As evidenced by the myriad positive reviews of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it's safe to presume that a majority of people thoroughly enjoyed the softer-looking visuals and art style of the Nintendo Switch launch title from 2017. Even so, one player decided to see what the open world action-adventure game would look like by removing the cel-shading graphics from the release altogether.
As seen in the video from the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fan known as "Arkh Longstride", certain graphical tools used within the Wii U emulator, Cemu, gives the Wii U and Nintendo Switch title a complete visual makeover with tweaks and optimizations boosting its performance. For instance, the game's fog, smoke, and reflections look more realistic, as do the environments, buildings, and character models. Plus, it's running at 60 FPS.
With the removal of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's cel-shading graphics, one could argue that while the pristine visuals look beautiful, the title loses some of its charm due to Nintendo having intentionally taken a more toon-like approach to creating the game's overall look. Some have even compared these graphical changes to making the Nintendo Switch and Wii U title look like a project borne out of Unreal Engine 4, as the engine has the propensity to deliver highly realistic rendering qualities.
For those unaware, there have been a number of fan made creations for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since the game's release back in 2017, with many of them focusing less on changing the the title itself, and more so on adding character skins. In fact, one of the more popular creations by the fan community saw the Mario franchise's Waluigi added in the place of Link.
All things considered, this example of visual enhancements for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will likely be seen as an impressive bit of work by many, while others could lament the removal of the game's familiar cel-shading graphics. At any rate, one can only hope that Nintendo is hard at work creating a brand new title as the next main entry in the long-running franchise for fans to enjoy soon.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now for Nintendo Switch.
Source: Arkh Longstride – YouTube (via Nintendo Everything)