IGN’s first look at the Ocarina Of Time remake on Switch 2 makes one thing clear: this is not a simple lift-and-shift of the Nintendo 64 classic. Eiji Aonuma called it a faithful interpretation, but the preview showed redesigned challenges, changed room layouts and controls that work very differently from the original.
That is why the search is spiking now. The remake is being treated as the series’ proper Nintendo Switch 2 debut, and the new footage gives players a real sense of how far the project moves beyond a visual polish. In the Kokiri Forest section, the game ran at a crisp 60 fps, and the old MIDI theme was rebuilt with what sounded like only a handful of real musicians, giving the forest a softer, fuller sound without losing its identity.
The preview also showed how the new version keeps the old world but remakes its logic. A Castle Town citizen reacted to Link’s outfit with the line, “Intricate stitching that implies the whole ensemble is handmade!” while the forest’s shopkeeper blamed Mido for blocking the path to the Great Deku Tree, where the staff goes to restock. Those details suggest the remake is not only updating how the game looks, but also how it presents itself to players moving through it.
The biggest changes, though, came in the early puzzle design. The challenge to reach the Kokiri Sword has been overhauled. On Nintendo 64, the chest sat tucked in the back corner of a maze with a giant boulder, and the obstacle quietly taught players to recenter the camera behind Link by tapping Z. In the remake, the chest is perched on a high platform in the center of the room while the boulder rolls around it, and that lesson is no longer needed because the right stick now gives complete camera control. Link can also jump at the press of a button, another sign that the remake is changing the feel of movement rather than merely updating the textures around it.
The same approach carried into the first dungeon, where the preview period included one section as Adult Link roughly at the one-third mark. That is the friction in Aonuma’s description: a game can be faithful to Ocarina of Time and still be far from a 1:1 remake. By changing room layouts, control prompts and combat navigation, Nintendo is signaling that this version is meant to stand on its own, not just preserve the old one in higher resolution.
What remains unknown is the one detail readers still want most: when the remake will actually arrive. For now, the preview answers the more immediate question. Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 is being rebuilt as a modern playthrough of a classic, and it is doing that by altering how the game works, not just how it looks.
