Zelda Breath Of The Wild’s Technical Director Talks About Adding VR Support To The Game

As many readers will know, the Nintendo Labo VR Kit will also be compatible with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the near future. But, how did this collaboration of VR and Zelda action emerge?

Thanks to Nintendo’s Takuhiro Dohta, we now know! The technical designer for Breath of the Wild recently spoke at length about adding VR support into the game – and how players can enhance their experience with it. We previously posted about some rough translations of Dohta’s comments, but now Nintendo has provided the full English transcript.

It’s a pretty interesting read, and you can check it out below.

Hello, I’m Takuhiro Dohta, the technical director for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo Labo: VR Kit is out now, and included in this kit are the Toy-Con VR Goggles. We’ve created a little something that uses this Toy-Con creation in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Once you’ve updated the game’s software, it’s easy to use. During play, open the menu screen, select System, and select Options. Then set the Toy-Con VR Goggles option to ON, and simply insert your Nintendo Switch console into the VR Goggles and attach its Joy-Con controllers to the sides. When you look through the VR Goggles, you’ll see the world of Hyrule stretching out before you in VR!

The controls and overall game content are the same as normal, but you’ll be able to get a new perspective on Hyrule. And as you look around with the VR Goggles, the in-game camera will move accordingly.

It’s possible to switch the display method at any point in your adventure. We recommend taking a look through the VR Goggles when there’s something interesting to see, like a location with a great view, a favourite character, or a favourite piece of equipment.

The concept of this update is to add a little twist to the world of Hyrule to give players, even those who’ve played the game a lot, a reason to come back and get even more enjoyment out of the game. This is why we have designed this new feature so that it can be used with your existing save data.

The idea for this started when the Nintendo Labo development team gave us a demonstration of the VR Goggles for the first time. The experience was quite a surprise, and I started thinking that maybe we’d be able to do something with them in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. First, we thought about lots of different things; locations that would be nice to see in VR, enemies that would be fun to fight… In the end, The Legend of Zelda development team reached the conclusion that, rather than change the game, we should let you play it as it is, and instead just make it so that you can use the VR Goggles to see whatever parts you want.

Since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a third-person game – meaning you play while watching your character, Link, on screen – our challenge became coming up with a way to create a fun VR experience without changing that core aspect of the game’s design. Ultimately, we arrived at a VR Goggles experience that’s a bit different from the one you’ll find in Nintendo Labo: VR Kit, so I hope you’ll give it a try.

If you’re not a fan of the motion-controlled camera, you can turn it off by adjusting the Aim with motion controls setting under Options, and enjoy the VR experience that way instead. Even with the motion-controlled camera turned off, I hope this new experience is enough of a twist to give players a reason to try the VR visuals out.

One of the core goals during development for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was to make it a “multiplicative gameplay” experience, in which players could find their own fun and find their own ways to play. The nature of Nintendo Switch multiplies the fun further by giving you the freedom to play wherever and whenever you like. I hope that by creating yet one more new way to play, with the VR Goggles, the fun can multiply again!