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!