Minecraft fans are well-known for taking on massive building projects in Mojang Studios' sandbox game. The Minecraft Middle-Earth community server turned ten years old earlier this year, and it continues to work on recreating J.R.R. Tolkein's expansive fantasy world. Now, one user has shared their take on Nintendo's open-world version of Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Crockette22 uploaded their Breath of the Wild Hyrule map recreation to the fansite Planet Minecraft on December 21, and it can be downloaded now for both Java and Bedrock editions of the game. The creator credits user lentebriesje, a site moderator, for publicly providing the terrain data, but says they went in and made the landscape more than just "an empty canvas of bare grass and stone" by adding more distinct features.
That being said, Breath of the Wild fans should not expect a perfect recreation. There are no buildings, and Death Mountain in the Eldin Region has some "huge mistakes" in-part due to issues with height lines in the landscape data. However, based on screenshots that showcase numerous landscapes across Hyrule, it's clear the Minecraft map is a labor of love that others can easily go in and explore or adjust to their hearts' content.
Though Breath of the Wild released in 2017, its fully explorable take on the land of Hyrule has become iconic for many in the gaming community, and Nintendo is capitalizing on this. The map will be reused in the upcoming sequel Breath of the Wild 2, which still has no release date as of this writing; and the map was broken into chunks for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, a pseudo-prequel released this November.
As impressive as Crockette22's Minecraft recreation looks, particularly in screenshots where they use shaders to accentuate certain color schemes, the use of data from lentebriesje undoubtedly offered a solid starting point. The Planet Minecraft moderator previously received a Guinness Book of World Records recognition for uploading a video in 2013 depicting the "Largest-scale recreation of planet Earth in Minecraft." This recognition was provided at least two years prior to YouTuber PippenFTS gaining recognition for his Build The Earth project, according to an image provided by lentebriesje.
Huge building projects are just one facet of the appeal when it comes to Minecraft. Many fans also enjoy the survival experience, and others watch speedruns of the game. All of this and more contributed to Minecraft being YouTube's most-watched game in 2020 with over 100 billion hours, and this will certainly continue as creators like Crockette22 continue to contribute to the game.
Minecraft is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Sources: Planet Minecraft, lentebriesje