[OoT] I don't "expect" an OoT remake to be Wilds-era styled, and here's several reasons why

Right up front, let me say I'm not *opposed* to it. If we get a remake; and it's big and sandboxy, and has a lot of extra elements, and feels less focused, and has like half an extra game on top of it, but still has the original game inside it, am I going to be happy and not complain? Ofc!!! And I'm not saying it's not a possibility, or even that it's not *likely*...I'm just saying, don't jump to the conclusion that it will be similar to their most recent game.

\- Nintento has always been gameplay-focused with this franchise. They're not going to make a Zelda that is basically exactly like something else they've already made, and they will only make a Zelda game if they can bring some new style of play to it or show off some new console capability. (Most often, this is for marketing new hardware.) This probably means they want to show off the Switch 2 graphics capabilities or some new control / play options (like whatever the mouse point click thing is or some online share feature). It *might not* mean they actually add content.

\- Right around when Imprisonment was announced I was saying that every Zelda release is the exact opposite of whatever you would expect it to be. (It seems almost -- if not quite, but *almost* intentional. And a little bit of an art form.) If you'd have asked me then, I'd have said this was the thing I was expecting the least. Expectations generally mean nothing to Nintendo. They're finally making a movie, and then they made it live action, and everyone lost their mind; then we saw images from it, and everyone went, "actually, wait a minute..." The company knows what it's doing, but it definitely doesn't 'listen' to the people, so to speak.

\- They have made OoT remakes before, which actually makes it more difficult to tell what shape it will take. Generally they only make remakes to update the UI and graphics to keep the games playable, esp for new players (ex. not trying to make sense of N64-style button controls and convert them over if you've never played on the OG console).

On one hand this could mean they are just doing another re-skin; on the other hand, it could mean they feel it would be pointless to just do another re-skin and want to use the Switch 2 capabilities to make another remake 'worth it'.

\- Development time. In the last 3 years, Nintendo has put out Tears, Echoes, Imprisonment, the Breath 'Switch 2 edition' and the Tears 'Switch 2 edition'. This more than likely would mean studio outsourcing on some aspect(s) of it, and the fact that the Wild-era games take so long to make, would mean in order for this to be a full-scale Wild-era type game, they would have had to be developing this concurrently with *all* of those other projects in order to place it in that style, over the course of years.

\- Animation/gameplay style. OoT contains elements that are not always easy to recreate in a more advanced and detailed environment. It seems like they haven't had success with doing underwater gameplay in the style they've been using since Skyward Sword. As you may know, a bunch of of Ocarina involves moving in and out of underwater settings. Moreover, the movement of this type of gameplay was restrictive; in this era, free-movement underwater gameplay is kind of a disaster, and yet, restriction goes against the very idea of Wild-era gameplay style.

\- Learning lessons from Sony and the Final Fantasy VII remake. When Ocarina came out, it was competing with the legendary FF7, which had just dropped the year before. They are definitely watching what Sony is doing, and they are learning. Going super-modern with the game has not necessarily worked in Sony's or the game's favor. One game as four games, basically, spaced out with real gameplay development times separating them, the challenge of adding new content to a classic masterpiece and having the new content both hold up and feel necessary, the backlash against changing elements to appeal to new players who don't have the background in Final Fantasy, the difficulty in meeting expectations for such an anticipated project...all of these things are public lessons for Nintendo.

\- Fans are fickle (& Nintendo doesn't necessarily know what they're *actually* looking for). For the last year plus people have been complaining that they're tired of Wild-era, tired of sandbox, doesn't feel like Zelda...do we even *want* an OoT remake that's Wild-styled? Would we even like it?? Nintendo doesn't know! *We* don't even know! Hell, most fans probably couldn't even agree on whether they do or not. If they add Mogmas, will people be upset? If they add Rito, will people be upset? How about *Zonai??* "They ruined Ocarina!", I can already hear, the mournful cry. "They retconned it with their Zonai BS instead of ignoring Tears, throwing out the Zonai, and only using the ancient Sheikah tech stuff from Breath!" or "They explicitly clarified that the Refounding Theory is false and 89% of us were totally wrong about the timeline and where Breath & Tears go!" or "They destroyed my 20+ year old headcanon by changing the most minor detail!"

\- It could be top-down like Echoes & ALBW, or even some new style of gameplay we haven't seen before. Like now that Unreal is in there and Octopath has finally brought the genre into the current millennium, they could finally decide to make OoT into a super inventive, in-depth JRPG. They probably won't do that either, but...I can hope...right??

So what's SAFE to assume about a (*still potential*) OoT remake? Not much...but here it is: updated graphics; smoother gameplay; better controls; most of the original game being intact, if not all of it. Right now, that's about it. Is that bad? No!! Ofc not! An OoT remake is an OoT remake! They could full-on "reimagine" it with FF7 time travel retcon BS and I would *still* play it. And actually, that would make more sense in this context, since...wait a minute...could it be a Back to the Future 2-style do-over that would actually work well with the original story because time travel shenanigans?!?

Bottom line is, have an open mind. If this thing turns out to be real, enjoy it for what it is, not what you wanted it to be. Then maybe we will get some more major console remakes like Majora's Mask(!!)