Following my detour through the south of Hyrule during the endless day, it was finally time for that day to pass and visit the castle. But it's easy to get distracted again when Hyrule Castle Town is filled with so many new details... And after my audience with the princess, I went back to the Lon Lon Ranch for a bit.
The town is with all certainty the area that profits the most from this remake. Finally, finally you can explore it with a free camera after 28 years, which is something that Ocarina of Time 3D should have done back in 2011.
It would have been even more amazing if they also had expanded the town a bit while they were at it. Imagine if you could walk along the side of these canals instead of just looking at them... But it's already interesting enough to view all these parts that you couldn't even see before. There are also many doors now that you can't interact with, but I would find out their purpose later...
One door still works and that's the one to the right after coming through the main gate, the little storage room where you can smash all the pots. And you can smash all the pots with physics, though they now only give single Rupees, so it's not all that fast to grind Rupees here any longer.
But the wooden crate with the Skulltula now rumbles, giving you a clear indication that something is hiding in there. That's the stuff that you only found by accident or by being very thorough, as a child with a Nintendo 64 and no internet back in 1998.
The bored guard there is hilarious, how he theatrically stands in that corner with his head down. But that level of theatricality is something that all the characters in Hyrule Castle Town now have in common. Well, the characters in Ocarina of Time were always meant to be "suspicious types" (see Iwata Asks), but they've amped this up to 9000 in the remake.
In combination with the very Central European medieval theme, it reminds me of the Shrek movies. It's very much the same style with how the characters are exaggerated and overacting. But I don't mind, I find this very fitting and entertaining. Like how the Potion-Shop Owner completely loses it when his bug escaped (which is how you obtain the new empty bottle in the remake).
And one of his customers is a woman plagued by an over-the-top itch, almost like she is having spasms. This character already existed in the original, but she was just standing in the same spot all the time and the thing with her itch was just a simple joke, one they've really expanded on.
My favorite addition is the above blonde woman with spending issues, and not just because she's pretty. I find it so adorably polite how she lowers her head when she is talking to the young Link, which some other women do as well. Sadly, we don't learn her name, which is true for most characters here. You usually get just generic titles, like "Shooting-Gallery Operator", who looks hilarious with that chest and belly hair, as well as his overblown lips.
Speaking of, the mini-game is so easy now that they had to add an expert mode, where the targets are moving faster. This has taken me a while to master, mainly because I had to get used to drawing the slingshot before firing the pellets. But they've really outdone the western theme here and you now get proper targets to shoot at. Come to think of it, it was very silly how you were effectively destroying rupees in the original, 102 in total. That wasn't at all covered by the entry fee. And he even gets offended when you don't destroy any...
Well, there is so much attention to detail in the town that I had spend an entire hour looking at everything and talking to everyone. It's marvelous and it really makes me want to get a Majora's Mask remake at some point on the Nintendo Switch 2, where Clock Town receives the same love and care. That's a topic in its own right, which I will discuss once I've beaten this new Ocarina of Time, but it would be very disappointing if we weren't getting Majora's Mask in this style as well.
The Temple of Time is very impressive. They've managed to turn this into a proper church, which is awe-inspiring when you go inside it, which is now also seamless. The lighting changes and the chanted Song of Time starts, which gives you the same feeling as visiting one of the massive domes in Europe. Nintendo has done their homework here.
And Ocarina of Time was very much inspired by medieval architecture here in Europe. Well, Germany always has been a favorite vacation spot for many Japanese, where Miyamoto himself went there in the 90s to draw inspirations for Ocarina of Time. And maybe some of the younger developers have followed his example here, though they probably would have mentioned this in the recent developer interviews.
But all of this makes me want a new 3D Zelda game that follows the same style, with a fully realized castle and castle town, one that's still in its prime and not in ruins. That could turn out to be amazing.
Hyrule Castle is the next area that has seen a major upgrade, mainly because it looks much more like a proper castle now. And it even became a place that you can now traverse as a whole, where all the different stealth section are fully interconnected.
One of the biggest disappointments I had as a child about this game was that you never got to truly explore the castle. You had this outside part and this series of inner courtyards, but it wasn't a proper castle, it was just a facade. And it still is, so you won't be able to visit the throne room or anything like that, but they definitely tried to make more out of it.
The whole area has certainly evolved, almost like the game is taking place in a different era. You get a cobble street leading to the castle, with some nice shrubberies on the sidelines, instead of some old dirt road. And instead of some simple hill with some grass, flowers, and guards, you get proper castle grounds with a wall all around, already starting from the first gate onward. And you have these little hedge mazes, where it becomes a lot clearer which way you are supposed to go.
It's very reminiscent of the castle courtyards in later Zelda games, where you also have to sneak past the guards, like Oracle of Ages, The Minish Cap, and Spirit Tracks. But all of these were inspired by Ocarina of Time, so it's only fair how it all now comes around.
And it all looks fantastic. That mossy drain takes you into the inner castle is now so disgusting that you can almost feel it, where it would have been funny if Zelda made a comment about it. "What's that smell, by the way?"
But once you get out of there, you get to enter a different scenery atop the castle. While it's loosely based on the old stealth sections, this is completely new. And it was likely inspired by the first Super Smash Bros. and its Hyrule Castle stage, which takes place on the roof, even though you never really went there in Ocarina of Time. But now you get very close.
And they weren't done with the references. The final stretch takes you inside, which looks a lot like the early stealth sections in Echoes of Wisdom. All that was missing were some old beds standing around. They took one of the more annoying parts of the game and made it truly shine, a real highlight.
You can also distract the guards like in the later games, by shooting pellets somewhere or at their helmets. In the second-to-last section it was helpful to make one of the two guards stop, so that both of them will move in sync, which allows you to easily walk past them once they both have their backs turned on you.
If they still see you, then Link and Navi will now run away from guards on the inside, hiding at the sewer, which makes things a bit more logical. In the original the guards threw you out of the castle, to the spot where Talon was sleeping, but you're not supposed to be there either. Once outside you weren't their problem any longer, but of the guards on the outside. Realistically, they would hand you over to them and then you'd get thrown out of the whole castle, which would make things a bit too frustrating. So, this running-away-thing solves that.
The guards also have an imposing design, with those bulky breast plates. They appear a lot more threatening, and not like some thinly soldiers who barely survived the war.
And they've outdone themselves with Zelda's courtyard. They had to, since this is such an important place to the game's story. It's really beautiful, but you can also make it super ugly by cutting all the flowers. The Super Mario Easter egg seems to be gone, but there is still the rabid guard who will throw bombs at you for some additional destruction.
This gets awfully close to Princess Zelda herself when you visit her again here later, which you now can. You can visit this place during the night now, where the princess doesn't seem to ever go to sleep. But when is she having her prophetic dreams, then?
On a side note, I love the new feature with hiding dialogue boxes. I take a lot screenshots for this blog and I can't count how often it has happened to me that I wanted to take a good shot of a character during a scene, only for that shot to be ruined by an incoming dialogue box. Here you can just hide that box again and still take that clean shot. It's something that normal players won't really need, but has been proven super useful in my case. Thank you, Nintendo!
They have expanded Link's time with Zelda quite a bit, where the two can grow a bit closer and she tells you a lot of things. It's almost like Link is in a relationship already. But she looks much cuter than in that first scene with her, where she turns around at the window, which we saw in the trailers. Can't wait to see her as an adult, because I always liked that version of Zelda quite a lot.
Now, after Impa escorts you back to Hyrule Field, it breaks the endless day, so that time finally passes in the game. And I think I found out why it's not all one seamless overworld... Aonuma said that they did this to preserve the feel of the original, but that was clearly just an excuse. Plus, they have made transitions seamless whenever they could, e.g. with Hyrule Field, the Lon Lon Ranch, and Lake Hylia.
But while time now passes everywhere, there are still two different types of locations. In some the dynamic lighting from the sun and moon changes, in others it doesn't. Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle Town are two of the places with a fixed sun / moon. And it's super weird once you've started noticing it.
It looks like an eclipse is happening. And the sun even gets magically swapped for the moon, which you don't see, because there are always some clouds moving in front of the sun when that happens. The lighting in the environments change to a more red tone, like during a proper sundown, and then into a dark blue at night. But the cast shadows always stay exactly the same.
This is sloppy. Couldn't the engine handle a global light source change in these places? As much praise I had for the visuals so far, I would have traded a hundred details in this town for a proper sunset. And for a seamless connection to Hyrule Field and Hyrule Castle. It would have been awesome if you could visit some of the houses that you can see from a distance between the town and castle, but you simply skip past them. This was to be expected, but it would have been nice anyway.
As for the stuck sun and moon, I don't know what's the excuse here, but I hate this. It was fine as long as the time didn't pass, but it completely destroys the immersion once it does. This is so irritating that I would definitely not give this a 10/10. It's just sloppy and on top of my list of complaints, next to the missing Master Quest mode. But at least there is still a chance that we might get Master Quest at a later date, while this issue here sits at the root and probably won't see a fix.
But it's fun to watch how the citizens of Hyrule now go in and out of houses for their daily routines. That's what all the doors are for that you can't access: there is some void behind them where people disappear into. But the funniest part is how the turn suddenly gets swarmed by dogs at nightfall.
And actually that's another excuse why they have kept the town area separate from the field and castle, because they needed some roads where these dogs could magically appear from and wander off. If you could just follow them, the developers would have a problem.
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| Nice view! |
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| Yes, I'm a naughty boy! |
The dogs will now only follow when you interact with them via the A-button, which should make the "Find Richard" side quest a lot more convenient. But I wasn't able to trigger this quest yet, so far little Richard was happy at home.
Back to the Lon Lon Ranch, the day and night cycle already looks much better, where you can now watch Malon got to bed. She may have found a surprise waiting for her when she did, though...
I was in the middle of preparing for the Super Cucco mini-game, where now you can take all the Cuccos upstairs to truly clear the room, instead of just squeezing them all into the corner between the counter and the stairs. But it already became night when I was done, so I couldn't wake Talon any longer. You can just sleep in Ingo's bed to make it morning again, where the Cuccos even stay as they are.
But... I could have saved myself the trouble, because the mini-game now resets the positions of the Cuccos, so you can't cheat any longer. It's easy enough without cheating, scoring me a second bottle, but part of me still wants to do it like always.
There don't seem to be any Guays roaming the sky at night at the Lon Lon Ranch. That was something seriously freaked me out as a kid for some reason and therefore stuck with me, where I'm a bit disappointed that this isn't the case any longer. It's not a deal-breaker, but it would have been nice if this got preserved somehow. Guays do roam Hyrule Field now, however.
It also seems like one of the Gold Skulltulas got moved, the one behind the paddock. But my guess is that it was moved inside the nearby grotto – I've already theorized in my previous entry that all of the grottoes might now be unique and that they have relocated some of the spiders. So, it would make sense. The one at the ruined tower is now also on the inside.
Plus, they have moved the trees around that used to have them. This is true for the ranch, but also for the Hyrule Castle area. And it's a good change, because they aren't as obvious any longer.
By the way, when you meet Malon earlier at Hyrule Castle, she tells you why it's called the "Lon Lon Ranch". It's because both her and her father's name end on the "lon"-syllable. Well, it seems obvious in hindsight, doesn't it?
Well, that's it for now. I could post a dozen more screenshots and a thousand more words, but then I won't get to play at all today. Next stop is Kakariko Village!
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