Ever since the Zelda Ocarina of Time remake was shown off a few days ago, one topic has been up for debate — or rather, setting the forums on fire: Link's face, and those of every other character, for that matter. Rounder, more childlike, with chubby cheeks and big eyes, the hero seems to have swapped his usual look for something closer to a little doll than a traditional video game character. It's an artistic choice that has split opinion, with some going as far as to claim wildly excessive use of AI, calling the result too realistic and at times uncomfortably close to the uncanny valley. But there's actually a rather unexpected explanation behind it — one that makes a good deal of sense, in fact.
Takaya Imamura, a former Nintendo artist whose credits include The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Star Fox, reckons Link's new design could well be tied to Shigeru Miyamoto's love of puppets. Look a little closer and you'll notice that Link's face, along with those of the other characters, does have something quite fixed and faintly artificial about it, as though the cast had been handcrafted before being brought to life. The costumes only reinforce that impression, with their very organic textures, their fibres, their wood and their materials that look lifted straight from the set of a Japanese folk tale.
Ningyōgeki, Japanese puppet theatre
It was in response to an X (formerly Twitter) post from the official Japanese The Legend of Zelda account that Imamura explained he had immediately recognised « Miyamoto's love of puppet shows » shining through in the art direction. It's a particularly interesting observation given the background of Zelda's creator, who has always shown an interest in that world. The comparison might seem surprising at first, but it becomes fairly obvious once the two are placed side by side. The idea didn't come out of nowhere either, since Takaya Imamura knows better than most how Miyamoto folds that passion into the creation of his characters. Back when he was working on Star Fox, the game's marketing leaned heavily on actual puppets of Fox, Falco and the rest of the team. Those models have since become rather famous in Nintendo's history.
So we'd be seeing that same fascination resurface today in Ocarina of Time, albeit in an entirely different form. The remake wouldn't be trying to faithfully recreate how the characters looked back in 1998, but rather to make them look like little articulated figures moving through a world that itself resembles one enormous model set.
