// KOTAKU — GAMING
8 Things We Noticed In The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Trailer
I know the original game is nearly 30 years old, but I’m pretty surprised at how much of the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake Nintendo showed off in the first proper trailer for the Switch 2 game this morning during the series’ 40th anniversary Direct. The beefy three-minute trailer featured clips from across the whole game, ranging from its opening moments to some of its final boss encounters. If you’ve never played the game before, I actually recommend not watching the trailer so you can stumble upon its various foes and challenges with fresh eyes, but if you, like millions of others, are familiar with the game through either its Nintendo 64 original, its GameCube re-release, or the 3DS remake, let’s break down what we saw.
We start off with some environmental shots showing off some of the areas around Hyrule that Link will explore in the remake. There’s Lon Lon Ranch, Death Mountain, Kakariko Village, and we get our first look at adult Link riding Epona through Hyrule Field. We then see him in both his younger and older states walking through areas like Kokiri Forest, the Hyrule Castle Town’s market, and Gerudo’s Fortress.
Next Link faces off against a handful of the monsters and creepy crawlies he fights in Ocarina of Time. We see the werewolf-like Wolfos in front of the Forest Temple, spinning Leevers in the Gerudo Valley, and the laser-shooting Beamos in the Dodongo’s Cavern dungeon.
Throughout Ocarina of Time, players will have to go back and forth between the past and future by removing the Master Sword from or replacing it on the Pedestal of Time. Link ages when he moves to the future, so even in environments that don’t change much, you can tell when a clip takes place based on whether Link is a child or an adult.
A lot of the more powerful foes Link faces are found during the adult segments, which is good because adult Link has a lot more tools at his disposal, and can use his signature sword and shield more effectively when they’re not the length of his body. The fights we see here include face-offs with the sword-wielding Stalfos skeletons and the Iron Knuckle mini-boss with her giant axe and all-encompassing armor.
Most of Link’s tools have a potential use in combat, but they’re more often used to solve puzzles and move through the environment. The returning tools the Hero of Time will have include bombs to break through walls, torches to burn through webs, a hook shot to cross over chasms, the Megaton Hammer to knock obstacles out of the way, a boomerang to attack enemies at a distance, and his pair of Iron Boots to walk around underwater while wearing his blue tunic that lets him breathe while submerged.
Not every moment of Ocarina of Time has life-or-death stakes. We also see Link gliding around while holding onto a Cucco, fishing, taking a dive, flying with the talking owl Kaepora Gaebora, and getting eaten by Lord Jabu-Jabu. Okay, that last one sounds at least a little hazardous, but he’ll be fine, probably.
Link meets many allies in Hyrule that he watches grow up as he travels through time, and we see a handful of them here. A few that the trailer spotlights include the rancher’s daughter Malon, the Great Fairy, the enigmatic Sheik, his childhood friend Saria, the Goron leader Darunia, the young Zora princess Ruto, and, of course, Princess Zelda herself as a child.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Ocarina of Time without Ganondorf. The Gerudo king who has been a timeline-spanning thorn in Link and Zelda’s sides made his first appearance as the handsome, charismatic despot in the original Ocarina, and he is just as imposing and scary in the remake as he was in 1998. After we see Ganondorf intimidate a young Link while on the back of a demonic-looking horse, we see a handful of the bosses from Ocarina of Time, including the parasitic arachnid Gohma, the Spirit Temple witch Kotake, the fiery dragon Volvagia from the Fire Temple, the dinosaur-like King Dodongo in his cavern, and the Phantom Ganon project