One of the most infamous dungeons in The Legend of Zelda's history is undoubtedly Ocarina of Time's Water Temple. But after three Ocarina of Times and two full remakes, series producer Eiji Aonuma is finally happy with how the dungeon turned out in the new Switch 2 version.
Asked if he's finally content with the Water Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Switch 2 remake, while speaking to Game Informer, the series lead simply said "certainly." Aonuma acknowledged that the original N64 Water Temple "was hard," but some of that trickiness came from the "system that we were presenting to players."
1998's Water Temple had players equipping and then slipping off a pair of iron boots that would make Link sink or float up in these rooms full of water, hence the name. The headache came from the actual act of wearing the boots, since you'd have to drudge through the menus every single time. Thankfully, the Switch 2 version takes some notes from the 3DS remake and retains simple button mapping for items.
"Now that we're able to give players a shortcut, single button on the gameplay screen, I think they can get to that more quickly. It's a better experience because they can focus on solving the puzzle rather than having to navigate menus and thinking about that and interrupting the flow of their thought each time," Aonuma explains.
The Zelda lead also notes that a more fluid camera makes all the difference, especially when you're under water or in tight spaces: "Another consideration compared to the original is that you couldn't move the camera angle in the original game, and so if you were looking for a certain room in this 3D space relative to where you are now, it was much more difficult to orient yourself and think about the space where that room might exist. So I think those two together, you know, also with the heavy boots being one button press, I think this, for me, is the best version of the Water Temple."
There you have it, folks - the Switch 2's Water Temple is officially the best Water Temple of them all, at least, according to Aonuma.
We might see more controversial Nintendo levels get the same treatment, as an executive recently teased more remakes alongside original games. Producer Hidemaro Fujibayashi also stressed the importance of all-new ideas in the Zelda series, however.
