When it was released in 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was lauded as a beautiful and expensive entry in the long-standing adventure series. With its open world setting, BotW is also one of Nintendo's longest games. As visually pleasing as it is, the game is now four years old and will eventually start to show its age. However, there is a mod that's been released which shows what the game looks like when given some graphical pizzazz.
Uploading to their YouTube channel recently, user Digital Dreams has been showing off what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can look like when run through some visual modifications. The footage shows the game in stunning 8K resolution, with everything in the scene popping with vibrancy. As well as a graphics mod, there is the user's own ray tracing reshade thrown into the mix to boost the lighting effects in the game. Parts of the video show Link bathed in the glorious sunlight as he looks out over a body of water that glimmers and absolutely shows the graphical fidelity of this mod.
This is also not the first time Digital Dreams has shown off a game with a graphics boost and some ray tracing. Recently, another video surfaced which showed what The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim looks like when it has more than 500 mods installed. Similar to the Breath of the Wild add-on, the visual overhaul really shows what's capable in the modding community, and how a game that is years old can look amazing with a modern tweak.
The fan base is always keen to show off its skills and to keep games like The Legend of Zelda going for as long as possible, either by upping the visuals, adding new content, or just finding new ways to improve it overall. Take the BotW mod which renovates the destroyed Hyrule castle, as an example. Sometimes, playing the base game isn’t enough, and there are some talented people out there who are more than happy to pitch in to make their favorite franchises as good as they possibly can be.
With Breath of the Wild 2 being announced during E3 2019, Legend of Zelda fans will no doubt have their ears to the ground for any updates on that front. It will be interesting to see how good the graphics will compare to Digital Dreams' ray tracing reshade of the first game, not to mention the 8K visuals that have been added to it as well.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now for Nintendo Switch and Wii U.