Here's How Faithful The Link's Awakening Remake Is To The Original
We always appreciate video game remakes that retain the essence of the original, and wow, does it ever look like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening's remake will do just that.
The folks at Digital Foundry took a deep dive into the title, comparing the remake's gameplay footage with the Link's Awakening that first appeared on the Game Boy all those years ago. And while the Link's Awakening remake doesn't always move from map tile to map tile, the world looks almost exactly as you saw it in 1993; almost to a stunning degree.
The paths appear the same. There are ponds and other obstacles in the same places. You'll count the same number of posts in an area as you would in the Game Boy title. And the enemies even seem to react the same way to Link's weapons. It's almost as though someone plugged the classic Link's Awakening Game Boy cart into a magical machine, chose the "upgrade" option, and started capturing video of the results.
That attention to detail extends to the dungeons, where the game reverts to the tile-to-tile movement found in the original. You'll have to clear one room to see what's in the next — no cheating here — and we think that's as much about preserving the experience as it is a necessity for a new feature being added. The Link's Awakening remake will allow you to arrange your own dungeons using those you've already explored, which involves placing dungeon tiles (rooms) in the order you choose.
And those dungeons? They look like they were ripped right out of the first Link's Awakening, too. It's kind of incredible.
As far as performance goes, the game appears to be targeting 60 frames per second. A quick analysis from Digital Foundry showed that, at its best, the Link's Awakening remake could hit 60 frames in some areas of the map. However, in busier areas, the game appeared to hover frequently between 30 frames per second and 50 frames per second. We're unsure about how much stock we can put into that, seeing as the game doesn't come out until September and Nintendo could still be putting some final touches on it. But it's debatable how important that is here, anyway, as the frame rate is unlikely to affect gameplay.
If you've not seen the remake of Link's Awakening in action, we implore you to go check out Digital Foundry's comparison video for yourself. And if you plan on picking up the remake when it launches, here's the date to mark on your calendar: Sept. 20, 2019.