Nintendo’s upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake lead Eiji Aonuma has expressed his excitement for the future of the series.
As the dev team finishes up its recreation of the iconic Nintendo 64 adventure, Aonuma explained that many developers on the team never played the original before working on the Switch 2 recreation. For hardcore fans of the series, that might be surprising, but Aonuma believes that many of the remake’s strongest ideas came from devs that didn’t even touch the N64 game.
“It’s thanks to these young people, by thinking about how to adapt the game in the best possible way, how to make it fun once you have the controls in your hands, that this remake came into being,” Aonuma told AFP.
Aonuma, who has been at Nintendo since the 1980s, explained that the original game came at “the first time Nintendo was creating games in 3D”. Since then, the series has been reinvented a number of times with 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild bringing a brand-new formula to the franchise.
In the interview, the iconic game designer explained that “the road travelled has not always been easy”. While the series has always been well received, it has also seen its up and downs in the eyes of fans.
Following The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake, Aonuma is excited for the future of the franchise with these newer, younger devs at the helm. “I’m very interested to see what the younger staff will imagine,” he explained.
While the developer will still be involved in Zelda and its future for a while, he’s also “extemely happy” to continue working with the newer generation. He added that it will be exciting to “think together” about the next mainline Zelda game and how the formula can continue evolving into the future.
While not confirmed, it does seem that the next Zelda game to come after Ocarina of Time Remake might take quite a while. After the success of Tears of the Kingdom, we also have no idea what form the next game in the series will take. Will it be another open-world title? Or will it be another OOT-style game?
Whatever the case, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is almost here, and that title deserves its time in the sun before we start thinking about what’s next? Majora’s Mask Remake? Damn, sorry. I can’t help it!
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026.
