For several years around the time I was in college, I had managed to get my phone to play a custom sound whenever I got a text message (this was a somewhat challenging thing to manage at the time on some phones). Whenever I got a text, my phone would play the Navi “Hey!” sound from Ocarina of Time.
I thought this was hilarious. It was especially great in public, because anyone with any familiarity with Zelda in earshot would immediately whip around, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.
I eventually moved onto other, more boring text notification sounds, but I still love the Navi “Hey!” usually followed by a “Listen!” It’s a beloved staple of gaming, such an iconic noise that even people who don’t consider themselves gamers often recognize it.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is being remade, and with a remake comes new sounds. There was no way in heck that Nintendo was going to reuse the exact same audio files recorded by Kaori Mizuhashi all those years ago. And there was also no way that any attempt to replicate or replace them, no matter how well executed, was going to work for me after so many years of attachment to the original.
I feel bad, because the new actor really did do a good job. The tone is right, but they cleared up the lines a bit so it’s a little more apparent what’s being said (I used to have trouble understanding “Watch out!”). There’s also new, recorded dialogue in cutscenes, where Navi actually says full sentences:
But even so, my brain and my heart want the sounds to be the old ones. And look, I didn’t even play the original Ocarina until this year. But I’ve known that sound since childhood! It’s a running gag, even, because Navi in the original game would never shut the hell up and so for years people made webcomics and quips and skits and memes about “Hey! Listen!” in the very exact tone in which Navi said it then.
I don’t feel this way about any of the other voices in the game. I feel a little weird about Saria’s voice acting, but am willing to give it a shot, and Ganondorf (have we all agreed that’s Matt Mercer reprising his role?) is phenomenal of course. None of Link’s sounds even faze me, though perhaps that’s because they’ve been swapping around Link voice actors between games for many years and I’m used to all his little variances. It’s just the Navi sound I can’t quite accept.
I fully admit that my discomfort with this exists purely because it is a change, and for no other reason. It will be difficult to adjust to, just as Link in a very highly detailed tunic will be difficult to adjust to, or the existence of a jump button. Navi will sound weird to me for a while, and then I will get over it, address the remake on its own terms, and become irritated with Navi’s vocalizations for an entirely different reason once again.