Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Release Date Announced, But There’s One Big Controversy

The remake of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time has its first trailer, and it looks amazing: an almost 1:1 recreation of the original using modern graphics.

Most things Nintendo do are hard to explain, but why they’re being so secretive about Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, considering it’s a remake of a 28-year-old N64 game, remains a mystery. However, on Tuesday afternoon they pulled back the curtain, revealing a very revealing trailer and a significant amount of raw gameplay.

They also confirmed that, as previously reported, the game will cost a surprisingly generous £49.99 (at least digitally, no price has been revealed for the physical version yet). They also revealed the previously published Switch 2 Special Edition and a bunch of other merchandise. Importantly, they announced a release date of November 5th, which is exactly two weeks before GTA 6.

As far as we could judge from what was shown, the game is more or less a 1:1 remake of the original. The graphics are much improved, as you’d expect, but while there aren’t many changes to the level layout, there are major changes to the gameplay… including the ability to jump.

In the original N64 version, you automatically jumped whenever you reached the edge of a surface, which worked very well and was specifically implemented to prevent people from perceiving the game as a 3D platformer. We can’t help but think it’s still a useful distinction, but while we’re sure Nintendo is agonizing over the decision they chose to use a standard manual jump button.

You can also move the camera at any time, which you couldn’t do in the original, but it seems less controversial, especially when you can clearly see that Nintendo has tried to maintain the look of the innovative Z-targeting system in terms of the on-screen crosshairs.

Other aspects were kept specifically to preserve the look and feel of the original, such as loading screens that were not intended to be entirely necessary. Instead, the biggest change we noticed was in Castle Town, which in the original was mostly depicted through Resident Evil-style fixed camera imagery.

Here it’s a typical open world hub, but it looks really nice and feels more like a bustling city. This is also the best place to see how the character designs still retain elements of the original art style. While things look almost photorealistic with Link in the Kokiri Forest, in Castle Town you can see that some of the characters are quite stylized in their appearance.

It’s likely that some areas will be changed more than others, but there were a lot of different locations shown in the trailer, and they all looked pretty much the same in terms of layout.

However, there is one significant difference: the game will have voice acting, but only during cutscenes. It’s very corny, with a strong American accent, but it seems like it could at least match the tone of the Young Link sections.

There will also be a lot more written dialogue than there was originally, and the fairy Navi will seemingly be able to say a lot more of herself by constantly updating the speech bubbles.

Series producer Eiji Aonuma took control of the live demo, which began in the Kokiri Forest and from there to the first dungeon inside the Great Deku Tree. One wonders whether Nintendo will simplify the dungeons, especially the infamous Water Temple, but it was impossible to tell from what is essentially a game manual.

A new hint system called “Threads of Time” was revealed, which tracks your progress and gives clues as to your next goal. The game will also use the Zelda Notes phone app, first introduced in the Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom Switch 2 releases, which tracks your progress, offers hints, and offers features such as quizzes and the ability to automatically take screenshots.

A lot of time was spent on different ways to emulate the titular ocarina (a type of flute, in case you didn’t know), with two physical ocarina options that could be purchased and the ability to hum a tune into the Switch 2’s microphone and register it that way. Zelda Notes will also let you compose longer melodies using the touchscreen ocarina.

The Aonuma demo only featured Young Link, but you can see Adult Link and Epona throughout the trailer, which spoils quite a few of the game’s most famous moments if you want to enter the game completely fresh.

We’re not sure there’s much more we could ask for from the Ocarina Of Time remake, but we’ll see how fans feel about it over the next few days.

The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time will be released for Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026.

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