The playground offered in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild continues to delight and surprise gamers despite being nearly five years old. A dream of many players is to experience that sandbox with a friend, and one fan has put out a handsome reward for whoever can mod multiplayer into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Breath of the Wild's open world design was a refresher industry-wide, with many games having used it as influence and inspiration. As its name implies, Breath of the Wild's main draw is the freedom of its open world, allowing players to largely achieve that classic gaming buzzphrase: "If you see it, you can go there." This freedom is compounded by the multitude of toys at the player's disposal, whether its manipulating physics with the Stasis Rune, allowing players to slingshot themselves across the map, or the pivotal hang-glider, making no jump too high, and no chasm too long. One of the game's shortcomings though is the lack of any multiplayer or co-op modes.
A YouTuber wants to change that, offering a large prize for anyone who can make a multiplayer mod for Breath of the Wild. Content creator PointCrow is the person responsible behind the bounty, announcing on Twitter, "I'm putting a $10,000 bounty on the creation of a Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod." PointCrow is a former Breath of the Wild speedrunner who took to the modding community to see what other Breath of the Wild challenges were possible, like beating the game if Link was randomly teleported around Hyrule every five minutes, or if it could be beaten in a completely submerged Hyrule.
With the bounty is a document outlining the requirements of the mod, though many of them have since been updated. For starters, PointCrow initially wanted the multiplayer mod to be playable of four people at once, which was subsequently lowered to at least two players. Other stipulations pertain to the mod's functionality, like how the player should ideally start after the Great Plateau with all Runes and the paraglider, and that it must be completed at least two weeks prior to Breath of the Wild's sequel. PointCrow points out in the update that they are still quite inexperienced in this area, with the $10,000 bounty and original asking requirements "not match[-ing]."
If there is any Zelda game that would benefit from a multiplayer feature, it would be Breath of the Wild. Imagine the possibilities of sharing items between players, or perhaps limiting Runes between them, forcing further cooperation and strategy in puzzles and combat. The series has dabbled in the multiplayer market a couple times previously—though mostly in the cooperative sense—with games like The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube, and The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes on the 3DS. With Breath of the Wild's sequel expected sometime in 2022, modders have a decent amount of time to complete this task.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available on Nintendo Switch, and Wii U.