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It's no secret that Eiji Aonuma can see the issues with Ocarina of Time's Water Temple. The series producer spoke about it when the game launched on 3DS, and it continues to haunt him today, as he's brought it up once again in the latest Ask the Developer interview.
"I had some overdue homework: I wanted to do something about the Water Temple I created 28 years ago," Aonuma-san says of the Switch 2 remake. He touches on all the dungeon's much-discussed sticking points (the item menu annoyances, confusing layout, etc.), and confirms that he "had the team make some adjustments in this version".
Director HokWai Ng expands on these changes, stating that the Switch 2 remake has "made item toggling much easier" — it's now mapped to the D-pad, borrowing from the simplicity of the 3DS version — and there have been certain structural tweaks, too: "We also changed some of the walls that made it easy to lose your sense of direction to lattice-style structures, making it possible to see the rooms beyond them and get a better sense of the overall space."
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What's interesting is seeing Aonuma-san speak about his intentions behind the dungeon's original design. It always gets so bogged down in negativity that it's nice to get a reminder about where it all came from:
When I designed the Water Temple all those years ago, I wanted to create an experience where simply being underwater was fun. It was a time when there were very few 3D games that even let players go underwater. I enjoy freediving, and what I find fascinating about being underwater is how different everything feels. The sounds change, and it feels like you’re in a completely different space. I wanted to create a place where players could experience those sensations.
Of course, the 3DS version came with its own Water Temple tweaks, including mapping the Iron Boots toggle to the touchscreen and adding directional lines leading to the water level switches on all the walls.
And yet, there are still those of us on Team NL that love the Water Temple in its original form — warts and all. It'll be interesting to see how the Switch 2 version matches up later this week.