A fan-made mod shows what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would look like with incredible graphical enhancements. Nintendo’s open-world masterpiece has no shortage of mods made by enterprising fans who want to add something to the already lengthy adventure of Link. Mods range from the relatively simple, like camera enhancements that give players more control over how they view Hyrule, to the outrageous, like the mod that puts a fully-playable Luigi’s Circuit from Mario Kart Wii right into the middle of the open world. As fun as it might be to add as many mods as possible to one’s game, there is such a thing as too many.
Instead of adding new features to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, some mods simply seek to push the game to its performance limits. Frustrated with the way Nintendo’s underpowered hardware frequently prevents games from looking their best, enterprising modders and recreators have found ways to get Hyrule running in better resolutions, at higher frame rates, and with more detail than the Switch can output.
One such mod and an accompanying video shows off what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would look like in a resolution of 8K and with ray-tracing technology enabled. Modding account Digital Dreams (via Destructoid) shared a video of the game running on an 8K-capable PC, and the results are stunning. Animations are incredibly smooth, and environments and visual effects that would make the Switch game drop frames have no such effect here. Lighting and shade are crisp and clean; the reflection of light on the water is a particularly beautiful highlight. It bears similarities to the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time recreation in Unreal Engine, though the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild mod is less of a reimagining and more of a purely visual update.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is already one of the Switch’s most beautiful games, so to see it enhanced even further is quite a sight to behold. While the Switch isn’t able to keep up with the 4K-capable PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, it’s only the second of Nintendo’s consoles to be able to output at a resolution of 1080p, or HD, which means that this generation is still the best that Nintendo’s games have ever looked on a regular console. Despite this, the console version of the game has some occasional frame rate and lag issues, which makes the mod’s smooth rendition of Hyrule all the more pleasing.
There are only two ways that a Legend of Zelda title would look this nice on a console. Either Nintendo would need to make an 8K-capable console – unlikely, considering Nintendo’s hardware history and company philosophy of purposefully avoiding the latest and greatest – or titles from the Legend of Zelda franchise would have to appear on a non-Nintendo console, which is even less likely. For now, fan-made mods are undoubtedly the best way to experience The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in all of its incredible natural glory.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available on Nintendo Switch.
