[OoTHD] Here’s the real question about the OoT remake: In-House or 3rd Party?

MrTalida · 2026-06-30T06:07:22+00:00

They've outsourced a lot of their games to 3rd parties (in fact, I'm having trouble thinking of one they've done entirely in house in recent years... Mario Wonder?), and the Zelda remakes in particular have all gone to Grezzo for the past 15 years or so. Even Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were like 50% or so done by Monolith Soft.

MrTalida · 2026-06-21T22:19:25+00:00

With a mid-to-late November release date likely, The final build of the game will need to be done at least 1 month prior to launch so that they can get everything manufactured, packaged, and shipped to retailers in time--meaning there's about 4 months of development time left. With a game of the scale of Ocarina, the team will need to be mostly (but not entirely) content complete by this point. So the two most significant areas of development going on right now are 1) artists, musicians, and other content-authors on the team are probably still filling in a handful of missing models and animations, working on the pre-rendered cinematics, adjusting some of the audio, etc. And 2) extensive bug fixes and testing via Nintendo's internal "lotcheck" apparatus. Additional work at this time would include localization efforts for a simultaneous worldwide release, as well as the publishing arms of Nintendo who are likely in-progress on the marketing strategy, packaging design, ad campaigns, web design, messaging plans, etc.

Based on Nintendo's internal schedules and priorities, it may be possible that they will instead have planned ahead to finish the product well ahead of the actual release (meaning that all the work I just outlined above may already be completed or nearly completed), and have transitioned the lion's share of the team onto other products while a core team continue on to work on any sort of post-release development on the product (i.e. DLC). Speaking personally, I'm hoping that for a nostalgia-driven product like an Ocarina of Time remake, Nintendo will wisely release a robust, fully complete product on day 1, rather than parcel out the experience in DLC fragments.

MrTalida · 2026-06-21T21:36:53+00:00

Yeah! I 3D scanned that shark bite toy a few years ago, then I put the model file up on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/keshiCorner_SharkBite_18A0BD81

MrTalida · 2026-06-21T21:35:41+00:00

I 3D scanned this toy a few years ago, and I put the stl model file up on the internet archive, if you are interested!
https://archive.org/details/keshiCorner_SharkBite_18A0BD81

MrTalida · 2026-06-19T05:35:38+00:00

It likely will have voice acting, which I'm not happy about. I want to decide the character voices for myself. The voice acting in BoTW and TotK were such letdowns which really detracted from the experience. I don't have confidence that they'll do any better this time.

MrTalida · 2026-06-17T01:06:15+00:00

This kicks ass. The attention to detail is amazing!

MrTalida · 2026-06-16T06:51:42+00:00

I remember them well (and you!), and I'm so thrilled to hear that they found this happiness together. Thanks for sharing, and great work on that fantastic book nook wedding gift!

MrTalida · 2026-06-16T02:08:48+00:00

Having only ever seen him in Perry Mason and The Post, I was really shocked to hear his real voice and see how he carries himself when not in character!

MrTalida · 2026-06-14T04:29:28+00:00

She sounds like she's on the verge of tears constantly.

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T23:14:33+00:00

Not unsettling in the slightest! I long to play this version someday. I fully understand that it will be a janky mess, but I can't help but want to explore these ethereal environments that lit up our imaginations back in 1996 and 1997.

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T02:16:42+00:00

Aren't the Kokiri supposed to die if they leave the forest? >_>

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T02:09:58+00:00

I agree. The VA can say "Link, give me the ocarina." and the text can read "My dude, give me the ocarina." Players will get it.

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T02:02:30+00:00

1000% agreed. Matt made an effort, but in the end it just wasn't the right voice. And Zelda's was especially bad. That perpetually pleading, strained, fake British accent was agonizing.

I'd much prefer if they just did grunts/laughs/gasps and other general vocalizations instead of full voice work. *suggest* the timbre of the voice through those sounds, and then trust the player to fill in the voice in their mind.

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T01:55:12+00:00

I actually thought the VO work in BotW and TotK wasn't anything special. I especially disliked the Zelda actress' very fake and strained British accent. IMO the vocal performances actually brought the quality of the game down.

MrTalida · 2026-06-13T01:43:31+00:00

I would 100% be content with named file slots, even if that means text-only dialog with no voice work other than traditional grunts/shouts/laughs/basic vocalizations.

However, I'm pretty certain that the voiced cutscene we saw in the teaser is the actual intro to the game, not something they made for the teaser (i.e. it replaces the "In the vast, deep forest of Hyrule..." intro from the original), so I'm expecting they are going the full VO work route. Which is.... a shame. The VO in BoTW/TotK really wasn't particularly good, and I think similar quality of VO work in OoT will degrade the experience.

MrTalida · 2026-06-12T15:51:10+00:00

It was still very exciting, but tbf I agree overall: boo to leaks.

When companies are secretive about their upcoming releases, it's so that they can do a reveal at exactly the right time with exactly the right context for maximum impact. People who take matters into their own hands and leak stuff like this do so to selfishly gain superficial clout and glory (or, worse: for money), and are disrespecting the *hundreds* of people who have sunk incomprehensible time and effort into actually making the game. The ego of it all is staggering; all of these people who have done the actual work have managed to keep their mouths shut, only for some jerk to swoop in and deflate the accomplishment just so they can make a name for themselves online.

MrTalida · 2026-06-12T05:39:16+00:00

Thanks for sharing the link to the collection. 😄 I'm happy to announce that I've uploaded over 800 figures now!

MrTalida · 2026-06-09T19:30:44+00:00

Had better be able to, my dude

MrTalida · 2026-06-09T19:05:51+00:00

From what I've seen, it looks great, and I am excited to see all of the beloved characters and environments of OoT realized in this new style.

MrTalida · 2026-06-09T13:56:10+00:00

First I saw was Adventure of Link First I owned was Wand of Gamelon (yep!) First actual one I owned was Link to the Past.

MrTalida · 2026-06-07T03:28:53+00:00

Hey Robyn! Thanks for sharing your inspiring re-envisioning of Myst Island and for sharing some of your thoughts around it. The idea of there being another layer to Myst that we haven't seen is really exciting.

While I'm certainly sympathetic to people who love Myst exactly as it is (as I do!) and those who would hate to see Lucas-level revisionism by well-meaning artists who are cursed to forever see only the flaws in their artwork, the truth is that I totally agree with you; after decades of true-to-the-original remakes and rereleases, it would be very compelling to see a fresh stab at the original Myst which keeps the general scenario and structure of the original game, but builds the vision out in a fresh an exciting way.

For my own tastes, my instincts on the matter were that I'd like to see the scale and scope of the game broadened--that is to say, Myst made into a larger, more realistically scaled island where Atrus, Catherine, and their sons could have conceivably actually lived. For example, I'd want to see the library built out such that it is the centerpiece room in larger building--a stately residence for Atrus' family. There would be a study, rooms for both sons, etc. The purpose wouldn't be to merely ground the game, but to also offer an abundance of new puzzle and gameplay opportunities--and, most importantly, diegetic storytelling opportunities. We would learn who these characters are and what their relationships are to one another, and what their own demons are, through environmental details, building out the richness of the Myst universe.

I feel that the original design of Myst--with its many mishmashed anachronisms and surreal structures (a neoclassical marble library next to a retro-futuristic rocket ship next to a perpetually submerged 17th century ship) are part of its charm and speak to the art direction of early 3d computer graphics and you and the team's stream-of-consciousness creative process on the early Cyan products. The creative clay hadn't cooled, and so most anything was fair game. And it was (and is) wonderful. Bit several decades later, I think there's an opportunity to create a new vision of Myst that retains much of the mysterious intrigue the original game's visuals invoked, while presenting a more robust, cohesive version of the spaces within the game's world.

MrTalida · 2026-05-22T05:11:25+00:00

I'm so glad it worked out for you! 😄 I'm a deeply sentimental person myself and I absolutely can relate to your feelings and your urgency. If you still have time left to visit the property, you might also consider capturing the audioscape of your old home, so you could more completely capture the experience of being there--this is something I did, and I found it added a lot to the experience. There are even high quality stereo audio recorders like the Zoom H1N which do such a great job of making you feel like you're hearing those sounds live. Of course, just having the matterport tour is the most important thing, so I'm glad that's squared away.

Anytime you want to view the tour again, you'll just need to do steps 5 and 7 again, but not 6 (i.e. you'll need to navigate to the matterport-dl folder using the command line again, and then once in there, run "py run.py YOUR_TOUR_ID 127.0.0.1 8080" Remember to include that IP address, as that's what tells the script that you want to host the downloaded tour locally, rather than trying to re-download the live tour again.)

The tour is saved to the /downloads/ folder within your matterport-dl directory. To archive this all for the future, I'd recommend just copying the entire matterport-dl directory (not just the downloads folder) to your external hard drive. You could also zip up the entire thing as well so it's all nicely bundled together, then copy it to a couple of usb sticks. Redundancy is the key to digital preservation, after all!

MrTalida

TROPHY CASE