Nintendo explains why Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake’s auto jump was hard to drop
A simple decision to let players jump whenever they wanted has big implications for Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake
The decision to drop Link’s auto-jump from Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Nintendo Switch 2 remake was not a simple one, Nintendo has revealed.
In a new blog post explaining some of the creative decisions made in the upcoming remake, the game’s developers discuss the issues that arose when trying to modernize Ocarina of Time’s control scheme.
The most significant change, they explained, is allowing the player to jump on command, rather than auto-jump kicking in towards a ledge, something which then influenced how the rest of the game was designed.
Longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said that the original game’s auto-jump was a “convenient” design decision, as it meant that the developers had more control over where players could explore. There were restrictions in place, and the environments were designed around this.
“If you remove that restriction and make it possible to jump anywhere, you need to anticipate all kinds of player behavior and make corresponding adjustments to the environment,” Aonuma explains. “So at first, we were like, ‘Are we sure about this?’ So, even a single change can instantly increase the number of things that need to be reviewed.”
On top of this, Young Link and Adult Link have different jumping distances, so developers had to be mindful that players were always able to pull off leaps regardless of who they were playing as.
It is, therefore, no surprise then that the developers have also made changes to the dungeons, since getting rid of the auto-jump opens up many more possibilities. In particular, Aonuma admitted that there have been changes made to the infamous Water Temple, based on years of complaints that it was too difficult.
“When I designed the Water Temple all those years ago, I wanted to create an experience where simply being underwater was fun,” Aonuma said. “It was a time when there were very few 3D games that even let players go underwater.
“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. We addressed those issues in this version.”
More specifically, it’s claimed that players will have better visibility in the new Water Temple, so we won’t get as lost. It should also be easier to toggle between items that we need to traverse the dungeon.
That said, Aonuma insisted on keeping some of the original design quirks in the remake. He said that he struggled to adapt to the new Jump Attack, which is now a two-button input. Due to this, players can toggle the controls to make it a single-button input, like in the original release.
Aonuma has also stated previously that he is “surprised” that the team did not make more changes in the remake, so it sounds like we are in for a faithful recreation of the original experience.
