Wow! The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is beautiful, yes, certainly the loveliest game Nintendo has ever made. The details, the colors, the sounds, the constant movements of individual leaves in light breezes, the ripple of water…wow! It’s dazzling! The stitching on Link’s tunic. All the unique bits of foliage that rustle as you walk through, the way nothing seems to obviously clip into anything else. The gentle reactions when you bump into NPCs. The attention to detail, everywhere, in the characters, the pacing, the way dungeon mechanisms work, everywhere you look, so much.

One of the Kokiri has a line at some point about how they and the fairies all sparkle and shine, and these visuals have committed to that descriptor. I didn’t want to leave the forest. But also I really, really did, especially after a little over an hour playing last night. Because it almost feels extravagant, like a just slightly uncomfortable excess, especially after having played the sparse original so recently.…