My Ocarina of Time Wishlist

It’s time! It’s The Legend of Zelda’s 40th anniversary and we’re finally coming back to the one that started it (read: 3D Zelda games) all! Yes, Ocarina of Time is being remade once again - but this time even more remade! This has led to some uneasiness among some Zelda fans, with some worrying they might change the game too much…

Not me! Here’s all the shit I want them to do!

Full* Voice Acting

*at least as much as there is in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom!

We did it, y’all! We got voice acted Zelda games and they were fucking awesome! Rolling Stone named Breath of the Wild the greatest video game of all-time, so I’d call it a huge success!

Now, let’s bring that over to Ocarina of Time! :D

I dunno how controversial this ask is, I just know I’m so down for it. Even if we don’t get to hear Patricia Summersett and her voice from Heaven again, it’d be weirder for Ocarina of Time not to be voice acted in this day and age!

Isn’t that wild??? This game, that has never been voice acted outside of mouth sounds like “hyah!” and some laughter, is probably going to be voice acted for real! We’re going to hear at least some of this dialogue read by humans!!!

Some might see that as a new vector of failure, but me? I love voice acting. It is an art in itself, and it adds a new layer of authorship to each line spoken. Nintendo may be the author of the work for copyright purposes, but the actors who read the lines get their own bit of ownership too!

We’re gonna get to hear Zelda, Navi, Malon, Ruto, Nabooru, Link—well, I mean, we’ve heard Link already, just not any actual lines from him… unless…

Sheik Side-Story

They should have a side-story where you play as Sheik, going over her training under Impa in the time between when Link spends all those years pulling a sword out. Sheik is my favorite character and favorite part of Ocarina of Time. Why a masked woman who others perceive as a man would be so evocative to me, personally, I’ll leave up to the viewer’s interpretation.

Honestly, when I played through Ocarina of Time to completion for the first time, I was stunned by how excellent Zelda/Sheik’s role was in the story! She manages in 1998 to be a female character with agency, an active role in the story, while also being one of the coolest and most beautiful characters ever.

Her relationship with Link is made so much more meaningful by her time training him as Sheik, even as her face is hidden behind a mask. The times she plays music with him, teaching him the songs he needs in order to complete his quest, were my all-time favorite moments of the whole game.

All that just makes what we don’t get to see of Sheik in Ocarina of Time feel like a gold mine for anyone working on the remake who’s wondering what else they could do. You could even have it end on when Link turns to look at Sheik, in that way that paralleled with how Zelda turned to look at Link when they first met!

All that isn’t even getting into how fun the gameplay could be! Nintendo already had a bunch of great ideas for how a Zelda-led Zelda game would be in Echoes of Wisdom, I’m dying to see how they’d approach that in 3D - even as Sheik is a very unique time for Zelda.

Expanded Music-Playing

I lovvve the music component of Ocarina of Time. When it got referenced in Skyward Sword it went a long way to winning me over on that game! Any time Zelda gets mixed with music-playing, I’m there!

Whether it’s, like, longer songs or even getting to play more notes from the songs, I’d love if they did more with the music since it’s such a big part of the game! Especially the scenes where Link and Sheik are playing togeth—oh yeah, I already went over that. Huh. Anyway!

Part of the genius of Ocarina of Time’s handling of the ocarina is admittedly how simple it is, both mechanically and in the composition of the very songs you play. They each have a nice string of notes you can repeat (and remember) without too much trouble! But if anyone can figure out how to give the player more to do in this part of the game without making it overly cumbersome, I’d bet on the team making this remake!

Make me feel like a musician! But, like, in the same way that dance games make me feel like a dancer - through low expectations expertly-disguised to make the player feel skilled!

So About the Gerudo…

That’s an aspect of the game that’s probably gonna need to be different!

Nintendo put a lot of work into how they depicted the Gerudo in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom - work that kinda feels like it gets overlooked when people continue to have the same discussions we’ve been having since Ocarina of Time about how the Gerudo are depicted.

There are criticisms that don’t really feel as relevant anymore or like they’re actually engaging with the latest depictions of them, and (more gratingly…) there are people who still slander Gerudo as “thieves” despite the fact that they aren’t doing that shit in the newest games! They’re basically Amazons now.

Sooo what to do about them in the game that introduced them? I dunno, this is kinda outside my area of expertise, but I am interested in seeing them update this part of the game because it was by far the most jarring part of my playthrough.

Right down to Zelda’s suspicion of Ganondorf, even though it is literally textually justified, I got the worst vibes off her having some “bad feeling” about the guy immediately. I know for a fact he’s the villain but it still had me like, is he that bad or is your implicit bias talking???

Nabooru is a part of the game I am eagerly looking forward to seeing as a result, since she is one of the Sages! She’s good! When [REDACTED SPOILERS], you feel bad because you like her!

We’ll see what they come up with! I like how they’ve been addressing it in the latest games and I get the sense a lot of other people have responded well to it, so I’m looking forward to seeing them finally set right what should never have been done so wrong in the original game. Probably the area with the most room for improvement in Ocarina of Time.

Link Should Talk

When Link makes sounds with his Link mouth, words should come out! He’s made sounds like “hyah!” and “AAAAAAHH!!!”, but neither of those are words! He’s had implied dialogue (characters react to something he implicitly said), referenced dialogue (Zelda writes about Link telling her why he doesn’t speak much), and user-chosen dialogue (some of which is quite memorable in Tears of the Kingdom!) but nothing that would necessitate casting a voice actor for him in every language.

I propose we buck that trend and finally let Link have dialogue he speaks aloud ahead of the movie where there is no way they’re not doing that anyway! People overthink this way too much, you’re gonna have to rip the band-aid off eventually, why not do it in the remake of Ocarina of Time? Because you’re afraid someone’ll get disappointed? Good point, let’s never make anything ever again so no one ever gets disappointed.

Kidding!

More seriously, I think the urge to let Link stay silent forever comes from an understandable place that I ultimately can’t help but disagree with. It views past art as something that’s in stasis, which I get… but is the exact opposite approach you should take when you’re making a remake.

Everyone who has ever made something creative in their lives has to know that art is a living thing. The form it takes can vary wildly in its development, you can start with one idea and come out the other side with something that looks totally different! Once it’s been made it’s pretty well set, sure, but when you’re making it again? It lives again.

Ocarina of Time is more “alive” than it’s been in over 25 years, right now, in that sense. To limit ourselves to what’s already been done in perpetuity does a disservice to what the art we make could be.

Plus, I dunno, we already call him “Link” in cutscenes in the newer games. The Link that could be renamed to whatever the player wanted hasn’t been around for a while now, and the silent protagonist piece is a relic of that. They could continue that tradition, but I think it’d be worth the risk to say “fuck it” and see what it’d be like - even if it’s just for one line.

So that’s basically what I’m mainly hoping for with this new remake. I’m open to being surprised with what they do, even if it’s not what I would’ve done! God knows we need creatives to feel empowered to take those chances even at the risk of alienating some parts of their audience, nowadays, at a time when corporations wanna sell us all personally-generated garbage.

More than anything, I’m just looking forward to seeing what people make of this remake. I’m a fan of Zelda, sure, but I’m also a fan of what Zelda fans make every single day! I have a whole custom feed on Bluesky dedicated to it! The best part? Those Zelda fans didn’t even stop to wait and see what the game’s gonna look like, they just got the teaser and ran with it.

My timeline is flooding with fanart of Saria, Malon, and so many Links. It’s probably gonna be this way for at least the rest of the year, with this remake on the way! No matter how it turns out, I already couldn’t be happier. :)