Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Devs Tried Adding Even More Fast Travel Points, But That Sucked

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is out this week, and by all accounts we’ve heard so far, it seems like a pretty faithful remake, albeit with a lot of (necessary, in my opinion) technical and mechanical smoothing out from the original. I don’t envy the devs working on this one (which we now know to be Nintendo EPD): Ocarina of Time is a classic that everyone has really, really strong feelings about. Deciding what to change and what not to change must have been a huge headache. Which is why I’m so, so glad that Eiji Aonuma backtracked on his own ridiculous idea to add a bunch of new fast-travel points to this game. This came up during an Ask the Developer interview published by Nintendo today. Now, the original Ocarina of Time already has some fast travel, in that Link can eventually learn ocarina songs that will warp him to each of five of the game’s major dungeons, plus the Temple of Time. And honestly, that’s quite enough to be getting on with, thanks. One of these songs is actually necessary to even access its associated dungeon in the first place, as you need child Link at the Desert Colossus, but he can’t get into Gerudo Valley without being adult Link and riding Epona. But at one point in the remake’s development, longtime Zelda producer and franchise steward Eiji Aonuma thought this wasn’t enough. As Aonuma explains, he observed that a lot of players tried to move around the world faster in the original by spamming Link’s dodge roll, which led him to think there may need to be a faster way to get around the world. I thought we needed to address this in this new version. So I asked the team to add warp points that didn’t exist in the original game, giving players access to shortcuts. But when we actually tried playing the game with those warp points, we realized that we were missing out on the moments of discovery that came from stopping along the way and wondering, “Wait, what’s this?” Through this development process, we were reminded once again just how important those moments are to the very structure of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So even though I was the one who proposed adding warp points, they just weren’t working for me in the end, so I got the team to take them all back out again. (Laughs) Honestly, what a relief. He’s spot on, really. I played Ocarina of Time for the first time back in January, and while there were times when I was grateful to have a quick way to get from, say, Zora’s Domain all the way back to Castle Town without hoofing it through multiple loading zones I’ve seen a dozen times before, a lot of my favorite discoveries in this game came from being forced to hike around and trip over interesting things. There are all sorts of hidden bits in Hyrule—heart pieces, rupees, goofy little characters. I also just don’t know where you’d even put more fast travel points. I guess I can imagine Aonuma wanting to add warp points to places like Kokiri Forest, Lon Lon Ranch, Zora’s Domain, and other major spots. But if you did that, then why would you ever need to even be in Hyrule Field? Ocarina of Time is not a massive game! It does not take that long to cross Hyrule Field, especially on Epona! It’s pretty easy to get to all those spots from the temple warps! Kids these days don’t want to go on long walks through grassy, Peahat-ridden plains anymore! Mostly I just think it’s funny that Aonuma both proposed this idea and ultimately rejected it. Elsewhere in the interview, Aonuma talks about how the development of this remake involved handing off this old classic to individuals who had never played it until they were put on the project and letting them make their own decisions about how much to alter: If the producers say, “This is how it should be,” the team would naturally feel obligated to do it that way. So I basically let the developers make whatever changes they genuinely felt were necessary. I wanted the team to make The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time their own, and to follow through on their own ideas about what the game should be. That said, I did deliver my fair share of lectures along the way. (Laughs) I took a step back to observe how the younger members of the development team would reimagine The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time using the insights and answers they had arrived at on their own. The remake of Ocarina of Time is out later this week, on November 5, and a second part of this Ask the Developer interview is dropping tomorrow. You should read the entirety of it when you get the chance, as it’s pretty neat, though it’s left me desperately wanting to hear whatever “bright and upbeat” piece of music Kondo originally composed for Ganondorf’s theme way back in the ’90s.