The young adventurer Link has been entrusted with an epic quest that will take him to every corner of the globe. He is fated to do incredible things, to become the Hero of Time, but for now he is just a boy. He says farewell to his dearest friend, Saria, and, with his trusty sword and his fairy Navi in tow, he steps out of his tiny community of forest children and finds himself in awe of the wider world. As he gazes out, he realizes this vast untamed wilderness is … maybe the size of a couple of football fields? Thereabouts?
I was there when Ocarina of Time first released in 1998, and like many young gamers, my mind was blown. This was one of our earliest experiences with 3D exploration in an open world, and it truly felt vast. The central hub of Hyrule Field was large enough to gracefully cross on horseback. Almost 30 years later, though, the once-majestic Hyrule Field lacks its original luster.
I recently got to play the Ocarina of Time remake, and like lots of players, I was curious how–or if–Hyrule Field would be updated for this latest incarnation of the game. The answer is that it’s very faithful to the original, for better and worse. The size appears roughly the same, and the landscape is mostly empty aside from the spokes leading out from the hub and Lon Lon Ranch at its center. There appear to be a few more irregular hills and rock formations to add realistic texture, but it is largely recognizable.
On one hand, this makes sense. As I mentioned in my preview, this remake aims to respectfully recreate the original Ocarina of Time, and complicating Hyrule Field with a bunch of random stuff wouldn’t feel authentic. Your default run speed is a little faster, so it doesn’t feel like it’s wasting your time crossing an empty field. It mostly exists as a space between the towns and dungeons you visit for quests.
At the same time, we’ve now seen the Zelda series fully embrace and even innovate modern open-world design with the two most recent core games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Those two games created massive wilderness that actually felt, appropriately, wild. They created tons of little hidden nooks and crevices to explore, with environmental and navigation puzzles to solve. One reason those two games have captured so much attention, and became so beloved, is because you can truly spend dozens of hours simply roaming around, exploring, and discovering.
An Ocarina of Time remake was never going to recreate that feeling. Its core design is just too different. But it’s hard not to notice, having played the modern Zelda games, that this Hyrule Field is relatively tiny. It’s true to the original, but there just isn’t much to do. Just how much that impacts your experience will likely depend on what you’re looking to get out of the remake.
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