While the challenge of modders continues on the net to the sound of 8K videos and Ray Tracing of Zelda Breath of the Wild, there are those who find it much more interesting to hunt for the secrets and still little known features of Eiji Aonuma’s open world masterpiece.
As a great fan of the Link epic, the amateur developer and content creator known as Postposterous tried to find out what lies behind the particular system adopted by the developers of Zelda BOTW in managing a little-known feature of the Nintendian blockbuster: the tan rate in desert areas.
Once in the sunniest regions of Hyrule, our intrepid alter-ego tends to acquire a reddish color due to a percentage system which, it is assumed, was originally envisaged as an ingame element only to be relegated to a mere visual parameter. : Link’s tanning rate in desert areas reaches in fact maximum value of 4%. The youtuber and modder thus wondered what could ever happen to Link by forcing this parameter to bring it to much higher values.
Taking advantage of the well-established reprogramming techniques to access Zelda Breath of the Wild ingame content and “hidden” installation files, the author of this experiment showed what would happen to Link by remaining alone the scorching Sun of Gerudo for too long without the due “protection” offered to him, in fact, by blocking the tan rate at 4%.
Observing the youtuber’s video, you can see Link gradually take on a reddish color on the most exposed areas of the skin and, once he has overcome a 10% tan, completely assume a black color to represent (in a decidedly drastic way) the burns caused by the prolonged exposure to the sun.
