Twenty-eight years is a long time to sit with a dungeon you know by heart and quietly wish you had built differently. For Eiji Aonuma, that dungeon is the Water Temple, the one every Ocarina of Time player remembers for all the wrong reasons, and he has finally gotten around to what he calls his overdue homework, as detailed in a new developer interview covered by IGN.

You remember the feeling: menus you opened a hundred times just to swap boots, walls that all looked the same, water levels that turned a 3D adventure into a guessing game. Aonuma says he only ever wanted players to feel what freediving feels like, the sounds muffled, the space transformed, and that the constant item toggling got in the way of the wonder he was chasing. Production Group No.3's HokWai Ng says the team kept the dungeon's actual mechanisms intact and simply made the layout read more clearly, with objects now nudging you toward the right direction instead of leaving you to flounder.

GameXplain and Polygon both picked up the same interview, and between the three accounts a tidy little picture of the rework emerges:

Item toggling is quicker now, so you are not pausing mid-swim to dig through a menu.
Disorienting walls have become lattice structures, letting you see the rooms beyond them and actually get your bearings.
The 3DS version's wall lights, which mark water-shifting spots, are back for this remake, as IGN's Logan Plant noticed in gameplay footage.
Link can shed his iron boots instantly now, no detour to the equipment screen required.

It took Nintendo twenty-eight years to admit the Water Temple's real problem was never its puzzles, it was that nobody could tell which way was up.