《塞尔达传说：时之笛》Switch 2 重制版如何改动经典游戏剧本

At the start of the iconic 1998 Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, our playable hero Link wakes up in his tree cabin, heads outside and is greeted by his friend Saria.

“Yahoo! Hi, Stotil!" she says.

In other people’s copies of the games, she might say “Hi, Link!” or “Hi, Brick!” or use whatever other name the player was allowed to input when first launching the game.

The more important point is that she starts with a “Yahoo!”

In Nintendo’s 2011 remake of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS handheld, Saria greets Link with that same word.

But for the 2026 Switch 2 re-remake of Ocarina of Time, out November 5, Saria’s salutation has changed: “Hello, Link!” she exclaims.

There’s no “Yahoo” to be heard.

Last month, in an official Nintendo video preview, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma described the remake as a “faithful interpretation using modern technologies.”

Faithful means the gameplay hasn’t changed much. Dungeons, quests, and just generally what you do in the game doesn’t seem to have changed, not based on what Nintendo has shown nor the hour of the game I played in New York City a couple of weeks ago.

The graphics have been overhauled. The controls have been tweaked. Players can now manually control the camera and make Link jump with the press of a button, both notable differences from the original 1998 design. But Link’s journey appears to take the same path, with the same obstacles in its way.

The remake’s biggest alteration to Ocarina of Time that I’ve spotted so far just might be the script.

About the game’s story, Aonuma said in September, “We’ve added quite a lot of new dialogue for the characters, so that their personalities shine even more.”

Earlier this month, I played a chunk of the Ocarina of Time remake at a Nintendo showcase. In the game’s earliest moments, I made a point of talking to characters and recording what they said.

I found the script to be more colorful, more natural in its phrasing, more careful to establish its characters, and certainly more wordy even with the removal of that one “Yahoo!”.

I’ve got some very early-game examples, so you can judge the new writing for yourself.