I was worried for a moment that I would just die from the impact, but the water still catches you.
Well, the Zora certainly did not get individualized. They look like aliens now. You can still find two of them at Lake Hylia, looking for Princess Ruto and scaring little children. That Lake Scientist in the laboratory now also looks perfectly scary with those teeth of his. They nailed that design.
The lab also has a small sleeping shed outside, but this didn't really have much use yet, except for healing. Once time finally passes, you can use them to switch between day and night without the Sun's Song, like beds in Skyward Sword.
That's it for my detour. I also wanted this entry to cover Hyrule Castle and Castle Town at first, but it has gotten so much already that I will put that into a separate entry... Stay tuned for that part in the next hours.
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