November 27, 2024

Breath of the Wild 2 won’t look as good as this on Nintendo Switch 2, sadly

March 25, 2021 f_admin Wii U 0

Nintendo is still keeping schtum about Breath of the Wild 2, and it failed to reveal any new information about the hotly anticipated sequel during the last Nintendo Direct.

Bubbling in the background of Link’s imminent return, however, are those ongoing Nintendo Switch 2 rumors – or Nintendo Switch Pro if you like – which refuse to go away. Speculation points to it being a more powerful iteration of the company’s widely successful hybrid device, one that’s capable of 4K visuals when docked.

That leaves those of us with fanciful imaginations to sit and speculate, dream even, about what might be achievable on Nintendo’s apparently impending new Switch model. Speaking of which, we’ve often wondered what Nintendo could pull off with more powerful hardware – and thanks to the advanced horsepower of PC hardware and clever emulation, sometimes those daydreams are turned into reality.

Case in point, Breath of the Wild running in 8K with ray tracing. In the video below, you can marvel at arguably the finest Switch game released to date running at a level of graphical fidelity that simply isn’t possible on Nintendo’s hardware (and almost certainly won’t be feasible on Nintendo Switch 2 either).

The video shows the Wii U version of Link’s open-air adventure running on the CEMU emulator, and is the work of the Digital Dreams YouTube channel. As you can see, ray-traced global illumination makes the lush landscapes of Breath of the Wild look simply sensational, and the REVO Reshade Redux mod, which is created by Pascal Glicher, helps to make the game look more lifelike than ever before.

Blue ocean strategy

Unfortunately, it’s likely that we’ll be waiting years before we ever see this level of detail in games from Nintendo. After the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo opted for a different approach compared to Sony and Microsoft, often choosing cheaper, more underpowered hardware that’s designed to leverage a new controller or design idea.

This idea-focused approach has paid dividends for Nintendo, though, with the Wii, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Switch selling millions upon millions of units. It doesn’t always work out of course, as the Wii U so damningly proved, although the Nintendo Switch is certainly benefiting from the Wii U’s library.