Nintendo’s upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time looks drastically different from the Nintendo 64 original. That’s understandable, given the nearly 28 years that have passed since the first 3D Zelda debuted. Beyond the graphical advancements, however, the Switch 2 remake of Ocarina of Time makes some bold character design choices, some of which have divided longtime Zelda fans.
In a new interview with the developers of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, we finally get, we finally get some explanation of why Nintendo made certain aesthetic choices, including the decision to make Link, Zelda, and others look more like puppets than strictly photorealistic people.
Nintendo developer Aya Shida, who served as art director on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, said that, “When we first considered how to leverage the capabilities of Nintendo Switch 2 to explore new forms of visual expression, a fairly natural direction seemed to be to create a richly detailed world that felt as though it could truly exist. But our goal wasn’t simply to make everything look realistic.”
Shida noted the contrast between the dark but beautiful setting of Hyrule and the game’s colorful, quirky characters in the original game.
Nintendo is nostalgic for the ‘contrast’ of Ocarina of Time
“I felt that this contrast was what gave The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time its mysterious, almost dreamlike charm,” Shida explained. “So for this game, we wanted to rebuild Hyrule as a rich, dense world that felt as though it could truly exist, while retaining the feel of the original. At the same time, we wanted its colorful and quirky characters to feel like a natural part of that world. Figuring out how to strike the right balance became one of the main themes of the art development.”
Shida revealed that some of the game’s art direction was guided by certain keywords: “a puppet-show feel” and “the analog feel of practical effects films.” Those phrases refer to creating “a convincing sense that the characters truly exist within their respective fantasy worlds.”
“We also felt that there was some overlap between these forms of expression and the distinctive nostalgia evoked by the original game,” Shida explained. “We began by drawing sketches of Link, Zelda, and the other characters. At the same time, to show the kind of world they would inhabit, we created a 3D model of the Great Deku Tree that looked truly alive, carefully adjusting the lighting and textures. We then presented the concept to Aonuma-san, explaining that we wanted characters like these to blend naturally into a world like this.”
Longtime Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma weighed in on that choice, highlighting how nostalgia for the original Ocarina of Time played into the remake’s visual style.
“Back when we were developing the game for Nintendo 64, we thought we were making something cutting-edge for the time,” Aonuma said. “We weren’t trying to create anything nostalgic. But after all these years, the current development team feels a certain sense of nostalgia when they look back at the original. And their efforts to express that nostalgia led them to an analog, puppet-show-like feel. As one of the original developers, that progression made sense to me.”
Players will get a chance to immerse themselves in the reimagined Hyrule later this week, when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrives on Nintendo Switch 2.