The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake preview – the once and future king

GameCentral gets to play the remake of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and go hands-on with the entirety of the Forest Temple, in the new version of one of the best video games ever made.

The idea that Nintendo has never been interested in high-end graphics is an increasingly common assumption amongst younger gamers, but it’s not true at all. The SNES was considerably more powerful than the Mega Drive and the N64 was not only far ahead of the PS1, it was specifically marketed as cutting edge hardware. The GameCube was also more powerful than the PlayStation 2, and it’s only its failure that caused Nintendo to rethink their approach, starting with the Wii.

There are many strange things about how Nintendo’s handled the Switch 2 release but one is that they have made no effort, through games or presentations, to illustrate exactly how powerful it is. Even the Wii U got a tech demo, but the only way to judge the Switch 2’s abilities, given the nature of the games Nintendo has released so far, is third party ports. Many of these have been impressive, but there’s been nothing of reference from Nintendo themselves.

But now there is, because whatever quibbles you might have about the Ocarina Of Time remake – and fans are going to be arguing about it for decades – it is a graphical masterpiece. Obviously, it’s not as photorealistic or as technically complex as GTA 6 but the two or three hours we’ve played of it took our breath away in terms of visuals, while also making us confident that it is making the right decisions in terms of how to update the gameplay of the 28-year-old original. Well, most of the right decisions anyway…

For those that need a bit of context, Ocarina Of Time was the first ever 3D Zelda game. Back in 1998 the whole concept of 3D games was still new and the game was an absolute revelation in terms of visuals, scale, and the interactivity of the game world. It was a huge influence on the entire games industry, with Rockstar Games noting how important it was in paving the way for GTA 3. And yet in broad terms it did not deviate greatly from the 2D formula for the series, as exemplified by SNES entry A Link To The Past.

In fact, every mainline Zelda game has followed the same basic template, up until 2017’s Breath Of The Wild and its follow-up Tears Of The Kingdom. It’s implied that the next mainline entry will be something different again, but what Nintendo has made clear is that it’s not going back to the old style… except when it comes to remakes.

Our preview of the game was split into three separate sections, two of which Nintendo has already demonstrated with its own gameplay footage: the very beginning of the game in Kokiri Forest and the start of the Great Deku Tree dungeon; plus Hyrule Field and Castle Town. The largest section we got to experience was the whole of the Forest Temple – the first to be tackled as adult Link.

The graphics are astonishingly good throughout but it may be that Kokiri Forest is the most impressive area of them all (just as Korok Forest was in Breath Of The Wild), with a ton of unnecessary detail and the feeling of a living, breathing location, with insects buzzing everywhere and pollen floating in the air. And yet despite the vastly increased graphical detail Kokiri Forest is essentially identical to the original in terms of layout – and even the fact that some of the minor characters are just visual clones of each other.

Even ignoring Castle Town, which has changed the most, the game is not 1:1 with the original, but when you start it does seem that way. Venturing into the Deku Tree area, he’s had a mild makeover, bringing him slightly closer to his look in Breath Of The Wild, but in general all the designs are as you remember, just with extra detail on top.

The Piranha Plant style Deku Baba, for example, now has a drooling, root-like tongue, while the Skulltula look a lot more like actual spiders now – their legs crumpling up when you kill them, in a way that will not please arachnophobes.

The basics of the controls and combat are almost identical though, including using Navi to lock on to enemies, in a modern version of Z-targeting. It’s very straightforward and easy to get to grips with, which is the whole point, but we only got to play the first few rooms of the dungeon before being moved on.

After that a new save was loaded and we relived one of the most iconic moments ever in early 3D gaming: the reveal of Hyrule Field. Back in the day, open world games were all but unknown on consoles but at the time the open plains of Hyrule Field were a revelation, seemingly going on forever and free to be explored whenever and however you want.

That raises one of the key problems for the remake because while Nintendo could easily make a massive, modern open world environment, that would be a major change and alter the pacing and accessibility of other parts of the game. So they’ve done the sensible thing and kept it the same (or more or less the same, we’re sure fans will get their virtual measuring tapes out when the game is released).

And so it was that we made our way from Kokiri Forest to Hyrule Castle. It only took a few minutes, especially with the new run ability, but everything along the way looked amazing – especially the volcanic Death Mountain in the distance and the windmill of Kakariko Village. We also appreciated the fact that the game has the same length of load times as the N64 game, even though the Switch 2 could do it quicker, just to preserve the same pace and feel.

In the N64 game, Castle Town was made up of a number of pre-rendered, fixed camera scenes – inspired by the original Resident Evil games. There are a few similar areas elsewhere in the game, such as Link’s house, but Castle Town used them the most and is now a fully 3D environment, with a lot more detail and a few new buildings and, seemingly, side quests.

It also now works on the same day/night cycle as the rest of the game, which seems to run slower than it used to, as it was never night-time in anything we played.

Inside Castle Town, there’s the bomb shop and Happy Mask Shop, as you’d expect, but those with good memories will note some minor differences, such as being asked to catch an escaped bug in the Bazaar. There’s also evidence of a fifth bottle to collect, which is very exciting (bottles are incredibly useful in Ocarina Of Time, for storing fairies and other health restoratives, amongst other things).

Castle Town is also good for seeing just how varied the character designs are. There’s been a lot of understandable concern over young Link looking like a plastic doll rather than a photorealistic person or a stylised character, but he is something of an outlier. The other forest children, and even adult Link, look notably different in style, while the denizens of Castle Town almost seem like they’re from a different game.

Many of them look straight out of the original’s concept art, including one guy with an enormous beard that is very highly stylised. There are a lot of characters like that, including an old guy that beckons you over to talk to him, and the different styles don’t mesh particularly well. Maybe that’s supposed to be the point, since Link is an outsider even to the Kokiri, but it’s a slightly strange decision.

Moving onto the Forest Temple, the game again takes on the appearance of being a 1:1 remake, even if the eagle-eyed will realise it’s not. We’re sure we missed some things but it’s immediately obvious that the dungeon has much more wood panelling than the original. A lot of the N64 textures looked like ordinary stone but this time everything looks a lot more like the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil, while the wells are tiled like public baths.

The Resident Evil similarities may be a nod to the fact that the Forest Temple was quite scary in the original game. There are more overt horror elements in the darker corners of the game, that we’re interested to see if Nintendo keep, but the whole dungeon still has an unsettling edge and the Wallmasters – giant hands that drop down to grab you – are still panic inducing. Although the shadow revealing they’re about to drop on you is now a lot more obvious than it was on the N64, and therefore easier to avoid.

There are other changes too, such as a pool of acid during a Stalfos fight, instead of a hole in the ground, and a spinning carousel of platforms has been replaced with a different room layout. There’s also no time limit for moving the poe sister caught in the sliding block puzzle and Phantom Ganondorf has a new spin attack in the boss battle, which we’re pretty sure he didn’t have before.

There are other similarly small differences, such as the insertion of a Deku Scrub, but nothing substantial beyond the graphical overhaul itself. Although there is one brand new element: Fairy notes. These are very short messages left in hard to find spots that add minor bits of background lore. Speaking to other journos at the preview, we were seemingly the only ones to find the one in the Forest Temple, on the back of one of the wood stairs, but someone else found one on a stone outside Castle Town, so we assume there’s at least one in every major area.

In terms of what we weren’t so keen on, as soon as we heard about it, we didn’t like the idea of having to manually jump in the game, and we don’t like it much in practice either. In the original you automatically jumped when you reached the edge of a platform but here you have to jump with the press of a button, which means you have to master an additional skill just to play the game.

Ocarina Of Time is not a platformer – that was half the point of making jumps automatic – but now the barrier for entry for casual gamers is notably higher than in the N64 original, since you have to both jump and control the camera with the right stick (the N64 controller only had one analogue stick). Regular gamers will have no problem with that, but others will and it’s a shame there’s not at least an option to use the old system.

We’re also bitterly upset you can no longer rename Link, as you could in every pre-Breath Of The Wild game. Technically we don’t know that for a fact but since his name is spoken aloud in dialogue it seems certain you cannot.

That brings us to the question of the voice-acting, which is often a blind spot for Nintendo and is very cheesy from what’s been shown so far in Kokiri Forest. We’re not dead set against it though, as they are all kids and while it’s silly that Saria talks like she’s a Californian teenager we suspect the acting in adult Link’s sections will be more serious – but there’s not much talking in the Forest Temple, so we couldn’t tell.

There doesn’t seem to be much spoken dialogue anyway, with much of it left as just on-screen text and the voice-acting appearing only in cut scenes and other controlled conditions. Navi is a lot more garrulous than before, but only via cute little text bubbles.

The original Ocarina Of Time is rightly revered as an all-time classic and clearly some fans are going to be angry with the remake no matter what it does or doesn’t do. We don’t agree with all the choices but even the ones we don’t like didn’t come close to spoiling the experience for us. And we suspect that will be the same for any reasonably minded fan, no matter their specific grievances.

For us, the biggest question is whether the old school, non-open world formula is still engaging in 2026. None of the subsequent games ever did it better than Ocarina Of Time (follow-up Majora’s Mask was great but largely because it subverted the formula) but an awful lot have tried and failed, which makes it difficult for this remake to surprise anyone.

We think it will with the graphics, which really are astonishingly good, but Ocarina Of Time wasn’t popular because it was a graphical demo. It was a great and innovative game, filled with secrets and wonder, and endless charm. From what we’ve seen, so is the remake.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD
Release Date: 5th November 2026
Age Rating: 12

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