Nintendo has finally shown us a proper look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on Switch 2, and Zelda fans have immediately found something to argue about. The announcement also came with a first look at the new Nintendo Switch 2 Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition, which was less contentious – everyone loves it.
Personally, I think the new The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake looks gorgeous, but it also looks very different from the N64 original, with rebuilt environments, much more detailed materials, modern lighting, a free camera and redesigned character models. Naturally, that’s how things should be for a Switch 2 remake of a classic retro game. During this week’s Nintendo Direct reveal, Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma called it a “faithful interpretation using modern technologies”.
The big reaction from fans who’ve been longing for the return of Ocarina of Time? It looks like an Unreal Engine fan project. That's not necessarily an insult, either, although quite a few people are definitely using it as one.
On Reddit, one fan wrote: “Honestly, I’m not a big fan of how it looks. It looks like a fan project made in Unreal Engine 5 to me,” reads one reaction to the new trailer.
Another fan immediately pushed back, arguing: “We've seen OoT fan remakes in UE5. None of them looked close to this good.”
Ocarina of Time a UE5 fan remake?
I think that’s a better way to look at the comparison. Nobody seriously thinks Nintendo just took somebody's Unreal project and shipped it; the comparison is really about modern game engines: realistic materials, volumetric lighting, soft shadows, detailed vegetation, and all the other bits of rendering wizardry we've got used to seeing in high-end Unreal demos.
Ocarina of Time is absolutely loaded with that stuff now, and while that gives it a new lease of life, it can massage out some of the original’s quirks and personality, or at least, that’s how some fans feel. The problem, for some fans, is what happens when that modern rendering wraps around those very familiar Nintendo character designs.
Young Link in particular has become the focal point of the complaints, with one Reddit reaction saying: “Link looks like one of those creepy dolls. The environment looks great, but the faces are just not working for me.”
You can see why the face is causing so much discussion. Nintendo hasn't turned Link into some completely new interpretation of the character; it appears to have retained the proportions and familiar shapes of the N64 version while giving him dramatically more realistic skin, hair, eyes and lighting. It’s a modern update that can work beautifully in one shot and then look strangely uncanny in the next.
There's a similar complaint about the game's characters more generally, with one fan saying the overall style is working for them but that the faces feel “almost mask-like”.
The other reaction to Ocarina of Time's remake
But here's the other half of the story, and it's a pretty important one because there are plenty of Zelda fans who absolutely love what Nintendo is doing, and after seeing more and more of the remake, I’m sitting comfortably in the ‘I love it’ camp.
One of the most popular reactions to the remake says on the forum: “It is exactly what I predicted, exactly what I wanted, and is the best-case scenario for this remake. Absolutely glorious. Immediate preorder.”
That's a completely different reading of the same footage revealed at the Direct. For these fans, Nintendo hasn't lost the plot at all, and instead there’s a feeling the developer has finally been able to realise the kind of realistic fantasy world Ocarina of Time was attempting to create back in 1998, only this time without the N64 having to render it all through a few blurry textures and a heroic amount of fog.
That's why the environments are getting so much praise, and for me this has been the real star of the remake – beautiful, detailed, pastel-hued grassy fantasy. One current discussion on Reddit describes the remake as “technically incredible”, specifically praising its vegetation, materials and shader work, while still questioning some of the lighting and character rendering.
There’s a good argument here too, as Ocarina of Time wasn't Wind Waker, and it wasn't trying to be a cel-shaded, stylised cartoon, and it wasn't built around deliberately exaggerated character proportions in the same way some later Zelda games were. Nintendo was trying to make Hyrule feel like a convincing 3D fantasy world; it just happened to do that on hardware that couldn’t totally match the ambition. The remake is attempting to make the original vision a reality.
There's also a funny generational thing happening here. Fans who grew up with Ocarina of Time often remember wanting Zelda to look more realistic, more cinematic and more technically impressive, while younger players have grown up with Nintendo's much more stylised approach and aren't necessarily convinced that realism automatically makes Zelda look better.
Which means Nintendo has somehow managed to create a remake that gives one group of fans exactly what they always wanted while giving another group something that feels slightly off. But that's a good place for an Ocarina of Time remake to be, because the environments look spectacular, the original visual ambition is much easier to see, and Nintendo has clearly put an enormous amount of work into rebuilding Hyrule rather than simply giving the N64 game a lick of high-resolution paint.
Nintendo is getting the balance right
I'm less convinced by some of the faces, particularly Young Link, but that's also the bit I'd expect Nintendo to spend the next few months polishing, tweaking and generally trying to make everybody stop staring at his slightly unsettling eyes.
So no, Zelda fans aren't all saying the remake looks bad. They're all saying it looks different, and that difference has split the audience pretty neatly between people seeing the Ocarina of Time they've always imagined and those seeing a very expensive Unreal Engine demo (they’re wrong).
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026.
