Zelda: Ocarina Of Time’s NPCs Stay Busy All Night, And Sounds Like That Was A Pain

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Switch 2 is a mostly faithful remake, but it does introduce some new features and bells and whistles that modernize the experience. Some of those are very noticeable, like the addition of a jump button, while others are more subtle. One such subtle change is the new full-day passage of time inside Hyrule Castle Town, which also means NPCs need something to do all night. And according to producer Hidemaro Fujibayashi, that meant a ton of extra work, especially for him.

"I reviewed every single text of the NPCs," Fujibayashi told GameSpot. "And before, in the original game, each NPC didn't have a strict 24-hour routine, but in this game, they do. The director said, 'We want to have a 24-hour routine for every NPC.' And in my mind, I was like, 'That's going to be a lot of work.' [laughs] And I told them, 'That's going to be a lot of work,' but they said they want to do it. So in my heart, I was like, 'Okay, I guess I'm committed.'

"Because on the one hand, I know it's going to be a lot of work, but I also didn't want to discourage the young staff from coming up with new ideas and taking on new challenges," he continued. "So I had to roll up my sleeves and, on a daily basis, try to check as much of the dialogue as possible, working with the team, discussing what can be tweaked, what can be adjusted. So all of that to say that it was a lot of work."

The idea of a younger generation coming up with new ideas to modernize Ocarina of Time was a repeated theme during our wide-ranging interview with producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi, as well as how the more experienced developers would push the younger class to rethink their assumptions.

Ocarina of Time is enjoying stellar reviews across the board, including in GameSpot's 9/10 review. Currently it is also the top-rated game of 2026 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic.