Nintendo’s big Switch 2 release of the year, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, has been officially revealed, but very little is known about it. Nintendo did mistakenly drop a brief description, and it has told us it is coming this year, but what is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake release date? How much is it going to cost? And what sort of remake are we going to get?
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake release date
Nintendo has yet to actually announce a release date. It has officially said it is releasing this year, but has yet to narrow it down any further than that.
It almost certainly will not release in this month. So that leaves August, September, October, November, or December.
Nintendo tends to only release one first-party title per month and we know Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is already slated for September.
August would be a surprising one, landing so close to the official reveal itself. It did just launch Star Fox quite quickly after its official reveal, but an August launch would leave Nintendo open to serious scrutiny and leave its major holiday launch schedule oddly barren unless something else, something somehow even bigger than the Zelda remake comes out of the wood work.
Many suggest it will avoid the GTA VI launch window in November, and that more or less leaves us with an October or early December launch date here. We have been eyeing those two months for a while now, especially considering it debuted Metroid Prime 4 in December and Nintendo seemingly won’t have a big Pokemon or Mario game to fill the October slot this year.
Obviously, Nintendo might not care about GTA VI at all, and it might want to give folks plenty of time to land a copy (and itself plenty of time to sell as many copies as possible) so it’s not like August and November are completely out of the question, but it does make me think October is a more likely choice.
How much will the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake cost?
A recent early pre-order listing put the game up for pre-sale at $59.99. This is by no mean confirmation of anything, and the Star Fox remake did just launch at that price, but this is Zelda and a remake of one of the biggest games in history so something’s feels a little off to me at $59.99. Something like $80 seems a stretch, and $69.99 puts it on par with the Zelda Switch 2 Edition launches while also undercutting the brand new, premium IP releases hitting the mx industry standard at $80.
How much of a remake is this going to be?
At this point, it’s still hard to say for sure. A recent description of the game Nintendo put up, and then promptly removed, seemed to have gamers thinking this was just going to be a 1:1 remake:
The N64 classic reborn as a full remake for Nintendo Switch 2.Experience Ocarina of Time with stunning visuals, updated designs, and timeless gameplay.
While I, for one, don’t really hate the idea of Nintendo re-creating the game exactly as it was, save for the all-new visuals and some light quality of life tweaks to modernize the experience, I think this will leave a lot to be desired for many gamers. Is it really just going to do what it did with the Star Fox Switch 2 release, add some new “cinematic” elements, a ground-up visual overhaul, and call it the big Switch 2 release of the year? I’m not sure, but it is entirely possible.
Ocarina of Time open-world remake?
A Digital Foundry analysis of the debate teaser trailer reveals that it is running at 1440p/60 fps with no signs of DLSS. Nintendo has, for the most part, avoided upscaling tech, and some folks seem to feel the brief “in-game” shot from the teaser might very well be just that, a very brief hit of actual in-engine footage.
The has led some to believe that, if that game actually does run at 1440p/60 fps with no DLSS, there’s very little chance of it being some kind of open-world interpretation of the original as the Switch 2 might really struggle to run a large open-world with those specs. None of this means all that much to be, but the Digital Foundry folks tend to very much know what they are talking about and a open-world take on Ocarina of Time might very well have been the best update to the experience Nintendo could have delivered here without completely ruining its N64 masterpiece.
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