Breath of the Wild’s minor characters are likely advanced Miis

For years, fans have speculated that Nintendo was using Miis to build many NPCs (non-player characters) in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Many share similar characteristics to Miis – the shape of their face, eyes, nose, and mouth, for example – and modders know they were built with a file format called “UMii”. Now, however, we have even more evidence of the design and origins of the cast. A Mii expert with the handle HEYimHeroic discovered that it’s possible to convert and import traditional Miis – the ones you can create on Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Switch – in-game.

HEYimHeroic pointed out that Mii and UMii file formats are not the same. “The file formats are extremely different”, the modder explained on Twitter. “This is why it takes me a while to import Miis into the game. There are a lot of conversions going on, please don’t go wrong. There are clear differences between the two. NPCs in Breath of the Wild have slightly more detailed hairstyles, for example, and full-sized bodies. And although all of the fictional races in the game use the UMii format, HEYimHeroic explains, only the characters Hylian and Sheikah “use Mii type values. Even in this case, the UMiis do not support moles and select Mii hairstyles, the modder said in a series of posts on Reddit and Twitter.