It's finally happened: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild running 4K at 30 fps on a PC.
Of course, that means this isn't an official copy of the game from Nintendo. This was all possible thanks to the people behind the Wii U emulator that is CEMU.
Zelda: Breath Of The Wild In 4K Goodness
Before this development made rounds online, videos of Breath of the Wild being played on the PC already became widespread, but they all had a few troubling things in common — frame rate issue, missing visual elements, and more.
As evidenced by the clip YouTuber YamGaming uploaded, it looks like the CEMU team has been busy squashing bugs and improving performance and gameplay recently, as the game is now completely playable on the PC.
In short, all the Runes now work, allowing players to solve the puzzles in Shrines and clearing them to finish Breath of the Wild. Invisible grass and water and ground sinking have been done away with.
Hit up the video below to see what's in store:
For the record, the PC build YamGaming used to run Breath of the Wild in 4K is composed of an Intel Core i7-6700K, an Nvidia GTX 1070 G1 Gaming, and 16 GB of RAM, among other components.
Also, to get a closer look at the improvements, check out the video below for a side-by-side comparison between CEMU 1.7.3 and 1.7.4, the latest version with the fixes:
Breath Of The Wild Via An Emulator: A Moral Dilemma
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Nintendo isn't happy with Breath of the Wild being emulated on the PC, as the company has been taking down fan-made creations in the past, after all (read: Pokémon Prism and Pokémon Uranium).
The case this time around is, of course, no exception, but Nintendo has yet to make a direct statement regarding CEMU and how it's running Breath of the Wild.
Nonetheless, Nintendo makes its stance clear on emulators in general.
"The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs," the company's legal info reads.
Purchasing a copy of the game and just playing the CEMU version is more or less okay when it comes to financial matters, but the thing is, it's still not exactly what you'd call legal.
If nothing else, we get to see what Breath of the Wild in 4K looks like because of CEMU.
With all said and done, what do you think of the Wii U emulator and how it's delivering Breath of the Wild in 4K? Feel free to drop by our comments section below and let us know.
