The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's long-awaited Switch 2 remake might be bringing Nintendo's 1998 classic back to life with almost 28 years' worth of improvements, but the devs decided to reject one modern quality-of-life feature to avoid Link's classic adventure from losing some of its old magic.
Speaking in a new Nintendo Ask the Developer interview, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma explains that during the development of the new remake, he suggested implementing a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild-style quality-of-life feature that could have made traversing the world much quicker – fast-travel points.
"In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there are many warp points that enable players to move quickly around the game's vast world," he begins. "In the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you could get around a bit faster by spamming forward roll, so I think a lot of players spent their time doggedly rolling across Hyrule Field whenever they needed to be somewhere in a hurry. (Laughs)."
This is something that Aonuma initially felt "we needed to address" in the remake. "So I asked the team to add warp points that didn't exist in the original game, giving players access to shortcuts," he explains.
However, when the devs implemented this feature, the vibes were completely off, the producer continues. "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?'" he reasons.
"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," Aonuma says. "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)."
Even without the newly added fast-travel points, the Zelda devs have added another way to get around Hyrule quickly. Instead of doing his best Sonic impression and rolling around at the speed of sound, Link can now simply run. Oh, and he can jump now, too.
