8K Zelda Mod Already Looks Better Than Breath Of The Wild 2

It's been over four years since Link paraglided down onto Hyrule Field and continued the legacy of the Zelda series - bringing it to a whole new generation in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While we look ahead to the eventual release of Breath of the Wild 2, one modder is running the original in stunning 8K. 

As well as being one of the seminal titles for the Nintendo Switch, Breath of the Wild is held by some as one of the greatest video games of all time.

Added to this, sales of 25 million units mean it's one of the best-selling video games of all time, there's been a spin-off with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and all eyes are on the sequel. If you'd ever wondered what BOTW would look like n 8K, wonder no more.

What does Breath of the Wild look like in 8K?

One of the few complaints about Breath of the Wild was its lacklustre resolution when undocked. Thankfully, all of that is a thing of the past thanks to German Modder Digital Dreams. Although you sadly can't mod your Switch version of Breath of the Wild, we've been able to run it on PC for a while thanks to emulation. As with any PC game, this has opened up the Triforce to modders. 

The video gives us a beautiful tour of this new Hyrule and adds ray tracing to Breath of the Wild. From the sun beaming down on seaside beaches, to dimly-lit forests coming alive, even the night scenes show off a whole new Breath of the Wild that already makes what little footage we've seen from Breath of the Wild 2 look like an old version of Ocarina. 

The 8K Breath of the Wild comes hot off the heels of modders giving the likes of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2 a similar treatment. We've also covered how one intrepid gamer recreated the beloved The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in HD and showed what it could look like on the Switch.

Can anyone play Breath of the Wild in 8K?

Unfortunately, you'll have to resort to piracy to play Breath of the Wild in 8K. Nintendo is notoriously cagey with its IPs, so we don't suggest you try and take on the might of Mario's creator unless you fancy being slapped with a legal notice.

There is another catch. Digital Dreams has explained you'll need a pretty punchy PC to run 8K Breath of the Wild. An Asus TUF RTX 3090 graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage are all required to run this beefed-up BOTW, but trust us, it's worth it. 

While the 8K Breath of the Wild is a suitably impressive build, it'll still be a while for Nintendo will be able to deliver hardware capable of running 8K. The recent announcement of the Nintendo Switch OLED can't even support 4K, and even though we've given up on the Switch Pro, it's unlikely that mythical console would've been able to run 8K.