The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is rightly praised as one of the best games ever made, but that exalted status has always come with a caveat: the Water Temple stinks. It seems that the people working on Ocarina of Time’s imminent remake are very much aware of this. In an interview as part of Nintendo’s “Ask the Developer” series, longtime Zelda producer and developer Eiji Aonuma was asked whether the remake’s dungeons would change — for context, Aonuma designed these areas in the original game.
You have to constantly pause and open menus to put on and take off a pair of Iron Boots that let you sink in water, making it even easier to get disoriented. Aonuma explained why he wanted to build this area in the first place. "It was a time when there were very few 3D games that even let players go underwater.
I enjoy freediving, and what I find fascinating about being underwater is how different everything feels. The sounds change, and it feels like you’re in a completely different space. I wanted to create a place where players could experience those sensations.” “However, with the dungeon’s complex structure and a lot of item toggling involved, you often had to open the menu screen repeatedly, making it hard to keep track of where you were and which way you were facing,” he said, acknowledging the area’s flaws.
Instead of navigating menus, the remake lets players quickly swap items with the d-pad. Aonuma responded, “Then kids playing this version might say, ‘Come on, it’s not that hard.’ Poor old Dad might end up feeling deflated.” Early hands-on previews of the remake have been quite positive, and we won’t have to wait long to see how the final version lands, Water Temple 2.0 included. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is out on Nov. 5, exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2.
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