While the rumor mill has been swirling for some time that a remake of Nintendo’s beloved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was potentially in the works for the series’ 40th anniversary, nothing had been confirmed — until this morning. In the final trailer reveal of today’s Nintendo Direct, Nintendo gave us our first brief look at the upcoming remake.
A narrator explains the story of the Kokiri, how their home is in a small forest on the edge of the kingdom of Hyrule, and within that forest dwells a race of children known as the Kokiri. Their guardian, the Great Deku Tree, watches over them, each accompanied by their own fairy. That is, except one young boy. The trailer is focused mainly on a great tapestry that tells this story through visuals, much like we’ve seen in games like Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom, where the games’ events are told through scrolls or images and runes on cave walls.
The mention of the boy without a fairy gives us our first glimpse of our hero in this remake. Young Link lays sleeping on his bed, no hat and no boots. He’s wearing some sort of leather apron over a green tunic, and the Triforce is glowing on the back of his left hand. The trailer ends with a simple “2026” on a black screen.
If the game comes out on time, it’s likely that it will be a winter/holiday 2026 release. However, it is a bit odd that we were shown so little in a first look at a game that has less than a year left for development and release, especially one as anticipated as Ocarina of Time. Fans of the game have spent the last 28 years begging for a remake, making their own versions in Unity or other engines, creating mods, and finding any way to keep the game alive, so it’s unsurprising that they want to see much more than the teaser that got dropped this morning.
For my part, I am extremely wary of this remake. Ocarina of Time is my all-time favorite game. It’s one of the most loved, lauded, influential, and awarded games in the history of the medium, repeatedly cited as being one of the best video games ever made. That is an extremely high bar to clear, let alone try to at least meet, and the game’s larger-than-life legacy means this remake will inevitably be judged more on how it stacks up to the original than on its own merits. It’s inescapable. So in the face of that, I’m not sure it’s wise to try and remake a game that’s going to get picked apart and analyzed down to the last digital blade of grass on-screen. Then again, this didn’t stop Square Enix from totally reimagining the story of Final Fantasy VII, another giant in the gaming pantheon (though to my point, the results have been divisive).
At first blush, Link just simply didn’t look right. I don’t know what the black leather top layer he’s wearing is supposed to be, or how it’ll work with his brown boots. The colors on the tapestry and in the forest are rich, almost jewel toned, which is a departure from the more watercolor-like palette and muted tones of the original game, which are a good pairing for the serious tone and bleak, dark world that the majority of the game’s events occur in. The entire aesthetic gave off a strong Disney vibe that has me concerned.
Then again, this was an extremely brief look at a game we know next to nothing about. I could be judging it too harshly at this point, but, as I said before, the judgement is only going to continue to get harsher from here (and not just by me). We’re eagerly awaiting more news on this remake, and will hopefully get to see the final results sometime later this year.
Source: Nintendo Direct Broadcast 06.09.26 + Nintendo Press Release