From our other sites
The story
Fans on 5ch’s “Hardware & Industry” (Geha) board are debating the design direction for the upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The thread’s original poster pointed to the rumored Final Fantasy VII Remake, arriving around the same time, which rebuilt the entire overworld map and even implemented the airship — arguing that if Ocarina of Time’s remake just polishes the graphics while keeping the old “zone-to-zone” area transitions, that would be “half-assed.”
Pushback came fast: some cited past titles that forced their way into open-world design and flopped, while others argued that Ocarina’s charm comes precisely from its enclosed, “garden-style” (hako-niwa) dungeon structure. Opinions split right down the middle over whether going open world is even the right call.
What people said
If Square Enix is going that hard, and Ocarina of Time's remake ends up just polishing the graphics a bit while keeping the same old zone-to-zone area transitions, that's honestly half-assed.
Stuff like that shouldn't get a pass.
Will that alone make it more fun?!
That's just an established fact these days.
If anything, it's the bare minimum for a modern game.
Anything that falls short of that bare minimum shouldn't even be released as a remake.
Getting suckered by that baseless argument
and carelessly slapping open world onto a series
has wiped out pretty much every one that tried it.
>Going open world makes it more fun
Dynasty Warriors 9 (aka Shin Sangoku Musou 8) says "come again?"
What about the FF you yourself brought up one post earlier?
That's because it comes with a scenario and systems built around being open world from the ground up.
Force that onto something that wasn't designed for it and all you get is a joyless mess.
Back with A Link Between Worlds (Kamigami no Triforce 2), the answer was already given — you end up stuck building puzzles around dungeon-entrance item requirements and mural links, which makes for shallow puzzles and a more compact game overall.
Open world is boring.
So if they just get rid of the zone transitions, that's enough to count as "open world"?!
That's because it's already a confirmed losing platform. Honestly, people probably just don't care anymore.
Mario Kart World only moved 3,000 copies in its first week, remember?
And that's supposed to be the textbook example of failure.
If anything, that game could be called the origin point of Zelda's whole open-world system.
Though I really do want the dungeon layouts and puzzles changed, at least.
Hard to tell if this is aimless drift from a team that actually understands brand management, or reckless behavior from one that doesn't understand it at all.
It's a situation where you can tell success or failure before the thing even ships — so can they even judge what's okay to change, what shouldn't be touched, and what they changed with real intent?
I doubt the Ocarina of Time remake changes much of anything content-wise.
They might change the seasoning, but they're not touching the recipe itself.
Star Fox is exactly the series that's stuck to that philosophy the hardest.
Ah, so that's the setup for a big anticlimactic letdown later. Raising the bar on purpose.
If it's just adding more cutscenes, I'm all for it.
The mindset that "everything should just be open world" is outdated.
Do you know how many games have flopped because of that?
Third parties and Sony got played by that same argument over and over — that's exactly why they want to drag everyone else into the same mess.
Re: #60
But this is Nintendo we're talking about — the same company that's recycled Star Fox 64 through Virtual Console and 3DS re-releases over and over, and would still smugly ship a "just improved the graphics" remake. If both titles are coming out this year, the projects probably kicked off around the same time, so I doubt they'd give a from-the-ground-up rebuild to only one of them.
It's the overall story arc that's the issue there.
As for a Majora's Mask remake as the "Ocarina of Time expansion," though — since the original was already open-world-ish, that one I'm genuinely looking forward to.
Either way, that's just how it always goes lol
It's a garden-style (hako-niwa) game — you can't freely go anywhere, there are set routes, and the reachable area gradually expands, Metroidvania-style.
Momentum's already dropping because of the price hike, and if the remake's just a graphics change on top of that, it's basically throwing away the holiday season. If you want to play the original, you can already do that through the Switch Online expansion pack, so that covers it. Nintendo can do whatever it wants, but if it's just a graphics-only remake, I'm not buying it — and I'll mock it too.
What do you even think the holiday sales season is?
How was Nintendo's holiday lineup last year?
What about the year before that?
Without a headline title, sales volume's going to drop, right? There are probably a fair number of people who've already lost interest in buying a Switch 2 because of the price hike.
Behold my very own idea of the ultimate holiday lineup! (riffing on the classic internet meme format "my idea of the greatest ___")
Background and key points of the debate
Released for the N64 in 1996, Ocarina of Time is widely credited with establishing the grammar of the 3D action-adventure genre. Its structure links dungeons together across an overworld map — innovative for its era, but classified today as a “garden-style” (hako-niwa) design. Nintendo, meanwhile, has already established its own brand of free-roaming open-world design with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and several posters in the thread expressed outright fatigue with that approach. It’s also worth noting that whether the remake will actually go open world is not confirmed — the thread is largely speculation and wishful thinking, drawing a comparison to the FF7 Remake’s restructuring. The real point of contention was the broader question of whether going open world is a prerequisite for quality: some pointed to commercial disappointments like Dynasty Warriors 9 to argue that “open world” doesn’t automatically mean “fun,” while others countered that keeping the old garden-style structure would make the remake look like a lazy cash-in. The two sides never really met in the middle.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry/Geha) thread “If the Ocarina of Time remake isn’t open world, it honestly deserves to get roasted.”
Leave a Reply