With its tale of an idyllic world despoiled by the lust for power, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time feels as relevant today as it did in 1998.Nintendo's new remake, out Thursday on the Switch 2, enshrines its place in the gaming canon for generations to come.
But despite its stupendous production values and painstaking details, the game left me feeling oddly bereft.Perhaps I should have expected as much.Ocarina of Time weaponizes nostalgia even within its narrative, as the protagonist Link ventures to save his post-apocalyptic world as an adult after first working through it as a kid.
You'll uncover old characters enduring new catastrophes.You'll try to rescue everyone you meet.
You'll strive to bring things back to how they were before — no, better than they were before.Seven years stretch between Link's childhood and adult adventures.28 years yawn between the remake and the original's release.
Both in and out of the game, Ocarina of Time makes us yearn for an idealized past.Decent remakes evoke how you remember a game rather than re-create dated controls and chunky graphics.In myriad small ways, Nintendo has brought Ocarina of Time up to contemporary standards while (mostly) preserving its soul.I miss the thoughtfully-composed camera angles from the original, but quickly got used to the over-the-shoulder camera the remake employs (though I was irked that it abandoned the top-down view when you sneak into Hyrule Castle).
The new jump and sprint buttons made navigating the world feel more natural.Combat's smoother too, though it's still not easy to switch between targeted enemies (unlike modern third-person games like Elden Ring, where you can toggle between foes by simply flicking the right stick).You can, thankfully, swap between items in a quick menu — the same system introduced to the series in 2023's Tears of the Kingdom and continued in 2024's Echoes of Wisdom.
It's still not as fast as I'd wish (I'd have preferred a customizable wheel), but I va...