Video: Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Is Stunningly Beautiful Even In Places You're Not Meant To See

Never really thought about, the undersea, except when there was that video of a chest which is so deep you have to hack the game to get to it by removing the water and it has nothing interesting in it.

But I like that they went to this trouble to make it, it's the little things that make a great game

something tells me that we could dive underwater but they scrapped the idea

@BlackenedHalo Botw 2 will feature underwater stuff...

...plsplsplsplsplsplsplsplsplsplsplsplspls

Time for the VR goggles to check this little find out!

@gcunit One of the few things missing from the original. Would be great if they added it in.

Would like to try it. Anyone knows the location of the bridge in the video?

@lnrts99
It's the beach/fishing town of Lurelin Village. It's located in the south-east region of the map.

That also explains the large amount of underwater detail in this spot, given there's a large focus on water right here.

@TrixieSparkle
Thanks, will check it out.

Can I ask how Sexy Ganondorf came to be? And why is that a thing?

@liljmoore I thought it was "Hydrated" Ganondorf?

Water temple for BotW2 confirmed?

All that stuff is visible from the surface though. It's not like they put stuff in that you aren't meant to see. But it is awesome that there's so much detail even where they could have just had generic water everywhere.

I wish nintendo games would explore the water a bit more. Hope that ACNH will allow some diving to snatch some fish in a coral reef.

I like the idea of water/underwater stuff, but then I remember the horrors of Monster Hunter underwater controls, and that blasted temple we all know from that certain Zelda game.

Kind of hope they use this in the sequel.

Zora Link returns?

I hope in the second game we get some kind of sheikah slate upgrade that allows us to go under water with a bubble around your head or something cool like that.

It kinda bothered me that i couldn't go under water. I played the entire game looking, hoping for some iron boots and a scale, or a Zora mask. I was so disappointed when I got the salvager suit and could dive into the water. I thought it was going to give me the list harpoon from 'Xeno Blade Chronicles' and let me dive but noooo it doesn't do anything really. Next game I bet we'll get scuba gear.

Maybe these areas were being built as templates for areas we'll be exploring further in the sequel? Might as well put the assets in plain sight as places you can see but not explore until the next game.

Couldn't dive is what I meant to say.

As others have said, one of the things I’ve missed the most in BoTW was the underwater sections.
I’ve always loved swimming around freely as Zora Link in MM, and I’d love for something similar to be applied to BoTW’s engine for the sequel.

That will be so cool if you could submerge in BotW2 like other Zelda games.

From the E3 video it looks like we’ll be exploring Hyrule vertically as well as horizontally, going into the Sky after the castle but down deep into the caves (and dungeons!) as well. It only makes sense that underwater gameplay be part of that, be it under the lakes or out into the vast ocean. It would also give them a ton of places to hide more shrines.

The underwater exploration in AC Origins was sublime. I hope Nintendo can match it.

It would also be good if they replaced the tablet with some sort of Sheikah Armlet allowing one-handed manipulation of the ‘apps’ so you could fight at the same time. You could add in some sort of energy shield, a telekinesis power to lift up objects and monsters and a hookshot/grapple device to traverse with not unlike the baller in Fortnite.

You mean the sheikah scope, not camera

I'm glad we didn't have to deal with the monotony of equipping and unequipping iron boots in BotW, but I recognize the unfortunate downside to this is that all the bodies of water in Hyrule are immersion-breakingly shallow. Oh well.

I wonder, when they first designed the game, if the divine beasts would give us greater power and the water one would've let us dive underwater. I bet they scrapped this idea so that the game would have more freedom so you could explore everything at the beginning rather then creating boundaries.

nice
"under the sea under the sea"

I don't understand this very recent trend of video game articles arbitrarily putting down the graphics of Legend Of Zelda titles. Why is a Nintendo Life article about the game of the decade leading with an awful line like "Sure, the artistic direction might not be to everyone's taste..."? What, do you mean the two people on the planet who dislike the art style of Breath Of The Wild? This is written as if there is some well-known established backlash of Zelda fans that Nintendo Life readers are already aware of who actively dislike the art style of this masterclass of a game, which is universally lauded for its highly-stylized graphics. The number of people who individually dislike the artistic direction of this game isn't sizeable enough to justify a mention in the leading line of an article on the topic. If this were an article about the Wind Waker or to a lesser extent the HD remaster of Twilight Princess, this line would make sense, as there actually was a respective split amongst fans due to the then-controversial cel-shaded art style of the former and the comparatively subtle HD improvements of the latter over its original release.

@Majora101 I agree, in fact I haven't heard of anyone who dislikes the art style. It's brilliant because just like Wind Waker, it can never look dated. The line feels odd, like it was written to pad a short article more than anything.

You can do the same thing out near Eventide Island. There's coral and fish out there as well. Nothing new in this video. Slow news day?

That doesn't look like a paradise, that looks like a parched wasteland.

@Majora101 @nintendoknife I spent the whole article distracted by that exact line. I was thinking the whole time 'was there a point in time that I missed in which it became assumed knowledge that BOTW's art style is thought of as divisisive?'. I then started to think 'doesn't this statement actually apply to every art style ever?'. Surely the assumed knowledge is that the artistic direction of any game could not possibly to everyones's taste, so it's not even worth noting.

@nintendoknife @Wraggadam1 Agreed, it's such a poorly-considered line to start with. Even if Breath Of The Wild's art style actually was divisive, it would still be a weird line to start this particular article with, given this read is meant to demonstrate how 'stunningly beautiful' the game is, even from angles the player is not meant to see.

More like you were meant to see it and then they dropped the feature. So this is not the great news you thought it was.

Actually, using the camera is not necessary.

I just attempted to recreate this, but could not seem to activate the camera.

However, I did manage to sneak underneath the dock and swim close to the edge of it and managed to recreate it that way.

EDIT: Upon reading previous comments and confirming it in my game just now, it is not the camera rune that you use, but the Scope feature on the Sheikah Slate. The result is as described in the article. That being said, it is still not necessary to do this.

“Not meant to see”

I don’t really understand this. This is a particularly shallow inlet next to a town the player is definitely expected to visit, whose contents are obscured only by tropical seawater - not known to be the most opaque of substances.

If you want to see the corals just look beneath you as you’re swimming. They’re there. Not as clear as in the video where all water effects have been removed, but hardly ‘hidden’ or ‘unseen’.

It seems a bit of a stretch to speculate that the existence of coral beds in a tropical seaside town suggests diving mechanics were scrapped by the dev team, when the only thing their inclusion really suggests is that you’re swimming around in a tropical seaside town.

@Blizzia Yeah, but I liked using the iron boots in Ocarina. It felt magical to walk down to the entrance of the water temple! Also, the swimming in Majora's mask is awesome, especially in the N64 version(the N64 frame rate is horrendous, but the swimming mechanic is better than the 3DS version).

I think you folks are onto something with the theory that this could be a feature in BotW2.

@Leon_Kennedy The lack of diving, and the total lack of caves were easily the biggest, most head scratching omissions. Especially the caves. Dont get me wrong, I love BOTW so much, but that such a huge overworld is missing one of the most identifiable aspects of a Zelda - dark, mysterious caverns - it honestly hindered the immersion for me a bit. And yeah, same with the lack of underwater gameplay.

Looks beautiful.