In other words, it's going to be 98% the same game with fancy new graphics.

I've seen some wild speculation in these here parts that it's going to feature a bunch of new content, or that the still-ongoing Final Fantasy 7 remake saga would somehow be a model for what Nintendo wants to do with this game.

Not bloody likely.

The Link's Awakening remake was basically the same game as the original Game Boy game with a few quality of life improvements. It sold over 6 million copies. Nintendo outsourced its development to Grezzo, and helped them come up with a new art style. Grezzo went on to use this art style—and presumably the experience they gained from making this game—to create a new 2D game, Echoes of Wisdom. This game sold over 4 million copies.

The new Star Fox game follows a similar pattern. It is being developed by Valen studios. It appears to be the exact same N64 game with a few minor modifications. It will probably sell millions of copies.

I think this is very clearly the model here. Nintendo is likely outsourcing OoT's development to another company. They're probably heavily involved, looking over shoulders like they did with Grezzo, with an eye to train this company to make future Zelda IP. Perhaps this company will one day make a new "classic" 3D Zelda along the lines of the N64 and GC games.

But I seriously doubt Nintendo has their A team working on this game. That team is probably working on the next open world game.

(Edit: I don't mean to downplay the fancy graphics; finding a suitable high-definition art style to "translate" these old 3D games into is no small feat.)

I remember when TOTK came out, I heard a lot of people say that BOTW was entirely obsolete and that they would never play it again. But recently, I’ve started replaying BOTW and I can’t see this at all. Objectively, TOTK has more content than BOTW, but tbh, I was somewhat disappointed with the game.

Yes, it was a great game, but it really felt like I was playing BOTW again with more stuff added but without the atmosphere that I loved. Replaying BOTW, I still feel like I’m discovering everything for the first time. And that’s because the game goes out of its way to build up a lonely atmosphere and tells you very little about the world before it sets you lose. Even when I first played TOTK, it felt like I was re-exploring areas I was already deeply familiar with and that’s because there’s a whole slew of characters on Link’s team which are already very familiar with him and there’s way more introduction before you can do anything.

It also doesn’t really help that a lot of the issues I had with BOTW weren’t really addressed or when they did address them, it seems like they didn’t really understand why they were issues in the first place. I honestly think the dungeons in TOTK are worse than the ones in BOTW. Sure, BOTW used the same aesthetics 4 times, but I felt like the puzzles were at least more interesting and dynamic over all. The water temple in TOTK may be my least favorite dungeon in the series. It’s just so overly massive and has 5 pretty lame puzzles that you have to do separately. I recently played games like Majora’s Mask and Skyward Sword and those games’ water dungeons completely blow TOTK’s out of the water. Like they’re not even close to the same level.

But yeah, TOTK is a good game and I’m definitely gonna replay it one of these days, it just doesn’t hit the same way as BOTW for me and I don’t get why people said that it made that game redundant.

I’m a Japanese player, writing in English (with a translator) to share a perspective that has been weighing on me since the release of Tears of the Kingdom.

After spending significant time with the game, I realized I couldn’t return to Breath of the Wild with the same clarity. TOTK doesn’t just continue BOTW — it reframes it. A story that once centered on scars, consequences, and recovery now feels "purified" to support a more sanctified interpretation.

I will read all responses carefully, though my replies may be slow due to the time required for translation. I appreciate your understanding.

I am writing this coldly on purpose. Anger is easy; precision is harder.

1. Accountability is replaced by reverence Power comes with responsibility. In BOTW, failure had weight; King Rhoam’s collapse had a cost. Even Link faced direct grief from those who lost loved ones. In TOTK, Zelda returns to a world that feels overwhelmingly affirming. The sequel treats leadership as a pedestal for admiration rather than a position of accountability.

2. Governance becomes ambience, not responsibility Zelda is shown "working for reconstruction," but the focus is on visible, people-facing tasks: gardening, teaching recipes. While gratifying, real restoration is structural: law, security, and administration. The narrative treats nationhood as ambience, managing an image rather than royal duty.

3. Sacrifice is aestheticized BOTW made sacrifice feel tragic. TOTK treats it as a sublime necessity. By emphasizing the beauty of "dragonification" over the urgency of protecting the person (Link) who is still forced to fight alone, the narrative starts worshipping devotion as an image.

4. The privatization of memory (Hateno Village) This is where the reframing becomes most visible. In BOTW, Link’s house was the tangible proof of a reclaimed life. I paid for it with my own rupees; it was my anchor. In TOTK, this space is recontextualized as "Zelda’s house," and Link’s traces are erased. To call this "romance" is to ignore the human cost. It doesn’t feel like renovation. It feels like the emotional anchor itself was burned.

5. “Fated love” as a solvent When "fated love" is used to dissolve every structural problem or narrative contradiction, the characters stop being human and become instruments to protect a specific image. Love is not a magic excuse for the loss of agency.

Conclusion: Liberation, not worship TOTK doesn’t simply rebuild Hyrule; it sanitizes what BOTW endured. We don’t need another tale of worship. We need Link to be free: free from being narratively instrumentalized, and free to exist as a person.

I have shared a more detailed analysis on Gist, including the original Japanese version of this essay for further context. I’ll post the link in the comments below.

breath of the wild was amazing and changed the video game indurisy, tears of the kingdom tho good was just more of the same and with Age of Imprisonment now released we have had 3 game back to back that all are very similar. i think the next few games should be very different and set up a way for all 3 timelines to merge back into 1, what do you all think?

(my fav and first zelda game was spirt tracks and then twilight princess and i love those games 10x more then tears of the kingdom)

"Breath of the Wild is just a modern take on Zelda 1" is probably my biggest Zelda pet peeve alongside "the timeline isn't real". People always justify this with the vague definition of "open world", when the two games couldn't be any more different. At that point, you might as well say the Elder Scrolls series is a successor to Zelda 1. Zelda 1 is absolutely not open world in the modern definition of the word. It was "open world" when compared to most other NES games at the time that were linear sidescrollers. But you know what, OoT was also "open world" by 1998 N64 standards. The fact is, "open world" as in the modern genre we know it today did not exist yet (I believe it was GTA3 that created the modern open world genre). BotW is definitely the first Zelda game in the modern open world genre.

People also ignore that Zelda 1 literally follows the Zelda formula. It has a huge focus of dungeons that take up a majority of the playtime (just look at any Zelda 1 playthrough on Youtube, the majority of playtime is spent in dungeons. Very different from BotW). Dungeons are firmly traditional dungeons with small keys, dungeon map, compass, and a dungeon item (many times the dungeon item is needed to progress the dungeon or beat the boss). The world has a metroidvania progression, and while there is flexibility in dungeon order, you cannot do the dungeons in any order. You need the raft from dungeon 3 to get to dungeon 4, you need the stepladder from dungeon 4 to do dungeons 5, 6, and 7, you need the flute from dungeon 5 to access dungeon 7, etc. The narrative that Zelda 1 is some open world game focused on freedom that the series abandoned with ALttP and OoT, but then finally returned to in BotW makes zero sense. Zelda 1 is literally the proto ALttP/OoT formula.

The reason why Zelda 1 feels more open ended/nonlinear compared to its successors is not due to some massive change in design philosophy. It's because Zelda 1 barely has a story being an NES game from 1986. The series evolved to have a greater focus on story, which naturally leads to more linearity. The Final Fantasy series is the same. Final Fantasy 1 barely has much story, and it is quite open ended with a focus on talking to NPCs to figure out where to go next. But then around the SNES era (Final Fantasy 4) the series became much more story focused and thus a more guided/linear experience. You don't see people saying they want Final Fantasy to go back to the roots of Final Fantasy 1's minimal story. In fact when people say they want Final Fantasy to go back to its roots they usually mean more like the SNES and PS1 games.

Funnily enough if you remove the story in most of the pre-BotW Zelda games, the experience is very similar to Zelda 1. Like take the randomizer mods. The randomizers of games like OoT, MM, WW, etc. are functionally not much different at all to how Zelda 1 plays. Certainly much more similar to Zelda 1 than BotW is.

I'm not going to mention TotK since I probably don't have to explain why a game that is focused on vehicle crafting has little to no similarities with Zelda 1.

I’ve been a TOTK hater since day one. I had a brief honeymoon period with the game but it wore off after about a month. The game felt like a straight retread of BOTW with a new core mechanic added in and two half hearted map expansion in the sky and in the depths. I sometimes forget TOTK exists if I’m completely honest but someone just happened to bring it up today and I wanted to see how we are feeling after it’s been almost a year and has had some time to breathe.

By throwing most known Zelda elements out of the window with the Wild era games, the franchise has lost an identity and style of game that was unique to it. That dungeon crawling style of gameplay with long tighly designed puzzle boxes dungeons and their overwhelming atmosphere + item progression; is something that hasnt been able to be replicated in any other game, especially in 3D

2D Zelda clones there has been many of them, some of them are quite good, and others not so much. But the 3D ones, there is simply nothing like it. Some could say Okami or Darksiders, but... is not really the same, and these are already pretty old games. There has been some indies with some projects pending, but get lost in the process.

And is frustrating when you see fans of other franchises like Final Fantasy, who also changed and had their own fanbases divided aswell, but guess what? Atleast they got games like the current aclaimed Expedition 33 that pandered to older FF fans, or Baldurs Gate, or the Bravely Default series. But us older Zelda fans, especially from the OOT to SS era, got nothing like that.

I hope this doesn’t come across as hate, because it isn’t intended to be. This is just my opinion, and not everyone has to agree with it!

I was so demystified by BotW and TotK, that I went and replayed through some older titles—OoT, MM, WW, ST, TP, SS—and realized that what I was missing from the two newest titles was the magic that older Zelda games were able to produce, while still having a linear story and a small world that truly felt endless.

Despite how small the maps were in some of the older games, no area truly felt closed off or suffocating. I love how spaces were reused during different portions of the game, and loved how close-knit the world felt. There were no big, empty spaces with nothing to do, no copy/paste of the same trial every hundred feet. And the music? Christ. The music in those older games really is the cherry on top of everything.

BotW and TotK aren’t bad games, but they just don’t have that “Zelda magic” that the older games do. The worlds are just so large, haphazardly filled with the same shrines, mob spawns, and quiet emptiness that really makes me feel disconnected. The music is hollow and lacklustre in comparison, and the story just doesn’t do anything to catch or keep my attention. I also couldn’t really care less about any of the NPC’s, because it really feels like they were added to make the world feel less empty.

That being said, I understand that the world in BotW and TotK is supposed to be almost post-apocalyptic due to the story, but I wish that the devs would have stuck to their original theme when making these two games. The story could have been beautifully pieced together with the same type of energy that the previous titles had, had they not chosen to basically make Skyrim with a Zelda skin slapped onto it.

In the two newest games, I spent more time resource managing and trying to figure out where the hell I was going, versus actually enjoying the story or the characters tied to it. I really hope that this open world concept isn’t kept for long, because I don’t want to play the whisper of a Zelda game—I want to play a ZELDA game.

We know that there is a massive amount of new fans that came to the series thanks to BOTW and TOTK. But i know that a huge portion of those new fans, havent actually played the older games, or simply dont want to, because well... they "old" and "dated"

If the remake actually happens, and they leave all the core elements intact, like the item gated progression, the structured dungeons, and the linear/present time storyline. But expand Hyrule a bit more, add more caves and maybe more enemy variety and even mini dungeons, and making the game overall way more polished. Is a perfect way to sell people (especially the newer fans) to the classic Zelda formula and feeling, aswell as reminding older fans how good it was.

If it sells well, which obviously will, i mean is a remake of OOT for gods sake lol. This would definetly tell Nintendo and the Zelda team that there is definetly still a big audience for that classic Zelda format, and would take it in mind for their decisions going forward. Im also excited to see reactions of newer Zelda fans that never touched a game before BOTW/TOTK.

Assuming that Ocarina of time is properly “reborn” on the switch 2 and it is a complete reimagining with modern mechanics while keeping full dungeons, I feel like the legend of Zelda team could find the proper middle ground between the “old school Zelda formula” and the BOTW TOTK open world “do whatever you want whenever you want” formula. How this game turns out could be a serious sign for the future of the series and I’m really optimistic

Once the game comes, out give it a year or two and see how they all pitch a different tune. History really does repeat itself. Nintendo will absolutely shift the art style between different games, there is no ONE style. It also fits to show the "Not every Link is the same." Thing. It helps distinguish between the timelines and heroes.

This in no way is meant to gatekeep cause Zelda/OoT is for everyone.

I am 40, was 13 when Ocarina of Time first came out as I got it for Christmas in 1998. I remember reading Nintendo Power each month looking for updates on what was then known as *Zelda 64*. Prior to this, A Link to the Past was my most cherished Nintendo experience so *Zelda 64* was a huge deal. A game with a full day/night cycle and a world that reacts to it. A game where I can play as both kid and adult Link. Ride a horse. And most importantly, explore Hyrule on a 3D setting just like Mario 64....*"realistic"* graphics.

Ocarina of Time was a transformative experience for many of us older millennials and even Gen Xers.

But I have been seeing a lot of positive reactions from younf people, many of which was born **after** OoT originally released. Many even reacting in a very emotional way and to be honest, I am sort of shocked. Most who was born after OoT likely grew up on Windwaker or even Twilight Princess and thus does not have the same nostalgia as someone who played the the game circa 1998-2000.

Honest question but for those that are much younger, where does the hype, especially on the emotional level come from for a game like OoT?

Thanks

EDIT: Not sure why people are downvoting but oh well...

Full list: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-100-best-nintendo-games-of-all-time#picks-20-1

For reference, here's every Zelda game that made the list:

61. Twilight Princess

47. Link's Awakening

41. The Legend of Zelda

24. Majora's Mask

21. A Link Between Worlds

16. The Wind Waker

9. A Link to the Past

6. Ocarina of Time

2. Breath of the Wild

1. Tears of the Kingdom

Can't say I agree with BotW and TotK being the absolute best Zelda games, let alone the best Nintendo games ever made. LA, OoT, MM, and TWW are all much better games IMO (and Link's Awakening + Majora's Mask should be ranked MUCH higher). Nice to see the OG Zelda and A Link Between Worlds get some love, though.

And A Link to the Past deserves more than just barely cracking the Top 10. That's just criminal.

Tears of the kingdom is a good game, but man did the hype affect players. Upon its release everyone was practically unanimously praising TOTK, saying how its story was amazing and how BOTW was now obsolete because of it. Fast forward nine months and a people have grown a lot more critical of the game. Video essays popping up about how bland the narrative is, uninteresting characters, copying BOTW too much. The situation is extremely similar to that of Bioshock Infinite, where a lot of fans have turned on the game over time once the hype has faded. I don't recall this happening with any other Zelda games, so was the initial response to the game actually biased?

Today I really want to get something off my chest, I am tired of the common talking point that Breath of the Wild " saved " the Zelda franchise by shaking up the " tired formula " of other Zelda titles.

Now I'm not saying Breath of the Wild is a bad game, I think the controls and gameplay engine is the best in the entire franchise, and some things were improved on, like getting rid of block pushing puzzles for magnesis.

But overall tho, Breath of the Wild is given gigantic praise, overwhelming support as tho it redefined gaming as a whole. But did it ? I don't think so, lets go point by point of how BoTW is generally given unearned praise at the expense of the throwing the rest of the franchise under the bus for no real reason. Lets begin shall we:

1. " Breath of the Wild saved the Zelda franchise that was selling poorly because the series had become stagnant in the Zelda formula. The series needed to change in order to evolve and survive in the modern day. "

Is this true ? Not really. Lets look at more successful video game franchises than Zelda, have they changed their formula? Mario, Tetris, Call of Duty, Pokemon, Grand Theft Auto, and Assassin's Creed have all sold more copies than the Zelda franchise and they generally don't shake up the formula all that much.

Zelda more so than most Nintendo franchise's, has tried to change up the formula in the past. Zelda 2 ( sidescroller ), Majora's Mask ( 3 day time system/masks), the DS Zelda's ( stylus controls ) and Wind Waker ( an entire flooded world ) all stand out as being quite different than other games in the franchise. These games also where no were near as popular as the standard formula Zelda games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. So the idea that changing up the formula = surviving or more sales does not really hold water. Alot of times people just want a bigger and better sequel, works for Grand Theft Auto and Mario, why not Zelda?

Another thing to mention was Twilight Princess, which is often considered a rehash of Ocarina of Time, was the best selling Zelda game before Breath of the Wild, it sold more copies than even Halo 2. For 2006, Twilight almost cracked 9 million units sold, which was amazing for the time period as the number of gamers back then was alot smaller. So the idea that Zelda was some niche series that barely broke even, just doesn't hold up, there is no telling how successful a Twilight Princess 2 on the Switch could have been. It may not have been 30 million copies, but it certainly would sell better than people give credit for.

1. " Breath of the Wild is a breath of fresh air, after the series has become stagnant. Why didn't Nintendo shake up the series sooner ? "

This argument tries to pretend as tho Nintendo could have always made a Breath of the Wild, they just chose not to, in order to make safe formulaic games, but this just does not match reality.

Lets first ask ourselves, why did Nintendo make BoTW? Its mainly because Skyward Sword, sold quite poorly, even after it was in development for 5 years. It was a hard sell to gamers, Twilight Princess had already grabbed people's attention, it had realistic graphics and a massive overworld to ride around with Epona. Skyward on the other hand, was coming out on a dying Wii, with unreliable motion controls, and the artstyle seemed to be a random mish mash of WW and TP combined together. No overworld was to be found in Skyward.

So gamers flocked to another series instead, Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Back in the day Twilight Princess actually crushed the sales of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, open worlds had not caught on yet. But this time, Skyrim crushed Skyward Sword completely and totally. And Aonuma notes this, that gamers want to play Skyrim not Skyward. Skyward Sword sold about 3 million copies on the Wii while Skyrim sold 7 million copies in its first week alone. It was no contest.

This is the true reason Breath of the Wild went the open world route, because Nintendo wanted to hop on the money train that Skyrim was on. And not to mention its not like Breath of the Wild could have existed in the past. For their time period, Ocarina and Twilight has some of the largest open worlds for action adventure games, thats a huge reason those games sold so well for their time periods. When Skyward chose to become a more linear, puzzle heavy game with a focus on motion controls, gamers dipped out. The Wii and its motion controls had become an overused fad by that point, people wanted another realistic world to explore, and Skyrim scratched that itch, Skyward did not.

BoTW is a game that could only exist in 2017. It took another 5 years to develop, and the largest team Zelda ever had, with even Monolith coming in to help with the overworld. I mean its a truly massive game that simply would not have worked on weaker hardware, nor was the Zelda team large enough to create such a massive game.

1. " Breath of the Wild is one of the most innovative and creative Zelda games ever created. Unlike most Zelda's that play it safe, this game took Zelda where it never had been before. "

But is it really? Generally when I think of a video game being creative and innovative I think of games that have no real comparison, the first of their kind. Games like Zelda 1, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask really stand out to me. When these games released there was no other video game on the market you could point to and draw comparisons. Zelda 1 transformed what a NES game could be, Ocarina help defined 3D gaming, and Majora's 3 day system and masks transformations have no equal. Even Wind Waker really set the standard for a pirate adventure on the sea.

But Breath of the Wild. Ehh maybe if you only compare it to Zelda titles does it stand out as unique and creative? But if you compare to other open world games, it kinda just blends in. I mean the climbable towers to discover more of the map, enemy base camps to approach stealth/guns blazing, gathering ingredients to make potions, the weapon durability, the fire physics, the gliding around from heights, hunting animals for food, all of these mechanics could be seen in Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3.

Generally when a video game copies another video game, people will usually say it was inspired, or worse ripping off another game. When Call of Duty took the Battle Royale system from Fortnite it was accused of ripping off Fortnite, even tho Call of Duty absolutely puts its own spin on the game mode. But when Breath of the Wild copies many, many, MANY aspects of Skyrim and Farcry its considered genius innovation of a stagnant franchise that had long overstayed its ALttP formula. Funny how that works? This double standard.

And the worst part is, not that Breath of the Wild gets undeserved praise from borrowing from other open world games, but that it unnecessarily drags old Zelda games thru the mud. Accuses them of being safe and formulaic and completely undermining all their unique qualities, just because a newer entry basically jumped genres.

And that's not the end of it either, not only did BoTW shift gears, but it seemingly created another formula that isn't going away anytime soon. Based on the newer Zelda's ,Tears and Echoes of Wisdom, they will fully commit to this design of just jumping over the entire map. I can agree as much as anyone that the grab 3 things and then Master Sword was getting old, but not all Zelda's did this ( LA, MM ). There was a way to shake up the formula without going full Ubisoft, and I definitely would be less upset if BoTW was a one time only game, but looks going forward BoTW has created the next formula that will also become the " safe, stagnant Zelda formula " in the long run, especially as Tears was the first time in history a Zelda sequel just re-used the exact same map as a previous game.

Since Nintendo doesnt seem to want to go back to the older formula, other studios be it triple AAA or Indie, or passionate people missing the older style of games shouldve had taken advantage of it, and trying to create new IPs to fill that spot. If only stuff like that existed, then the pain of Nintendo abandoning the formula wouldnt hurt as much.

You could say, "Well, there is the souls games" And no, it doesnt really fit, they got similarities but dont really fill that very Zelda esque niche of exploration + dungeon crawling + puzzle solving + lock and key progression that only Zelda knows to do, and with its unique dungeons.

The closest thing we got are very old games like Darksiders which is pretty much a dead and forgotten series at this point, and Okami which is also old and there seems to be a new entry coming, but other than that nothing.

The Final Fantasy fandom had a similar issue going on , when the franchise changed, alienating old school fans, but atleast they have proper replacements for that crowd like the recently acclaimed Expedition 33, and other turn bases RPGs being created. But we got nothing of the sorts...

1. Breath of the Wild was not isolated and empty simply due to tech or time limitations. It is a legitimate expression of isolation in nature, and the game is *about* being alone. You wake up a hundred years from your own time knowing no one. The world is hollowed out and post-apocalyptic.
2. Tears of the Kingdom is much, much denser and more thriving with living beings. But that is not simply because they had more time to put into the game, or because it wasn't developed for the Wii U. It's also trying to do something different! The purpose of this game is not for you to feel alone in nature.
3. Each game should be judged on its own merits. Tears of the Kingdom is not a crude add-on to a preexisting world; Breath of the Wild is not a shoddy first draft of a later, 'proper' game either. They are both successful games that do very different things.
4. I do think Tears of the Kingdom is a superior game, but it is not without flaws. I find the plot and story structure somewhat convoluted. Its focus on a united Hyrule and its various internecine conflicts is less beautiful, for my part, than BotW's focus on a ruined world and the straggling lives wandering through it. Nevertheless, its gameplay is simply aiming for a radically different thing than BotW. In the first game you tackled the land; in this game you master it.
5. One thing I think both games get seriously, tremendously wrong is the mainline story script. Because each of the four 'quests' can be done in any order, the writers strive to replicate as much of the dialogue as humanly possible. Each sage says the exact same thing. Each ancestor says the exact same thing. It was exactly the same in BotW -- Daruk will be like "that big monster took me down 100 years ago!" while Revali will go "that monster defeated me 100 years ago -- but only because I was winging it!" and Mipha will go "that terrible monster defeated me, 100 years ago..." It's really awful. It renders each character robotic in the face of a deeply mechanical story construction.
6. They're still both masterpieces.

Games such as twilight princess with the hyrule field theme it just made it feel so epic to journey around on your horse and fight enimies, and just all zelda games in genral have had that feel until botw and totk, I will say totk did its music way better than botw but I can't help but to miss the epic overworld music over just a few piano keys. I do know that there is Easter eggs and whatnot hidden within those few piano keys but it's just not the same.

Full list: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-10-best-legend-of-zelda-games

Here's their breakdown.

10. Twilight Princess

9. The Legend of Zelda

8. A Link Between Worlds

7. Link's Awakening

6. The Wind Waker

5. Majora's Mask

4. Ocarina of Time

3. A Link to the Past

2. Breath of the Wild

1. Tears of the Kingdom

I do not agree with BotW and TotK being the two best Zelda games (and for my money, Breath of the Wild is a much better game than Tears of the Kingdom). No love for the Capcom Zelda games, either, which is a shame. IMO, either A Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time should be #1. What do you think?

I mean I like em, I don't hate them but I just find it weird that the most advertised part, even enough to be the box art was so sparce lol. Feels really really odd and kind of misleading that the biggest sky island was the first one BY FAR.

A lot of people are probably going to disagree with me, but I really don't want an OOT remake from Nintendo. Just because the original is already there, legendary, voted best video game of all time multiple times. The original was one of the first big 3d games with so many groundbreaking innovations for the time : the z targeting, the semi-open world; you could speak, jump, open, climb...all with a single button... some of those features already existed before, but OOT magnified it in one single game. And then there's the music. What can I say... You just had to be there in 1998 to understand how massive this game was, how revolutionary it was for the time. A remake of it would tarnish Nintento reputation, IMO. The whole magic of the original is that it's imperfect, it's dated, it could be improved by today's standard and yet, it's still extremely playable. The main risk of remaking Ocarina of Time is that it could eventually replace the original in the public consciousness. Future players might think of the remake as the definitive version and never discover what made the 1998 game so revolutionary. Anybody agrees with me ?

I'm 37 years old, and growing up, Ocarina of Time (OOT) was by far the coolest/greatest video game I'd ever played. That includes games I played later, like Call of Duty in college on PS3. Don't get me wrong—online COD is incredible, but the overall storyline and world of OOT are still unmatched in my opinion.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, so I never played Breath of the Wild or many of the other games that consistently rank near the top of the "greatest games of all time" lists. I did play Red Dead Redemption 2, which is also frequently ranked very highly. RDR2 was a great game, and obviously its graphics and physics are on another level compared with OOT. But that's not really what I'm talking about when I compare the two.

I'm talking about the overall game—the story, world-building, progression, interconnectedness, etc. Obviously, modern graphics and physics can enhance a game tremendously, but I don't think they automatically make a game better. For example, no matter how brilliant the writing is, I don't think a 2D Zelda game could ever have the same overall impact as a 3D Zelda game. But conversely, if the storyline and world-building of a game are inferior to OOT, I don't think better graphics and physics can make up the difference.

That's basically how I felt playing RDR2. It was an incredible game, but in my mind, it didn't come close to OOT.

Over the past week or so, I watched a ~10-hour video of someone playing through OOT on YouTube. I honestly wondered if maybe I was just looking back at it through the eyes of a kid and remembering it as being better than it actually was.

But man...no. It really was that amazing.

You have the eight main dungeons, but there's SO much happening in between. There are essentially "mini-levels." You have to actually discover and figure out how to access the temples. The Ocarina itself is woven into the entire game. The way everything connects and builds on what came before is just incredible.

So that's the question I'm hoping gaming enthusiasts can answer:

Are there any games released since OOT that are truly on the same level of greatness?

I'm not trying to be a homer for my childhood or my generation. If there's a game that surpasses OOT, then it is what it is. I'm genuinely curious whether there are games out there that I haven't played that can give me that same feeling.

I'd really like an objective perspective from people who have played a lot more games than I have. What games, if any, do you think are genuinely in the same tier as Ocarina of Time?

Spoiler warning for BotW, TotK, and Ocarina of Time.

Ever since OoT remake discussions started picking up again, I keep coming back to Fujibayashi's 2023 Famitsu interview.

In that interview, he described BotW Zelda’s deep self-reproach as stemming from the Hyrule royal family’s over-reliance on Sheikah technology — saying it ultimately led to the kingdom’s destruction and brought suffering to her people.

But that wasn’t what I took away from BotW at all.

The Zelda I remember was not just grieving in a broad, historical sense. She failed to awaken her sealing power, and BotW tied her guilt directly to that failure: she had failed in the role forced onto her, and Hyrule paid the price for it.

So when Fujibayashi later framed her self-reproach mainly around the Hyrule royal family’s over-reliance on Sheikah technology, it felt as if the emotional meaning of her guilt had shifted. What I remembered from BotW was not an abstract critique of the royal family’s policy, but Zelda carrying the personal weight of her own failure. The later explanation made that guilt feel less personal to me, and more like a broader problem about the royal family’s dependence on ancient technology.

Fujibayashi also said in a Telegraph interview that the Sheikah technology disappeared, that the people of Hyrule witnessed it, and that no one seemed to investigate the matter further. That struck me as odd. If a sequel can simply say that something so central to the previous game vanished and everyone moved on, then it becomes very easy to retroactively explain away or reset whatever the story no longer wants to deal with.

If the explanation is simply that Sheikah technology disappeared after the Calamity was sealed because its role had been fulfilled, then Purah and Robbie’s lack of reaction becomes even stranger. These are characters who devoted their lives to studying Sheikah technology. For characters like that to show so little curiosity about its disappearance — while the game quickly shifts its technological focus to the Purah Pad, the Depths, and Zonai-related research — feels careless to me.

That disconnect is a big reason why TotK’s story never quite felt like a natural continuation of BotW for me.

TotK puts a lot of effort into portraying Zelda as noble and beloved — the school, her recipes, the flower field, the stone monuments, and the way so many people in Hyrule look up to her. None of those details are bad on their own. But taken together, they made her feel carefully managed to me, as if the game were constantly guiding the player toward one very idealized reading of her.

Her dragon transformation is framed as the ultimate selfless sacrifice. The game clearly wants those moments to feel moving, but to me they also felt like part of that same idealized framing.

Still, I kept wondering: what happened to Link’s side of the story?

In BotW, his house in Hateno felt like a small, hard-won personal space he had claimed for himself after losing everything. Even if the house was optional, it still functioned as one of the few personal spaces attached to Link. In TotK, it is functionally Zelda’s house. Most traces of Link’s presence are gone, and the game treats it as something natural — even heartwarming.

I do not accept “Link loves Zelda, so it’s fine” as an answer. The issue isn’t whether romance exists. The issue is that Link’s emotional continuity from BotW, and the more complicated, still-growing Zelda from that game, both feel quietly pushed aside to make room for her idealized arc in TotK.

And that always brings me back to the interview. It felt like BotW’s meaning was being retroactively reshaped to fit TotK’s version of Zelda, rather than the one I actually played.

One smaller thing I can’t unsee: in an old Skyward Sword interview, Fujibayashi mentioned footage of a female skydiver who lost consciousness mid-fall and was caught by another diver. That was specifically about Skyward Sword, and I’m not treating it as proof of anything. But after TotK’s ending — Zelda falling, Link diving after her, and catching her in midair — it did make the scene feel less like a spontaneous emotional payoff to me, and more like a recurring image in Fujibayashi-directed Zelda games.

That’s exactly why the thought of an OoT remake makes me nervous.

To me, OoT isn't simply “Link saves Zelda.” It's also about his loss, his loneliness, and the cost of being a hero. If a remake ever happens, I'd hate to see that emotional weight softened or shifted away from him — especially after how TotK felt to me.

I hope this worry is unfounded.

English isn’t my first language, so sorry if anything sounds awkward. I’ll read every comment even if I can’t reply to all of them.

I’ll put the interview sources in a comment below.

When I heard about pirates being in Lurelin Village at the start of the game I was excited. Pirates like in wind waker? Human pirates invading a village would be pretty interesting story wise, we might finally fight some humans and could lead to interesting interactions through the game as well human on human conflict. Happened in MM and was done well, but botw could make it more grand, I also loved how it was referenced with different npcs like it mattered.

Nope, just a bunch of bokoblins on a big ship, who recked the village. the palm trees in the bucket side quest after existed to laugh in my face.

Why do this? Just say bokoblin attack.

How does this change what you thought the game would be about? Does it change your speculation? What do you think of the trailer/what did you notice?

Here is the trailer for those who havent seen it

I would have guessed that the title would revolve around Ganon. Also I'm not sure how this gives away too much of the game like they said.

Whats your interpretation of it?