Nintendo producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi discussed the Ocarina of Time remake for the Switch 2 with The Verge ahead of its launch.
Fujibayashi said younger team members, including some who had never played the original, shaped the remake. He said they "really embraced the theme of what not to change from the original." He added that they are "looking for elegance. Only what is needed, only what was important in the original."
Aonuma, who worked on the 1998 Nintendo 64 original, said the production is much larger now. "We used to have maybe just one person designing the backgrounds, and that's something that you couldn't do nowadays," he said. He said bigger teams can make management harder.
The team added features to match newer Zelda games. Players now have full camera control and can jump anywhere. Aonuma said the free jump required changes to the world. "It adds just a little bit more freedom compared to the original Ocarina of Time," he said.
Aonuma said the new graphics aim to "bring out details of the world that people weren't able to see in the original." He said the team wanted to do this in 1998 but lacked the hardware.
Fujibayashi, who was at Capcom when the original launched, said Z-targeting still influences how he designs 3D games. Aonuma said the team toned down Navi, the fairy guide, whose chatter was often criticized in the original.