Ocarina of Time remake faces music and voice-acting challenge

Most attention around the Ocarina of Time remake has focused on art style and design: how a modern, graphically rich treatment will look and which visual tradition it will follow. The trailer offers a partial answer, favoring a glossy, richly textured, CG-animated movie look, while questions about movement, camera and interface remain unsettled.

Sound may present the biggest challenge. The 1998 game’s distinctive soundscape — Koji Kondo’s melodies and the ocarina songs that tie into gameplay, bright effects, sparse ambient loops, and heavily compressed voice snippets such as Link’s clipped yells, the Gorons’ baritone grunts and Navi’s “Hey!

Listen!” — is central to its intimate, eerie atmosphere. Kondo’s arrangements often favor homely folk and chamber textures on synthesized fiddles, harpsichords and harmonicas, and the title theme is spare and dreamlike rather than overtly grand.

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