Awesome Breath Of The Wild Mod Makes Zelda A Playable Character

Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series is oftentimes regarded as one of the greatest game series in the history of gaming, but one of the biggest criticisms is that you don't get to play as Princess Zelda. Well, a new mod for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild changes all of that.

Modders have been working tirelessly on importing Zelda as a playable character in Breath of the Wild, and as Twitter user Maxime Lebled points out, the unofficial mod features Zelda in place of Link, wielding the sword, wearing armor, and even has full-on voice compatibility.

This was no easy process, though. For those of you wondering why Nintendo just didn't add a patch to make Zelda playable, you have to consider that modders have been working on making Zelda playable in the game for the last couple of months and they're still not finished.

It required ripping the model from the Wii U version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and then proceeding to get the player bone data from Link. The modders then had to go through the painstaking process of re-rigging the bone to the model so that the movements, gait and poise better reflected how Zelda should move and behave. Rigging original games can sometimes take a while, but re-rigging existing characters can sometimes be a pain because you have to make sure everything aligns just right with a pre-existing model, which already has its own rigging setup.

But that's just part of the issue. There's also the painstaking process of having to modify the mesh data for some of the clothing sets that Link wore, but make them compatible for Zelda. In this case, not all of Link's clothes are usable by Zelda, but instead some of his outfits are modified into Zelda's alternate clothes. For instance, the dirty trousers and shirt that Link starts with in the Shrine of Resurrection are replaced with a dirty temple dress and sandals for Zelda.

Zelda appears in all of the cutscenes and can fight, jump, fly, glide, and even ride the horses, just like Link. There's a video demonstrating Zelda in action courtesy of YouTube outlet Trollsquad57.

I suppose now that the mod is up and out there, some people will likely want to see Nintendo make this sort of effort official in the next Legend of Zelda game.

Originally, executive producer Eiji Aonuma mentioned that if Zelda took over the role of being the savior and the fighter, then it would diminish the role of Link, since the Triforce is supposed to represent power (Ganon), wisdom (Zelda), and courage (Link).

Depending on how popular the mod is for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it could convince Nintendo in the next game to mix things up by, maybe, adding Zelda as a playable character option in the next game.