Don’t get me wrong — I’m pretty darn excited for a Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. But boy, I would have been so much more excited for a sequel instead.
If you’ve somehow missed it, at the most recent Nintendo Direct, we saw a brief teaser for a Switch 2 version of Ocarina of Time. Admittedly, the brief trailer is light on details — merely showcasing a cinematic intro for the iconic adventure with some voice acting and vastly improved graphics over the Nintendo 64 original — but the promise to return to Hyrule later this year has left many (myself included) ecstatic with the hope this is Zelda’s Resident Evil 2 Remake equivalent.
Anyone who has touched Ocarina of Time knows why it’s regarded as one of the best games ever made. It perfectly translated the previously 2D-only series’ sense of adventure into a 3D world, and even close to three decades later, Ocarina’s Hyrule is a delight to explore — with its dungeons to solve, monsters to slay, and songs to learn.
A return to this world with a graphical and gameplay overhaul — taking learnings from titles like Breath of the Wild — would be the perfect way to revisit the classic, and introduce it to a new generation.
More to the story
Though it doesn’t quite hold a candle to its direct sequel, Majora’s Mask.
The darker tone and the repeating three-day cycle create a claustrophobic aspect that pairs perfectly with the game’s expansive world and its various branching stories. You don’t have time to solve every problem at once, so you have to slowly piece together each puzzle through what you learn in previous cycles, and the items and abilities you unlock.
Majora’s Mask could easily have been a mess, but instead it pioneered the Groundhog Day-like genre, setting the bar for what time loop games should deliver.
Everything is perfect… but ultimately unfinished too.
Majora’s Mask picks up where Ocarina of Time ends, with Link on a quest to find his fairy companion Navi after she leaves him at the end of the first game.
While he does save yet another realm, his inciting quest doesn’t have a conclusion, as Majora’s Mask ends with Link venturing on once more to find his fairy friend.
While the Zelda series has had plenty more entries since these two games, it has long felt like there should be a third story in the Ocarina of Time duology — one that ties up this loose end adventure in some way.
So while I’m excited for a new Ocarina of Time, I am left desperately wishing we were getting a fresh follow-up instead, one that finally concludes this long-time Zelda series mystery rather than simply being the fourth Ocarina of Time re-release.
Why not both?
My mixed feelings aside, this remake doesn’t rule out the possibility of a sequel. In fact, it could make one more likely as players are refamiliarized with the game’s story and finale.
Adding to my hope (read: cope) is that we’re coming up fast on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s 30th anniversary — which lands at the tail end of 2028. Concluding this mystery would be quite the birthday treat for longtime fans of this game.
Now that would be quite a swift turnaround time, but the Zelda series does comfortably hit one entry every couple of years — since 2023, the franchise has actually had a release every year if you count the Switch 2 Editions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
We’ll have to wait and see what Nintendo has up its sleeve, but as I play through Ocarina of Time on my Switch 2 later this year, I’ll be desperately hoping a brand-new sequel to it is just around the corner.
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
