Zelda: Breath of the Wild NPCs are actually Miis, modder confirms

Actually The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildThe character modeling really follows Nintendo’s Mii format. This means that an enterprising modder has found a way to make NPCs look like specific Miis.

Twitter user EHEYimHeroic, who has assiduously cataloged over 100 official Miis on their Mii library site, discovered over the weekend that Breath of the wild NPCs “use an advanced version of the Mii format” called UMii. “The UMi have almost all the same settings as the Wii U / 3DS Miis, with a few minor differences here and there,” Alice wrote on Reddit Monday.

For the record, there has long been speculation (since the game’s launch in 2017) that Breath of the wild used the Mii format to build NPCs to populate the game’s vast open world. Alice’s work confirms this and also reveals that Miis can be directly imported into the game.

Obviously, the artistic style of a Mii and the characters Breath of the wild is quite different; but both basically use the same attributes and parameters. It is a convenient way for the game to generate unique NPCs on a large scale. The modder figured out what their Mii would look like in Breath of the wild, although the game converted the Mii hairstyle (which was not one of the Breath of the wild hair options) into one that is supported. (Hats and other headwear are also simply converted to different hairstyles.)

EHEYimHeroic credits the Breath of the wild Discord modding with a lot of assistance, especially for testing and providing screenshots of Mii conversions in-game.

Import Miis to Breath of the wild isn’t necessarily laborious, but it does require a modified Nintendo Switch, or Wii U, and then extracting and editing a UMii file from the game to take on the same attributes as the Mii file. It also replaces a specific NPC, so you’ll have to find where they are and visit them in the world to see for yourself.