See the big Zelda: Ocarina of Time gameplay reveal – launching 5th November

The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct had one real job, and it did it well, featuring the grand reveal for the Ocarina of Time remake that was announced earlier this year. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will launch exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on 5th November.

During the Direct, series producer Eiji Aonuma played the game live. He discussed the decisions taken for the game’s art style, which aims to have a nostalgic feel that’s not quite realistic – it hews towards some Western fantasy vibes, if you ask me, with a little bit of claymation underneath – but it’s massively more detailed and has some of that Unreal Engine style sheen as seen in Star Fox. More of the characters living in Kokiri village have been given more lines of dialogue, and you now have a dedicated jump button instead of the auto-jump of the original. Link can also just hop into the water and swim around.

In combat, you still have the classic enemy lock-on to let you dodge, strafe and leap into an attack. Navi remains on hand to shout “Hey, listen!” and provide gameplay hints and tips – she and other characters will be fully voiced in the full game – such as telling you to hit enemies with a Deku Nuts to stun them before hitting them again with a stick.

Inventory management is now a quick sliding interface as in other recent games, and there’s gyro controls for aiming the slingshot.

Loading screens and moments will remain in the game, with Aonuma stating that this was kept intentionally to help delin. Another classic quirk was the belief that you could go faster if you dodge roll constantly. Now you can hold A to dodge roll into a sprint.

Threads of Time is a new story feature to help you keep track of events that have occurred and the path you need to take to continue, giving directions and gradually filling in a tapestry based on the adventure.

Heading to Hyrule Castle and the town beneath it, this is now a fully rendered 3D environment that you can explore with back alleys, people dancing and more. This, of course, was a flat 2D render to run across in the original game, and it’s great to see it being fleshed out. Time will also continue to pass while you’re in the town, when it used to stop. Naturally you can still just pull out your ocarina and play the Sun Song to switch back from night to day.

A new Switch 2 feature is that you can hum the song you need and the console microphone will pick this up and translate it into the game. Or maybe you’ve bought a real ocarina and play it?

We’re just a couple years shy of the 30th anniversary of Ocarina of Time itself, which is still regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, arriving for N64 in 1998 at a time when many were still figuring out how to transition from 2D to 3D and once again showing Nintendo’s ability to master the jump. Not only that, but it succeeded in telling a time-skipping tale split between two time periods. There are, of course, plenty who prefer Majora’s Mask from that era, or perhaps it’s Breath of the Wild, or one of the other fantastic games in the long-running series.

Elsewhere in the Direct, Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that The Legend of Zelda movie will be called The Legend of Zelda, that there’s a The Legend of Zelda LEGO set, Huzzle, Hasbro figurines and many more collaborations and tie-ins. A new 40th anniversary Zelda concert series is also announced, taking place through 2027.