Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 drops fast-travel warp points
Nintendo's developer interview says the world stays split into maps. The remake arrives Thursday, only on Switch 2.
The developers of the new Ocarina of Time for Switch 2 cut the fast-travel warp points that producer Eiji Aonuma had proposed after playing the game. Nintendo explains the decision in the first part of "Ask the Developer", an interview it published Monday, three days before the game launches.
With those shortcuts, Aonuma said, the team was missing "the moments of discovery that came from stopping along the way." He is interviewed alongside fellow producer Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and he tied the project to the series' 40th anniversary. He wanted a young team, many of them people who had worked only on recent Zelda games, to study how the original was built.
Part 2 is titled "The visuals may change, but the experience does not." Director HokWai Ng, art director Aya Shida, programming director Hiroki Taguchi and Masato Ohashi, sound director and music lead, take part.
The structure stays. The world is still divided into maps rather than one continuous open world, and the places and their connections remain. The one addition there is a map drawn by the same artist who illustrated the Nintendo 64 version's.
Hyrule was rebuilt with what the team calls an analog look, something like a puppet theater that draws on practical-effects films. Characters were redesigned but keep their familiar silhouette from a distance. The grass reacts to the player, and faraway areas carry less detail, with the castle and the mill drawn larger as landmarks. Fujibayashi noted that Z-targeting barely changed in later 3D Zelda games, so the team left it as it was.
Players who start on Thursday will get the original's pacing and exploration in the familiar places, not an open-world Zelda. The purchase details, per Nintendo's U.S. store:
- Release: Thursday, Nov. 5, Switch 2 only.
- Price: $59.99 for the digital version. A price in Mexican pesos has not been confirmed.
- Download: about 27 GB, estimated; the store warns the size may change.
- Digital preorder: includes a 40th anniversary Zelda wallpaper if bought before Nov. 23 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific.
- Languages: includes Latin American Spanish.
The October trailer had already shown the voices and the microphone. This interview covers the design choices players will test starting Thursday.
