One of the theories that some Nintendo fans have held for years is that the company used the Miis to create the various NPCs that populate the kingdom of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Well, now that same idea seems to gain more strength after the discovery of a modder.
Non-player characters in Zelda and Mii Maker
Only if you are a very fan of Nintendo, one of those who are interested in every last detail that surrounds the company, will you know that for years there have been a large number of users who have theorized with the idea that the non-player characters of Zelda from Switches had been created from the Mii . And they had no reason to believe it because features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth were similar to those of these avatars that you can create on different consoles such as Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS or the most recent Nintendo Switch.
Well, now it seems that everything is a little closer to being confirmed, although it should always be Nintendo itself that gives or not the definitive yes to this question that many are asking. The modder HEYimHeroic has discovered how to import these traditional designs of the Mii that we all know to Breath of the Wild and has told about it on Twitter.
To begin with, you have to know that the files used to load these characters in the game are different from those that store the Mii data, but the names of both formats are clearly similar. Those of the avatars that users can create are called Mii and those that correspond to these non-player Zelda characters are called UMii.
However, since they are different, the conversion process is not as simple as directly renaming, dragging and dropping. There is a lot of background work because the characters seen in Zelda have more details, such as more defined hairs, somewhat more stylized features, and ultimately a much more aesthetic finish to perfectly match the game’s own design.
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
Even so, as can be seen in the screenshots shared by this modder, there are characters that have been taken from their original Mii to that new version that is seen in the game. So with the right tools, the process is much quicker, and for Nintendo, using Mii Maker would have saved considerable development time .
Because if not, you would have to resort to conventional processes if you don’t want repeated characters to appear in different areas of the map. Which is not that it is a great inconvenience, but if you want to take care of the details there are things like these that can make a difference.
Of course, beyond the benefit for Nintendo itself and the development of the game, what many will be thinking is how they could at least convert their own Mii. Because visiting one of the towns or inhabited areas of the game and finding the “copy” of yourself is fun. Because who has never wanted to see themselves in a game? Although it was as a secondary character and not a protagonist.
