Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a milestone for Nintendo's adventure series as it was the first Zelda with 3D graphics. It looked staggering in 1998, but graphics have advanced and a lot of us would love to see a faithful recreation with today's tech.
Well, one dedicated fan dev is working on just that, making a Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake in Unreal Engine 5, and it's a thing of true beauty. The Unreal Engine Zelda remake respects details from the original game while taking advantage of Unreal Engine's powerful lighting tools (also see our guide to the best game development software).
We were recently poring over one game dev's Super Mario World remake in Unreal Engine 5, so I thought it was time we caught up on CryZENx's Unreal Engine remake of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The dev has been working on it for several years now with various collaborators, and a recent video on YouTube offers 30 minutes of new gameplay.
The new footage features an updated version of the Kakariko Village, more map detail, and players can now enter some houses (the beams of sunlight inside look gorgeous). Even Kafei makes a cameo! As for gameplay, players can fight several enemies, use their ocarina, collect items, break objects and speak with NPCs. There are also in-engine cut-scenes.
The size of interiors and exteriors seems to have been scaled up and the camera brought down so the environment is above eye level. That has the effect of making Link feel smaller. Nostalgic fans will love some of the smaller details like how the people in the village run with their legs moving faster than they move.
Unreal Engine 5 is opening up lots possibilities for indie devs to create with free software, and this is another fantastic example that bring back fond memories for many games. Comments on the latest video agree. Interestingly, some people say the stunning detail in the graphics looks how they remember (or how they imagined) the original game back in 1998.
"This looks incredible! Amazing job! The funny thing is that for 8-year-old-me it looked just like that back in 1998," one person wrote. "You are really putting your heart and soul into this project. I have been following this for years. It's looking fantastic, as always! I can't wait to see Zora's Domain (probably) next!," another fan commented. "If I were Nintendo I’d hire you to do a complete remake of OoT," someone else added.
"Truly amazing, can never get enough of seeing this game in such beautiful detail. The nintendo N64 with the OoT cartridge was the cherry on the cake," one person commented on the latest footage on YouTube.
You can learn more at the Patreon account. In the meantime, see what updates we expect to see in Unreal Engine 5.6. We also have a roundup of the best laptops for game development (see deals below).
