Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild basically uses sophisticated Miis as NPCs

If you are Nintendo and need a lot of non-playable characters (NPCs) for your big success Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, What do you do? Apparently, you can use your Mii creation tool to generate them. Twitter User and the self-proclaimed Mii Alice expert (@HEYimHeroic) found that some of the minor characters in the game world (shopkeepers, city dwellers, etc.) are based on Mii characters, and Miis can be brought directly into the game – albeit with a lot of effort.

It has been speculated before that Breath of the WildThe NPCs of were in some way related to the Miis (especially after the discovery that their game files were labeled UMiis), but Alice’s discovery reveals that the Miis can be mapped directly in the game, with only a few exceptions.

Image: @HEYimHeroic

These characters in Breath of the Wild are not exactly Miis, as you can see just by looking at a photo of them. UMii files have many of the same attributes as Mii files, and the game interprets them in the characters you can see in the game. The consequence of this is that it is relatively simple to convert a Mii to UMii, as they have basically the same attributes. This will bring your Mii to life in the game and in the artistic style of the game.

If you really want to put your Mii Breath of the Wild, you will need a modified Wii U or Switch (although this may be obvious). The process involves extracting and editing an existing game character’s .bumii file to match the values ​​of your Mii and then visiting them in the game. Apparently, the Zelda Modding Discord is reasonably active if you really want to delve into the system, and Alice credits this for helping them test their hypotheses.

If all of this looks like a lot of work or you don’t want to modify your console, Alice mentioned that they are receiving commissions, although it seems that they have already received many requests. These, incidentally, occurred exactly as expected.

There are many characters in the game that were not created that way. Main characters like Link, Zelda, Mipha and just about anyone who is an important part of the story will be made in the traditional way, like custom 3D models.

Leave the fact that some Breath of the Wild the characters are basically Mii characters with heavy skin, with some extra modifications as a lesson: you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel to get a system that works. If there’s anything you’ve worked hard on, like Nintendo seems to have done with the Mii console, think of other ways to use it. This is not just good game design; it’s good life advice – although we hope its results are not as scary as Breath of the Wild-ified Miis are sometimes.