Developers behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake have confirmed speculation that the game's new art direction was inspired by puppet shows.
Nintendo dropped the first gameplay footage of the remake back in September as part of The Legend of Zelda 40th anniversary Nintendo Direct, which is where we got our first look at the game's divisive art style. Series producer Eiji Aonuma asserted "we didn't just aim for realistic graphics," but it was safe to say that it was certainly a shock, the same way the Star Fox remake's art direction was for many.
Someone with a vested interest in both series is Takaya Imamura, who designed the Star Fox crew and was the art director of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, birthing Tingle into the world. He speculated that the new art direction was influenced by puppet shows, which Shigeru Miyamoto is known to love (thanks to Star Fox). Despite being his personal opinion, this suggestion was taken as fact by many, but it turns out he was on the money.
In a new edition of Nintendo's Ask the Developer series, Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake art director Aya Shida notes that "for this game, we wanted to rebuild Hyrule as a rich, dense world that felt as though it could truly exist, while retaining the feel of the original. At the same time, we wanted its colorful and quirky characters to feel like a natural part of that world."
"To help the team understand what we were aiming for, early in development we used phrases like 'a puppet-show feel' and 'the analog feel of practical effects films' as keywords," Shida adds, confirming Imamura's speculation. She explains, "Neither puppet shows nor practical effects films reproduce reality exactly as it is," and that "We also felt that there was some overlap between these forms of expression and the distinctive nostalgia evoked by the original game."
Aonuma adds, "the current development team feels a certain sense of nostalgia" – despite some of them having never played the original – and that "their efforts to express that nostalgia led them to an analog, puppet-show-like feel." But this approach seems to have gotten the Aonuma seal of approval, as he notes, "As one of the original developers, that progression made sense to me."
