A proof of concept video showcases a new in-development mod that transforms The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild into a first-person VR game.
Don’t get too excited though – according to developers in the associated Discord server, it might take “a few months, maybe half a year or more” for any kind of playable public release.
That being said, the footage in the video above looks stunning already. Breath of the Wild has a beautiful cel-shaded art style, which lends itself really well to being upscaled and displayed at resolutions above its original intention, such as in this VR mod. The video shows both first and third person gameplay — in the latter, Link’s character model has been modded out and replaced with Zelda, but it’s an aesthetic change only.
Breath of the Wild released in 2017 for Wii U and Nintendo Switch, but this mod will be a PC VR mod that uses a popular Wii U emulator called Cemu. The developers are actively developing the mod now, and in the Discord server they said they expect the end product would use an alternate eye rendering method for VR, similar to the popular Grand Theft Auto V PC VRmod.
Many users in the Discord server have also noted that the hardware requirements for the mod, whenever it releases, will likely be quite high. Given that Cemu itself is an emulator, it can already be quite taxing depending on the capabilities of your PC. Adding VR support on top of that will require significant headroom, especially if you want to run it at a 4K resolution with a high framerate for VR.
Breath of the Wild does actually have native VR support, if you could call it that, with Nintendo’s Labo VR system on the Switch. That being said, Labo is a cardboard headset and when combined with the 720p screen resolution of the Switch, it’s not anything special — especially compared to this breathtaking proof-of-concept VR video. Back in 2019, Jamie dubbed it “Blur of the Wild” and said playing the game on Labo VR would be “a crime to the good people of Hyrule.”
Would you play this Breath of the Wild VR mod? Let us know in the comments below.
