Ocarina of Time's remake dominates the day's games debate

Polygon's Oli Welsh argues that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and World of Warcraft: Forever, released on consecutive days, show remakes can have motives beyond market pressure. Ocarina keeps the original's content and design but overhauls its art. Forever keeps the original look under a new rendering layer, adds content, and promises a fixed progression cap and horizontal expansion.

In his telling, producer Eiji Aonuma wanted a team raised on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom to learn classic Zelda design by rebuilding it. The WoW Classic team, which pitched Forever after experimenting during Season of Discovery, wanted to see what the 2004 developers might have built with two more years. Welsh concludes that remakes are not just cash-grabs or schedule fillers.

CounterpointCritics of remake-heavy release slates would say developer interviews are a promotional frame, and that the financial logic Welsh sets aside still explains why these projects were greenlit over new ideas.

Previously: Welsh said he was holding off playing the remake until Christmas to share it with his son. — Sunday November 8 edition.

Welsh predicts the Ocarina of Time remake will collect several Game Awards nominations, including Game of the Year, and probably Best Action/Adventure and Best Score and Music. He points to its Metacritic score of 96, the year's highest so far, the jury's attachment to the 1998 original, and its status as an event release. The Game Awards have nominated only four remakes for GOTY since 2014, all of them extensive retellings: Resident Evil 2 and 4 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth.

He rules out a win, even in a year without GTA 6, because Ocarina is an old game rather than an original work. A win, he says, would send a sad message about the medium's best work.

CounterpointThose who think awards should judge quality alone would argue that excluding a 96-rated game because of its pedigree penalises it for being a remake rather than for how well it is executed.

Previously: Polygon argued that Phantom Blade Zero's reviews and buzz push Crimson Desert out of GOTY contention. — Monday November 2 edition.

Polygon's Jason Venter contrasts the Ocarina of Time remake, which he says feels like an event partly because the game has appeared on few platforms since 1998, with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which has reached 13 platforms as of November 2026, including Stadia and Amazon Alexa. He says Bethesda gives players no time to miss Skyrim, and that its new versions tend to add only minor improvements for people who already own the game.

Venter does not object to multiple releases in principle, since they widen access, but finds them tiresome when priced as premium titles without meaningful additions. Ocarina has avoided that fate so far; Skyrim, he says, has not.

CounterpointDefenders of Bethesda's approach would say wide availability keeps a 2011 game playable for new audiences on whatever hardware they own, a point Venter partly concedes.

Previously: Welsh was holding off playing the remake until Christmas to share it with his son. — Sunday November 8 edition.

In the third entry of his series revisiting the big GTA games, Game File's Stephen Totilo returns to Grand Theft Auto IV after last playing it in 2010, restarting from scratch on an Xbox Series X. He recalls the lead-up: a March 2007 trailer that made rival open-world games look a generation old, Rockstar's 2006 ping-pong game that tested the tech, and an April 2008 launch averaging a score of 98.

His reaction after nine hours is that the game is deeply strange, more serious and harder to enjoy than its predecessors. He argues that this is exactly what makes it worth playing.

CounterpointPlayers who prefer the looser, more playful sandbox of the earlier games would say IV's heavier tone and friction are a step back rather than a virtue.

Polygon's Jason Venter argues Sega should follow Nintendo's lead and remake the original Super Monkey Ball, which turns 25 this month as a November 2001 GameCube launch game. He says a remake could add visual polish, lean on its mascot characters and give the party games proper online play.

Sega's physical-only Super Monkey Ball Triple Pack for Switch arrives Nov. 10, bundling recent entries including Banana Rumble and Banana Mania. Venter notes none of the modern installments have matched the original's impact and says the open question is whether Sega wants to try.

CounterpointBanana Mania already remastered the original stages, and the series' recent entries haven't made much of a splash, so skeptics would see little evidence of demand for another version of the same game.

Venter argues that Starfield, launched Sep. 6, 2023, disappointed many players because its main plot lacks hooks and urgency, but that the game works if you make your own fun. He spent dozens of hours on faction quests for Ryujin Industries and the Crimson Fleet, buying houses, building settlements and growing a fleet of battleships.

He says patches have since fixed navigation pain points, as No Man's Sky's updates did. He concedes exploration is less thrilling than promised, and concludes the game is worthy of the Bethesda name for those willing to look past its plot.

CounterpointPlayers and critics who see story and exploration as the core of Bethesda's RPGs would say a game that needs its main plot ignored has failed at what it promised, however good the side activities.