An upcoming multiplayer mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that will let you play the open-world adventure with your buddies is due to release in only a few months' time.
The as-yet-unnamed Breath of the Wild mod was teased last year by speedrunner and YouTuber Eric ‘PointCrow’ Morino, who advertised a $10,000 payment to anyone who would develop the mod. They’ve now released a short snippet of the project in action, showing three playable Links running around The Great Plateau together.
In the accompanying Tweet, Morino said the mod will be “coming to my channels Summer 2022” – that’s anytime between June, July, and August, for those not in the Northern hemisphere.
A strange way of couching the release date, Morino clarified to Dexerto that the mod will first be shown off on their personal YouTube channel before being made available for free after they’ve “sufficiently made enough content surrounding it”.
Breath of the Wild Multiplayer is happening. Coming to my channels Summer 2022 :) pic.twitter.com/MPhuHGaXIgMarch 31, 2022
In their original pitch for the mod, Morino said they’d want one to two weeks of streaming exclusivity before its public release. So, you won’t be waiting too long to get your hands on it after it pops up on the PointCrow YouTube channel.
“It’s functional, runs at 28fps at least, and you can be anywhere in the game,” Morino told Dexerto.
“The mod needs polishing on more niche things like Cryonis, rune support, quest syncing, etc,” they added.#
You can take a look at an early version of the mod below, courtesy of one of the creators, on their YouTube channel Alex Mangue.
Better with friends
Morino originally pitched the mod as a multiplayer overhaul that would allow several players to explore Breath of the Wild with no restraints, letting two players complete separate playthroughs simultaneously. They also specified the mod would be completely free and would operate through peer-to-peer networks, requiring no public servers.
Although the mod was first described as supporting 2-player multiplayer, three players can be seen wandering around together in the short video. The developers who picked up the project – who go by the modding handles Sweet and Alex Mangue – may have expanded upon the initial brief.
A separate video that Alex Mangue uploaded to their personal YouTube channel looks to show an early prototype of the mod in action. It contains everything you'd expect; three players traversing the open world, fighting enemies, and collecting secrets.
There’s no word yet as to whether the upcoming mod will run on Nintendo Switch or a PC emulator of the handheld console.
Notably, Morino also specified the mod must be finished two months before Breath of the Wild 2 (officially known as Tears of the Kingdom) is released. That certainly won’t be a problem now the sequel has been delayed to next year.
