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Nintendo has discussed the changes it has made to the notoriously difficult Water Temple for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake.
In an interview with Zelda boss Eiji Aonuma, Production Group No.3’s HokWai Ng, and other members of the development team published on the Nintendo website, changes made to dungeons were outlined. Crucially, Aonuma — who worked on the original Ocarina of Time back in the ‘90s — was able to finally get to what he called “overdue homework” on the Water Temple.
The original Water Temple in the 1998 N64 masterpiece is infamous for its complex puzzle solving, but also its lack of handholding. This made it a bewildering challenge for many players of the original game. As someone who played Ocarina of Time back in the day — and without the help of a guide —- I found the Water Temple pretty frustrating. It took me longer to work out than pretty much any part of the game, as I struggled to make sense of the water levels and locked doors. And don’t get me started on that item toggling.
Ng said that Nintendo’s approach with the remake was to retain the dungeon mechanisms from the original game, but improve “playability.”
“For example, we placed objects in such a way that players intuitively figure out which direction to go,” he said. “So if you look closely, you may notice areas where the layout differs slightly from the original game.”
For Aonuma, the Water Temple was personal. “I wanted to do something about the Water Temple I created 28 years ago,” he said, laughing. “Since it became well known for its difficulty in the original game, I had the team make some adjustments in this version. 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.
“However, with the dungeon’s complex structure and a lot of item toggling involved, you often had to open the menu screen repeatedly, making it hard to keep track of where you were and which way you were facing. We addressed those issues in this version.”
To that end, the remake makes item toggling “much easier,” and Nintendo has “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.”
Essentially, rather than simply changing the structure to make things easier, Nintendo came up with various ideas to rework it so that players wouldn’t get lost.
As IGN’s Logan Plant spotted while viewing Ocarina of Time remake gameplay, the 3DS version’s wall lights, which helped guide players to water-shifting spots, return for the Switch 2 remake. And, as teased by Nintendo today, Link can instantly take off his iron boots without having to pause and go to the equipment menu.
There’s a fun exchange at the end of the interview that taps into the immense nostalgia fans have for Ocarina of Time, and what I imagine will be a typical household experience when the remake comes out.
“More than anything, I personally would be happy if it became a conversation starter that encourages players of different generations to share memories with each other,” Ng said. “You know, your Dad got stuck in the Water Temple plenty of times back in the day.” (Laughs)
Aonuma: “Then kids playing this version might say, ‘Come on, it’s not that hard.’ Poor old Dad might end up feeling deflated.”
I feel seen.
While you wait for the game to come out, check out a special episode of Nintendo Voice Chat where we dive deeper into our Zelda preview. Meanwhile, we finally have confirmation of who actually developed the Ocarina of Time remake, and a roundup of the Ocarina of Time remake global release times.
Bloober Team certainly appears to be the busiest horror studio in the business right now. Off the back of its 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake selling over 5 million copies, the Polish developer currently has a staggering seven horror games in various stages of production. During Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok last week, IGN sat down with Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno to get an insight into the secrets to his studio’s success, its ambitious plans for the future, and why horror has become such a bankable genre in recent years.
“I would say that horror is always at its strongest when something bad is happening to the world,” said Babieno. “When we have climate changes, when we have wars, [or] when we have some economical issues in the world. This is the moment when society [has] some kind of fear inside.”
“That’s why horror movies, horror novels, and horror games are working so well," he continued. "It’s working for horror, but I’m not happy about it because it always means that the world is not in good shape.”
Babieno is obviously not wrong. Humanity is currently faced with a global cost of living crisis, increasingly volatile weather events, ongoing wars between Russia and Ukraine and the U.S. and Iran, and the existential threat posed by the rapidly accelerating adoption of AI across virtually every major industry.
At the same time, the horror genre has rarely been hotter across most entertainment mediums. Indie horror films Backrooms and Obsession became major success stories at the box office earlier this year, with the latter going on to make over half a billion dollars. The Resident Evil series continues to be one of the most dominant brands in the genre, with its latest video game instalment Resident Evil Requiem selling 8.5 million copies since its launch in February, and its latest big screen adaptation from Weapons director Zach Cregger quickly becoming the highest-grossing Resident Evil movie ever.
The surging popularity of spooks and scares has also spread to many popular streaming services. Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie performing strong enough on Prime Video in order to be renewed for a second season. Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake has apparently become one of Peacock’s biggest scripted original series. Meanwhile Apple’s Widows Bay is one of the most celebrated TV shows of the year – horror or otherwise – snaring a whopping 14 Emmy Awards in September.
Even comic book movies are turning to the genre, with the DCU’s thoroughly disturbing Clayface enjoying a strong opening weekend in October. Public domain characters have also proved to be ripe for the picking, with two Winnie the Pooh slasher movies already released and a third one on the way in January.
However, Bloober Team is no bandwagon-jumper. Although the foundational years of the studio were spent producing a mix of casual games and contract work, the developer has been singularly focussed on becoming a specialist house of horror since it launched Layers of Fear in 2016. In the decade since, Bloober has steadily risen to become one of the most trusted conjurers of fear and dread in videogames, proving to be equally adept at reimagining licensed properties as it is at establishing new IPs of its own.
“There are a lot of great horror game developers in the world; we are one of them,” said Babieno. “We’re trying to focus [purely] on creating horror so that’s why the iteration process allows us to work not just on the formula [for creating fear], but on the technological aspect of creating games.”
“Also understanding our fans. Understanding what we did wrong and how we could improve. Project by project we are always thinking, ‘is this the next step for the studio? Is this the next step for our fans?’ Because if it’s not, you don’t want to waste four years of your life creating a new title.”
While Babieno’s team has become attuned to listening to its dedicated fanbase, it’s also learned to ignore its detractors online. Not unlike the undeserved backlash that Zach Cregger was forced to endure prior to the release of his Resident Evil movie, Bloober Team faced plenty of scrutiny from Silent Hill diehards when it was hard at work remaking Silent Hill 2. However, Babieno makes it clear that his team had complete confidence in their ability to reimagine the Konami classic to a standard that would be embraced by even its harshest of critics.
“At the beginning we suffered a lot of hate from fans,” said Babieno. “But we did the one thing which any studio who is trying to create something great is able to do: focus on the project, focus on delivering the best quality game, and put the noise around it out of our head.”
“So this is what we tried to do; we believed from the very beginning that we’d be able to achieve this and it happened. Silent Hill 2 was a pivot point for Bloober Team.”
Silent Hill 2’s subsequent critical and commercial success is likely a big part of the reason that Bloober Team now finds itself in such hot demand and experiencing a period of expansion at a time when so many other studios in the industry are suffering cuts and closures. Bloober Team is currently composed of two first-party studios, and has recently added the second-party Broken Mirror Games, a label that it uses to co-develop games with five other Polish development teams. A remake of the original Silent Hill, Layers of Fear 3, Nintendo Switch 2-exclusive Onyx: The Dark Grip, and Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a psychological horror game set in Gene Roddenberry’s beloved sci-fi universe, are four of the seven games currently in development that have been confirmed so far.
Babieno was unable to comment on the recent Silent Hill leak that suggested it would be released in 2027 and star Gabrielle Fritz and Jade Matthew – when prompted, he dismissed the details as "rumors." He also couldn’t reveal much about Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, other than agreeing with publishing partner Paramount Games Studio’s goals for it to be “the best Star Trek game of all time,” by stating simply that he wouldn’t be working on it if he “didn’t have such a fight.”
However, Babieno was keen to share his enthusiasm for Project H, the working title for the next game from the team behind 2025’s Cronos: The New Dawn. Although according to Babieno the project is only in the late stages of pre-production, he seems confident that it will represent yet another stride forward for the studio.
“This project is like a huge step from Cronos and from our previous titles so it will deliver a new kind of experience,” said Babieno. “But at the same time it will be very familiar to everyone who [has] already played Bloober Team games. So we will still keep our DNA in it, but we will show this in a completely fresh new way.”
Ultimately for Babieno, the ambition for Bloober Team and where it sits in the booming horror genre seems clear.
“I love Silent Hill and Resident Evil, and I feel that there is a place for a third huge horror IP as well,” said Babieno. “I think we’re on the right track with everything we’re creating. You can feel that Bloober Team’s games are a little bit different [to] those that are already available on the market.”
“The most important [goal] for me is to set new milestones in the game industry.”
Bloober Team’s next release is DLC for Cronos: The New Dawn. Dubbed Cronos: Lazarus, this story expansion serves as a prequel to the events of the main game and will apparently present players with a “faster, more aggressive style of combat.” Cronos: Lazarus is set to release on December 3 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with the Nintendo Switch 2 version launching sometime in early 2027.
After the runaway success of Wardogs, a new sandbox multiplayer shooter in Early Access on PC, the team at Bulkhead is taking a well-deserved break — and they want you to know you can take a break, too.
It’s a break the team likely needs. Since launch, there’s been balance patch after balance patch, hotfixes, major updates, and small updates. Wardogs even saw some controversy when it attempted to region lock players to prevent cheating.
Speaking to Edge Magazine, via GamesRadar, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer explained the pressure the team had been dealing with. "Everyone has done something that's not in their job description,” Brammer said. “Everyone wears multiple hats, because they can see the path to success with the product."
Following a flurry of updates and a disappointing Wardogs Season 2 launch, Bulkhead is taking the whole month of December off to rest and refresh for the new year and the road to the game’s 1.0 launch.
"We're going to make sure players know they can f**k off in December," he said. "Go play GTA 6, we need to detox.”
It’s a refreshing approach to hear a developer acknowledge the incoming leviathan that is Rockstar’s open-world crime sequel. Most publishers are just quietly changing their plans with no outward communication, but Bulkhead addressed the massive, massive elephant filling the room.
GTA 6 is out on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox, and it is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time. A number of publishers and developers either worked to release their games beforehand, leading to the September crunch, or push them back into early 2027. Star Citizen chief Chris Roberts claimed he delayed spinoff Squadron 42 into next year because he didn't want it going up against the "attention buzz saw of GTA 6."
"While GTA 6 isn’t launching on PC this November, pretty much all outlets and most content creators will be all over it, not leaving a lot of room for other coverage," Roberts continued.
Analysts expect GTA 6 will make over $5 billion in launch week alone, so expect it to fill your feeds for a few weeks.
Friendslop has been mogged hard by mogging. Friendslop is chopped, and mogging is sigma. It’s cooked, and mogging has been hard mewing in its looksmaxxing era. One is sus and the other is aura farming.
You might not like it, but that’s what language looks like these days. The Collins dictionary has added a range of new terms from gen alpha slang, including “mogging” — Collins’ word of the year — and “friendslop,” a video game term used to describe a new wave of mess-about-with-your-pals co-op games.
“friendslop (ˈfrɛndˌslɒp) noun a type of low-budget, independently produced video game, designed to be played casually with a group of friends,” is the official new dictionary definition.
It joins words such as “fricy,” which apparently means a food that’s both fruity and spicy. And also the less fun “P(doom)” — (ˈpiːˌduːm) an estimation of the probability that AI will bring about the collapse of human civilization. Lovely.
If you don’t know what mogging means, that opening paragraph was probably nonsensical, but we might as well teach you the language of the youth while you’re here. Mogging means to outshine in any aspect.
There’s height mogging, status mogging, wealth mogging, and looks mogging. There’s probably more mogs that I’m not aware of, but you can basically mog at anything. I mog at Apex Legends, for example. I mog hard.
Alex Beecroft, MD Collins, said: "Collins lexicographers not only track how often words are used, but they also analyse patterns of usage. The selection of ‘mogging' as Collins’ Word of the Year shows how each generation leaves its mark on language.
“It’s a great example of how Gen Z and Gen Alpha have adopted a word and turned it into humorous slang, making the language their own and 'mogging' the rest of us!"
If you’re not familiar with friendslop, arguably the best game in the “genre” released this year with Big Walk. You owe it to yourself to play it. Go in blind and bring friends. It’s unlike anything else.
“Big Walk is full of beautiful emergent moments as you find solutions to cleverly built puzzles and adventure between them in its vast open world,” said the IGN 9/10 Big Walk review. “Falling down a mountain at night and scrambling to find your dropped gear, finding your friends from a flare in the distance, or developing the language to both name things in its world and build a process to figure out its most complex puzzles is all part of the magic that makes Big Walk unlike any other co-op game.”
Other hugely popular 'friendslop' games include Peak, Gamble With Your Friends, Lethal Company, and R.E.P.O., which have enjoyed millions of sales on Steam... and countless clones on the likes of Roblox.
David Sears, creative director of South of Midnight, said in a recent interview that he was always worried about the previous era of Xbox's infamous development funding "money tap," and admitted he would probably have turned it off earlier.
The Xbox Game Studios-published South of Midnight launched in 2025, seven years after Compulsion Games' previous game came out. While it enjoyed critical acclaim, it failed commercially. Compulsion split from Xbox this year amid CEO Asha Sharma's "reset" of Microsoft's video game business, which has seen thousands of staff lose their jobs, multiple owned studios go independent, and multiple projects canceled.
In an interview with MinnMax, Sears said he was always worried Microsoft's generous funding of South of Midnight would end. “I literally told people, I was like, 'Wow, this could be terrible,’” he said. “Because somebody is going to say one day, 'You know the money tap? We're closing those floodgates.' And that's going to have really traumatic results downstream.”
Next, he was asked if he’d have turned off the tap earlier himself if he was in charge of Xbox, to which he replied: “Yeah, probably.”
“I wanted to make [South of Midnight], no doubt. Obviously, because we made it,” he continued. “Would I have turned off someone else's money flow before South of Midnight? Yeah, because I'm not completely selfless. But in hindsight at least, it was unsustainable. So, of course it was going to have a shocking outcome."
Microsoft bought Compulsion in mid-2018 as part of a spate of acquisitions designed to bolster subscription service Game Pass' day-one offering under previous gaming boss Phil Spencer. That summer, Xbox's ranks were swollen by the arrival of Forza Horizon developer Playground, State of Decay developer Undead Labs, Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, the aforementioned Compulsion Games, then, later that year, inXile and Obsidian. Microsoft also formed a new studio in Santa Monica called The Initiative, which worked on the canceled Perfect Dark reboot. Microsoft acquired Double Fine the following year, in June 2019.
“It’s easy to dissect it now, but at the time I would talk to other directors who would be like, ‘How is this happening? How did we get so lucky? Is this a golden era?’ And I would always be like, ‘For now.’ There’s always a night when Rome burns. I didn’t know exactly when it would be but I was always worried about it.
“But to their credit — amazing. I think there’s definitely a corporate Microsoft DNA, but they are vastly different from the Microsoft I knew back in the ‘90s and early 2000s — much more humane, actually. It’s remarkable and commendable.”
Sears went on to praise Microsoft for letting studios spin off from Xbox rather than shut them down, pointing to how Microsoft bought Ensemble Studios only to shut it down after a couple of games. Like Psychonauts developer Double Fine and State of Decay maker Undead Labs, Compulsion Games secured its independence instead of being closed.
Deathloop and Dishonored 2 developer Arkane Lyon, however, is still looking for a buyer as Xbox explores options to split from the studio. Hellblade developer Ninja Theory went through the same process, but didn’t find a buyer and closed as a result.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that the next mainline Halo game will be developed by Call of Duty maker Activision, with mass layoffs hitting Halo Studios. Xbox has moved Age of Empires developer World's Edge and Sea of Thieves developer Rare under the Activision umbrella. Microsoft is doubling down on its biggest video game franchises as it works to improve revenue at Xbox and grow its profit margin.
South of Midnight was Compulsion's third game, following Contrast in 2013 and We Happy Few in 2018. It retains ownership of its games and publishing rights despite leaving Xbox.
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World of Warcraft
Sturmgrenadier is more organised, more active, and more structured than most guilds you would come across in WoW. We believe this gives us a distinct advantage in being the best guild we can be for our members, because everyone knows where they stand, and are treated equally. Players with negative attitudes will not be tolerated. That means that there is no epeen measuring, no belittling of other players, and no trolling.
EVE
EVE Online is Sturmgrenadier’s longest-played game, with over 16 years of continuous influence throughout New Eden. Traditional hallmarks of our gaming syndicate; organization and leadership, have propelled our in-game history to include participation in many of the defining moments of EvE gameplay.
New World
New World is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing video game by Amazon Game Studios set to release in May 2020. Set in the mid-1600s, players colonize a fictional land modeled after British America in the Atlantic Ocean. Players scavenge resources, craft items, and fight other players.
Coming Soon!
Game is in early Alpha/Beta.
Join us and get involved early!
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