As someone who considers The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time one of his all-time favorite games and has been playing Fable since the original launched, I'm admittedly an easy sell on both of their upcoming returns. There is an important distinction between them, though. Ocarina of Time is a remake, whereas Playground Games' Fable is a reboot. Nintendo is rebuilding one specific game that has existed since 1998, while Playground has deliberately stepped away from the original Fable trilogy's timeline and given itself room to start over.
I'm actually more interested in where those approaches eventually reach their limits, because both projects are going to have to answer a similar question before all is said and done. Nintendo can modernize Ocarina of Time quite a bit, but there is presumably a point where changing too much would leave it feeling like something other than the game people remember. Playground has the opposite problem with Fable. It can throw away far more of the old games, but at some point, it still has to convince players like me that what remains deserves to be called Fable. Both revivals are testing how far they can move from the past before nostalgia stops recognizing what it came back for.
I've already said plenty about how excited I am for the Ocarina of Time remake, and most of what Nintendo has shown so far has only made me more interested in it. The free camera alone changes quite a bit about how the game will feel, because the original was designed around fixed and semi-controlled viewpoints that players simply had to accept in 1998. Now I'll be able to freely look around Kokiri Forest or Castle Town in ways the N64 game never allowed.
Manual jumping changes another part of the game I barely even thought about until Nintendo showed it. Link has always automatically jumped when running off a ledge in Ocarina of Time, which became so normal to me over the years that I stopped noticing it. Giving me control over when he jumps immediately makes traversal feel more modern, even if the spaces I'm moving through are still familiar.
Sprinting should have a similar effect, especially for anyone coming to the remake after spending hundreds of hours in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo has also changed the way time moves through Hyrule, with the day-night cycle now continuing through areas where it once stopped. Voice acting pushes the presentation forward even further, while the orchestral score gives music I've known for decades a very different weight.
Nintendo can modernize Ocarina of Time quite a bit, but there is presumably a point where changing too much would leave it feeling like something other than the game people remember.
None of this concerns me yet. In fact, these are exactly the kinds of changes I hoped Nintendo would make, because I don't particularly need the awkward parts of playing a 1998 Nintendo 64 game preserved out of principle. If the remake can make Hyrule easier to move through without altering what I'm actually doing there, I'm more than happy to take the upgrade.
Still, there has to be a line somewhere. I've already wondered whether Nintendo should give players different dungeon options rather than completely redesigning them, because once the actual structure of Ocarina of Time starts changing too aggressively, we're getting into much murkier territory. The same could be said for combat or puzzles. Improving how Link moves through the world is one thing. Rebuilding the game around modern Zelda expectations would be something else entirely.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/zelda-ocarina-of-time-remake-fable-reboot-modernization-identity/
