Disclaimer: I have nothing against remasters. I don’t see OOT as a sacred and perfect thing that nobody’s allowed to touch.

But everyone is swooning over the graphics of the new remaster and I really dislike them. For me, it’s ATBGE: all technics and no art direction.

Sure, the physics are impressive, the texture high res, and the models detailed. But they’re too detailed. It looks like they’ve taken any flat surface and said “ooh, we need to add some detail here”.

So you’re left with something cartoony but with very realistic texture, shaders etc. There’s a mismatch in style between the big geometry of OOT models that they’ve kept and the small geometry they’ve added on top of them. On the other hand, Elden Rings also has an ultra detailed style and I’ve got no problem with it because it’s not trying to be cartoony at the same time.

I’ve found this mismatch repugnant as well, because it reminds me if genAI. I’m not saying they used AI, but when you ask one to “improve” a cartoon, you end up with something similar: it adds unnecessary detail e-ve-ry-where.