For all the accomplishments the Breath of the Wild has as a game (one of the best ever by all accounts), it comes as a big surprise to hear that within the code of the game there is a rudimentary link to the system used in creating Nintendo’s adorable Mii characters.
In a thread on Twitter, user HEYimHeroic revealed that the NPCs found in Breath of the Wild are created on an advanced version of the Mii creator system. known as “UMiis” in the game files. UMiis are similar to Miis from the Wii U and 3DS with a majority of the same parameters. This, in turn, could be gerrymandered into forcing the appearance of Miis into the game. They used some examples with their own Mii, as well as Matt from the Wii Sports series of games and Barret, from Final Fantasy 7 and Smash Ultimate‘s recent 10.1.0 update.
Hi, Mii expert here. Turns out, the NPCs in TLoZ:BotW use an advanced version of the Mii format. This means that with modding, you can inject Miis into the game. :)
Thinking about opening commissions for Mii injects, both screenshot/images of your Mii and mod downloads! pic.twitter.com/8NfVr4zyqA
— i’m alice (@HEYimHeroic) January 4, 2021
The system doesn’t exactly make it easy to make the transition, as HEYimHeroic details. While, like the picture in the tweet above shows, general facial characteristics can be replicated in Breath of the Wild, hairstyles and Miis that have been designed for maximum chaos (you know the kind) are far less generous. If a certain hairstyle can’t be loaded, the game will swap it out for something that does exist for example.
HEYimHeroic, who had also created a database of Miis that exist within all of the Nintendo games, has said that they’d be open to the idea of doing commissions where they put user Miis in Breath of the Wild and see what came out as a result.
Breath of the Wild got a sequel announcement not too long ago – although we’ve heard little else since that announcement trailer. There’s every possibility that the NPCs will be built on the same platform as the first game so we could see a repeat of this modding breakthrough, but we’ll update you when we know more.
