Nintendo Explains How It Made The Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Only It Could Create

You can look at how the two have a slightly different approach to the development of the story and the player experience. In the open-air games, you have perhaps a more gradual progression of how the story is layered on, you discover elements in different orders, and those stack up together to create something, as opposed to a game like Ocarina of Time, where there is a greater at the outset creation of a story beat that you are then going to move to another large piece of story beat. Those chunks come on in larger pieces at a time. But in both gameplay styles, you’re going to get items, you’re going to get stronger as a player, you’re going to see the story progress, but just perhaps at a different pace. 

So what we have to think about as developers is: What do we need to provide the player with? What can we give them to increase their enjoyment of that style of gameplay that we’re currently considering? And working on the remake of Ocarina of Time so close in time to the work that we have done on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom allowed us to do exactly the kind of comparison that you’re talking about, and it made us realize other things. Like, in the classical style of gameplay, just because of the time in which those games were created and released, there were some limitations of the hardware capability. So we have this opportunity now to, using new hardware capability, new technology, make the games easier to play, more comfortable and smooth as an experience. And that allows the narrative beats from the original to expand in a way that is perhaps more enjoyable for the player as well. So we’re always looking at: What is the new play style we can bring to this kind of game to most increase people’s enjoyment?

One of those major differences between Breath of the Wild style and this is the open-air exploration. Hyrule Field is that environment, but it was a prototypical version of that environment. It’s relatively small by today’s standards. Was there ever a consideration to expanding that, making that bigger or more dense, or did you want to preserve its original form?

Aonuma: So this hits on something that we talked about earlier in terms of that category of things that we don’t want to change. Having these defined areas for exploration where you’re making a more discrete, marked transition from one area to the next is something that I think brings a unique feeling from this kind of classical gameplay. You cross a border, and suddenly you are in a completely new area and you have a fresh feeling for it. So that was something we decided not to change as a structural element here. 

And you can see that in the layout of the map when you look at the large open Hyrule Field in the Hylia area. There’s something in the real world where if you’re looking off into the distance, you might see a faraway peak and think, “Can you go there, or am I actually enclosed and that’s a backdrop in the game itself?” So in an open-air style game, of course, that movement is seamless. You can walk in that direction and you will get to that point because you can see it, and that has a certain impact and feeling for the player in terms of movement. But there’s a different impact here in terms of a marked transition that allows us to give a different feeling.

On the press side, it’s always a guessing game for us which games are developed by a third-party (Grezzo, etc.) and which games are kept in-house. Was this one just determined from the beginning, like, “Ocarina is our baby, this one we’re going to keep in-house”?

Aonuma: In this case, and when we’re talking about what kind of experience we want to create in the game and talk about Tears of the Kingdom and the open-air experience, that’s something that is perhaps fresh for our younger devs in terms of their recent work. But when they come to Ocarina of Time, they have this opportunity to familiarize themselves with the original game and think about how to interpret that in the remake. And this was something that, as a topic, generally we wanted to live in-house so that experience, that learning, could benefit future projects that our internal staff would work on later. 

But I have to mention that we do have partners who help with the work of development on games like Tears of the Kingdom. We had some contributions from Monolith Soft, for example. So there are some examples of shared development, collaborating with outside partners also.

You had team members who had never played Ocarina before. What kinds of lessons do you think they took from developing this that will help them in development of future Zelda games or just in general?

Fujibayashi: You know, I think it really just comes down to the raw technical skills of how to create a 3D game. For example, when you have a 3D game, suppose you have a room: you enter from this side, there’s a battle, and you have to go out the other side. But when you have that battle in between, sometimes when you get out of the battle, you lose track of where you need to go because it’s in a 3D world. So how do you help players get to that goal point? You add things like maybe a subtle marker to denote that that’s the destination. There’s staff that took that as a learning experience for them. But there might be staff that have been working on 3D games that have a little bit more experience with that, but their experience might be focused on some of the more open-air games that have a lot of degrees of freedom. But when you’re working on a slightly more linear game, there’s different ways of needing to communicate and guide the player to their destination. So I think it really depends on their personal experience within Nintendo, and their experience as developers, what their takeaway was from this development.

Nintendo has a unique culture, especially for Western developers, to keep employees for years. You referenced in the Q&A that you went to the artist who originally drew the map and had him draw a map. Why does that culture feel important to Nintendo, and how does it help you preserve parts of your legacy like Ocarina of Time?

Aonuma: I think you see a real benefit to having some very long-term-tenured staff members around who have shared the same experiences over time because every time you get to the next step, it’s easier to discuss how to proceed, or if you’re going to do something new. When you have new staff coming in, of course you want to make sure that you’re bringing everyone up with a lot of discussion, explaining how to do things, why you’re doing things certain ways, as well as the language that you’re using, but that takes some more time as well. So you need a bit of a balance. You don’t want your new staff doing things by rote or without understanding the reasons, you have to invest there. And so you do see the Zelda team change over time, but there is a continuity of core staff, certainly at least from one project to the next, so that we have that base that we can build from and bring up new staff within it. And this is something that I think Nintendo has done for a very long time, even since Miyamoto originally worked on projects like this. And it contributes to some of the sense of continuity that you do feel in games in the Zelda franchise, for example.

When designing a 3D space you want to have clear signposting, which I noticed in the revised Water Temple, which was somewhat notorious for being difficult. At the same time you want people to feel like they’re figuring it out themselves. How do you balance that sense of mystery with not frustrating them? 

Fujibayashi: It really boils down to doing monitor testing, feedback–playtesting, basically. So there are testers who are have just started doing this, and there are testers who are veterans at this. And then there’s also the senior staff, like myself and Mr. Aonuma. And we call this memory erasure, where we just pretend like all of our memories are gone and we approach the game as if we’re playing it for the first time. So sometimes we’d be like, “Oh, my god, I don’t know why the door’s not opening.” And the staff would be like, “Is everything okay? You should know how to do this.” [laughs] But we try to emulate the experience of a first-time player to figure out: What is the balance between what is frustrating and, again, what is satisfying? 

And there’s several senior staff that are able to do that. So we take a two-pronged approach. On one side, playtesting and the feedback gathering–maybe you wouldn’t call it scientific per se, but those are numbers-based data that we gather. And then there’s the intuition and thought that the senior staff with their experience can provide. So we take that two-pronged approach to strike the balance that you were mentioning.

Aonuma: One interesting experience for me, that comes up occasionally when we’re doing this playtesting and I have to clear my mind and play as a beginner, is if I struggle with something, but then they’ll say to me, “But that’s how it was in the original.” And that’s my moment to say, “Well, yes, of course, I know. I worked on the original, I was there.” [laughs] So that’s not enough of an end to the conversation for me. They have to go a little bit further and analyze and think about the reasons. And perhaps there is good cause for us to take a different approach here based on what a new player’s experience would be. Just stopping at “that’s how it was before” is not going to be enough.

This is the highest graphical fidelity that Zelda has ever been. It’s a gorgeous game. Did you find any technical challenges raising the bar for this one?

Aonuma: So, this time, working with our very young staff who were on this project, a lot of them were experiencing a project for the very first time on the Nintendo Switch 2. And they had the opportunity to realize the capability of that hardware, not just for the graphics, but for a lot of different kinds of functions. And so we had the design idea of how to translate original designs to new designs, but also the functional question of how to translate old function to new function in the remake as well. And what you see in the game here is the result of a lot of experimentation and trying out different things. You could certainly do a lot with the Switch 2, and so for us, the task was mostly about narrowing down. How do we find the right fit for each question that we’re asking of the hardware? That was the challenge. That’s what we put a lot of time into.

There are lots of little Easter eggs, that’s part of the charm of Ocarina of Time. Did you have any memories associated with bringing those back and updating them for a new audience?

Aonuma: So when I worked on the original Ocarina of Time, my focus was on the dungeons and the enemies, and also a bit on the cutscenes that take place in the dungeons. As a result, when it comes to Hyrule Field, sometimes I had no idea what was going on there, to be perfectly honest. [laughs] So there were a lot of things that I didn’t know, and I even had those [moments of surprise].

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom had really complex NPC routines. Ocarina of Time has relatively simpler routines, but they are made a little bit different in this version. So what was it like updating and revising NPCs while still retaining that original design?

Fujibayashi: When it comes to the text of the NPCs, there is a person who’s the lead writer of the game. And there’s also the younger staff that took on some of the roles and focused on specific spots. But all in all, I reviewed every single text of the NPCs. And before, in the original game, each NPC didn’t have a strict 24-hour routine, but in this game, they do. The director said, “We want to have a 24-hour routine for every NPC.” And in my mind, I was like, “That’s going to be a lot of work.” [laughs] And I told them, “That’s going to be a lot of work,” but they said they want to do it. So in my heart, I was like, “Okay, I guess I’m committed.”

Because on the one hand, I know it’s going to be a lot of work, but I also didn’t want to discourage the young staff from coming up with new ideas and taking on new challenges. So I had to roll up my sleeves and, on a daily basis, try to check as much of the dialogue as possible, working with the team, discussing what can be tweaked, what can be adjusted. So all of that to say that it was a lot of work. [laughs]