The idea that Aonuma was embarrassed of his work and that being the reason why meddling with Majora's Mask 3D and making changes "it didn't need to make" is a very tough premise to operate from. Primarily because Aonuma's interviews only shed light about a certain element of development, we still don't know and will never know the full story of the development that happened during Majora's Mask in the N64 era. Unless you can prove authorial intent that Aonuma was actually embarrassed and not what your gut instinct tells you, it's a flawed premise and an impossible argument to make.
I read probably every interview Aonuma did on the game to make sure I was being fair and it's hard to come to any other conclusion. He mentioned not wanting to do a remake because there would be a massive number of things that would need to be fixed, and even had to make a list of hundreds of things that made him say "what in the world" when replaying it because they struck him as being so bad:
Looking at excerpts like this, I don't even consider it speculation to say he was a little embarrassed by the original since he was literally apologizing for it regularly during development :
__________________________
"Ooiwa
When we had taken a look at the "what in the world" list, Aonuma-san's confessions were written everywhere! (laughs)
Iwata
Confessions? (laughs)
Aonuma
I wrote in a bunch of comments on where I thought things weren't good. Like, "I'm sorry that this comes from the one that made it this way, but..."
Ooiwa
That was on the top of every list.
Aonuma
And "At the time,
I think there was something wrong with me..."
Ooiwa
He said something similar
every time we had a meeting! (laughs)
Yamamura
"What in the world" was something that he said all the time! (laughs)
Aonuma
Every time a "what in the world" came up, I always apologized and made excuses on why I did what I did at the time. I was probably able to do that because I thoroughly replayed the game first, and that I had a clear idea on what needed to be accomplished.
Iwata
You were able to see a clear direction on how to create it for the Nintendo 3DS.
Aonuma
That's correct, but the sheer amount was astounding. Of course, at the time I must have been keeping an eye on everything, so I thought to myself why were there so many things that I wanted to fix.
Iwata
I also have a lot of things that I made in the past where I would do things differently if I had the chance! (laughs)
Aonuma
But I have so many! It's a lot! (laughs)"
_______________________________
Aonuma is a great developer and I don't mean to imply otherwise, but the game definitely came from a place of this "this is not good enough and we have to fix it." I think that was important to include since it gives context to nearly every big alteration in the 3D version.
He starts off the argument with a very flawed interpretation of Deku Link's movement. Before I get into it, I will just let GameXplain do it since they cover the actual mechanic and what has changed.
So the speed changes comes down to the way the spin and momentum was changed rather than being a symptom of level design. If I were to guess, realism was the issue as it doesn't really make sense to spin and then suddenly cut the animation into a jump with a ton of speed.
A lot of people have complained that the Deku change was misrepresented or that it
doesn't even exist- there are hundreds of comments saying that spin hopping is the same on 3DS
, and as GameXplain mentioned in that video they had the same thing happen to them when they initially showed the change; people accused them of just doing it wrong. I'm not sure why this is a controversial thing...
I pointed out how the change works in the video-
it is not a spin hopping nerf and doesn't seem to be directly related to the spin itself. Link's walking acceleration was lowered, and as a result he can't build momentum fast enough to reach many pads even when running normally. This becomes a level design problem because if they wanted this new, slower mechanic they also needed to adjust the environments to suit it.
The spin hopping still works in the 3D version when you run at absolute full speed, so it's not like they removed it because it was unrealistic or a "glitch." It just seems to be mostly broken due to deku Link's overall acceleration taking longer. I never considered the spin hopping to be a glitch or an unnatural thing anyway- Link gets a small boost when rolling normally and the deku spin gives a big speed boost on land. It only makes sense that you'd get a similar boost when spinning onto water.
The argument about Zora swimming is very disingenuous. Yes, it comes at the cost of magic, but at the same time, there are ways to circumvent the magic cost and still get your zora swimming. And yet, there's no mention of that anywhere in order to force a specific kind of agenda (this is the same for the difficulty argument, where the video refuses to mention that the rate of time was much more quicker in the 3DS remake, than it was on the N64, making planning for events and judging how many things you can do in one 3-day cycle, much more difficult even with the Song of Double Time).
I don't think there is a good solution to the swimming. First of all, 3D Zora link doesn't handle the same way even when swimming at full speed with magic- he's more fidgety and turns more sharply, so getting the smoother original controls isn't possible no matter what you do. The magic shield also gets pretty irritating after a while.
Chateau romani requires you to have romani's mask, the first wallet upgrade, and to waste the first day of the cycle and spend 200 rupees. That's a fairly big hassle that leaves you with substantially less time to accomplish what you need to. After using it, everything will be unbalanced since you'll have infinite magic even when not swimming, which could make sections involving the ice arrows even more trivial than they already are.
The solution I tried on my second playthrough was to grab a few green potions before going to the bay. The problem with that one is that you need your empty bottles more than ever at that specific point and you'll burn through the potions pretty fast if you want to swim constantly just like in the original.
I think saying the slightly faster passage of time makes things "much more difficult" is a little bit of a stretch. You still have a generous amount of time to do everything with the inverted song of time, and I never really noticed the difference even though I knew it was there. It would be very hard to argue that the game was not made easier overall.
This video is a bit...sensationalist
"Is it fair to ask players to master a mechanic you've forbidden them to use the entire game?"
"The save system was a barrier to some players, so it's great they changed it. But did they have to remove the original one", you just it was great...
"Odalwa has a new fight forced on you whether you like it or not". SUCH FORCED.
"Nintendo nuked the difficulty from orbit" [with optioned Sheikah stones]
What's wrong with that first point? They put in a new segment that requires you to really know how to Zora jump while simultaneously severely limiting your ability to practice and learn to use it.
It's great that they provided a simpler saving option for people who didn't like the original system, it's not great for players who actually prefer the original. Was there a single good reason to remove it as an option?
I'm not sure what you're objecting to with Odolwa. He won't respond to your attacks in the remake unless you fight him the new way, you are unarguably forced to use it. This is what being forced to fight a certain way looks like:
There was an entire section of the video devoted to difficulty nerfs and it would take some real truth twisting to say that the only nerf was an optional hint system. I wasn't even objecting to those stones being in the game, the point is that the game already had a hint system in place and it still went out of its way to provide two more while lowering the difficulty of segments all over the place. They seemed
really worried that the game wouldn't be accepted by a modern audience.
