The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake was apparently built from the development pipeline of Tears of the Kingdom.
According to a datamine of the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake game files conducted by Twitter/X user OatmealDome, the project, internally codenamed “Owl”, runs on Nintendo’s ModuleSystem game engine, the same technology used to work on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and other first-party games developed by Nintendo EPD. However, the findings suggest a closer connection between the two games than simply sharing the engine.
OatmealDome’s findings suggest that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake was built using Tears of the Kingdom as its foundation, pointing to several remnants of the latter’s development in the game’s files. The dataminer uncovered modules associated with the chemistry engine, a system that powers a major part of the gameplay in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Furthermore, they found leftover references to the Zonai, the ancient civilization that played a central role in Tears of the Kingdom’s storyline. Other references reportedly include Korok Forest, another location closely associated with the modern Zelda titles.
OatmealDome acknowledged that ModuleSystem has become Nintendo EPD’s standard game engine. However, they added that other games developed using ModuleSystem don’t carry references to Tears of the Kingdom’s code. As such, they argued that these leftovers in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake game files indicates that it was built from Tears of the Kingdom’s development pipeline. “ModuleSystem is the standard engine for EPD nowadays, but I still believe OoT is built off TotK because you can find lots of stuff from TotK in OoT’s code,” they explained.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is set for release on November 5, 2026, exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2.
