I can’t help but feel Nintendo is being a little too faithful with its upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. I know I’m pretty isolated in that opinion, but with new info coming out of recent hands-on previews of the game, I’ve suddenly got reason to believe that Nintendo is looking out for my tastes, too.
The Ocarina of Time remake will feature some new side quests, as demonstrated by longtime Zelda YouTube Zeltik. In Hyrule Castle Town, the guy at the potion shop will now be freaking out about a lurking bug when you first meet him, handing over an empty bottle for Link to catch it. Fulfill his request, and he’ll let you keep the bottle and offer to fill it up with a healing red potion.
This certainly isn’t the kind of multi-stage side quest that you’d expect to have in a modern action-adventure game – and certainly, it doesn’t seem that there’s a journal or anything where you can track side missions – but it does suggest that Nintendo has designs on offering some things to do that’ll be fresh even for those of us who’ve played through Ocarina of Time a dozen times over.
There’s also a new, harder version of the target shooting game where you have much less time to hit the targets, suggesting that we can expect some new challenge levels in the minigames, too. Zeltik’s video also goes into depth on some minor, but meaningful, tweaks to the layout of the Forest Temple, suggesting that we won’t be sleepwalking through the old dungeons, either.
I was ten years old when I first played Ocarina of Time on N64, and it set me on a path to loving video games so much that they’d eventually become my job. I should be the perfect audience for the remake, but I’ve honestly been a little disappointed with how safe Nintendo seemed to be playing it.
I know, I know, you can’t mess too much with a stone-cold classic, but I already know Ocarina of Time forward and backward, and I’m afraid trundling through a remake offering little more than prettier graphics would ultimately feel a little empty. Offering a few little surprises around the edges, though? That suddenly makes the prospect of revisiting Hyrule a lot more exciting.