This Zelda Remake is So Beautiful I Could Cry

There are few series out there that can claim to be iconic as The Legend of Zelda, releasing consistently over almost four decades since that first shiny gold cartridge dropped for the NES all the way back in 1986.

Now obviously the series has changed a lot in that time, and it's almost unrecognisable from the linear top-down efforts that brought so much success to the earliest games.

Games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are magnificent in their own right, but they're so fundamentally different from those halcyon days that it's little wonder that people regularly return to get a little taste of that retro excellence.

Not only that, but there are some dedicated fans out there who are doing everything they can to bring those games into the modern day, by updating the archaic visuals and gameplay where they can.

Over on YouTube, Vasge shared a video of their recreation of the first dungeon in the first game, The Eagle, and it looks absolutely stunning. The big thing that it has going for it right now is the art style, which is entirely hand drawn and seeks to more closely replicate the art of the original, rather than the game itself.

Developed in the Godot game engine, Vasge, a 2D Animator by trade, has managed to fully finish the core section of the dungeon, with only the smaller areas in the wings left to go. As well as obviously being massively prettier than the original, he has also made some nice, more nuanced changes that really elevate the aesthetics. The best one, in my opinion, has been softening the edges of the rooms with various features, making for a much more natural appearance than those rigid squares usually provide.

If you have ever played The Legend of Zelda in its OG form, then you'll know that it really doesn't offer too much in the way of detail. Whilst this absolutely could have been an issue in making the remake interesting as a project, Vasge has used that lack of detail as an opportunity to add their own interpretations.

This has led to a project like very few we've seen and one that should be very interesting to keep an eye on in the coming months. In even better news, the developer has vowed to plough on with the project, so we'll hopefully have a full game to jump into when all is said and done.