Ocarina of Time remake team tried and removed new warp points

The team remaking The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time tried adding warp points absent from the original, then removed them after finding they bypassed moments of discovery. Series producer Eiji Aonuma described the decision in a new Nintendo interview.

Aonuma said he had proposed the shortcuts to make travel across Hyrule Field quicker. During testing, the team found that players missed things they might otherwise stop to investigate. He asked for the points to be removed, after the experiment reminded him how much those discoveries mattered to the game’s structure.

One reason for the remake, Aonuma said, was to let younger developers who had mainly worked on later Zelda games learn the original’s structure and development methods by rebuilding it. He also wanted players accustomed to the freedom of Breath of the Wild to experience an adventure with a more gradual progression.

In the second chapter of the interview, the team described its approach to changing the visuals while preserving the experience. The art team drew on puppet shows and practical effects films as references for fitting colourful characters into a believable world. The remake comes to Switch 2 on November 5; two more interview chapters are due November 3.

The original game launched in Japan for Nintendo 64 on November 21, 1998, and was the first Zelda title to feature a 3D world. Players follow Link across Hyrule on a quest to stop Ganondorf, travelling between his childhood and adulthood. Along the way, they meet characters, explore dungeons and solve puzzles using items and mechanisms. The game earned critical acclaim, with a weighted score of 99 out of 100 on Metacritic.