It's impossible to overstate just how influential The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been since it launched on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998. It defined what 3D action-adventure games would look and play like for decades – not just in the Zelda series, but across all video games. As it turns out, this was part of the reason series producer Eiji Aonuma wanted to create the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake: he wanted to be sure the younger developers on the Zelda team understood just how important it was.
"Many of the team members who work alongside me on Legend of Zelda games today have only experienced developing the more recent titles," Aonuma explains in a new Ask the Developer interview from Nintendo. "That led me to wonder, 'Do they truly understand just how significant The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was to the series as a whole?'"
Aonuma admits that, "of course, there are team members who vaguely know the game, and those who played it in their childhood days. But I started to wonder how they'd interpret The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as they go about developing future Legend of Zelda games."
In part two of the interview, several of those younger developers explain their own history with Ocarina of Time. Some did have childhood memories of the game, while others had no experience with the original. "I played the Nintendo 64 version for the first time after joining this project," art director Aya Shida explains, "and I was amazed that a game this polished had been created 28 years ago."
"By learning the game structure and development style behind the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time," Aonuma explains, "and by actually rebuilding it as a full remake, it may trigger new insights that they can carry forward into future development. If we could achieve that, I thought it would be incredibly valuable. That's what led us to the conclusion that now is the right time to revisit The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time once again."
I'm excited by that rationale. The Zelda series hit severely diminishing returns by following closely the blueprint that Ocarina of Time laid out, and while Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are both great games, there's no denying that they had less of an impact than the N64 classic. Zelda wouldn't feel truly fresh again until Breath of the Wild revamped the entire format of the series, but I fear that more open-world games are going to quickly get stale.
Maybe a synthesis of fresh and familiar ideas from a new generation of Zelda devs is just what the series needs. While Aonuma first joined the Zelda team by assisting on Ocarina of Time, it sounds like he wasn't too precious about these younger devs making changes to his baby. In fact, he wanted them to be even more bold – at least at first.
"Looking at what they ultimately created," Aonuma explains, "I'm impressed by how rich an experience they were able to craft from a game that first came out 28 years ago. At the beginning of development, I remember thinking, 'They could be making more changes.' But as the project went on, it really came across just how deeply this development team cared about the original game, far more than we had imagined."
