Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks even more breathtaking in 8K with ray tracing enabled

Breath of the Wild
(Image credit: Nintendo)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been upscaled to 8K with ray-tracing enabled by a YouTube channel that specializes in applying next-gen graphics and photorealistic visuals to modern games.

The channel responsible for making Hyrule look so beautiful is Digital Dreams who have also upscaled other games including Immortals Fenix Rising at 8K, and Star Wars Battlefront 2 with photo-realistic visuals

To really show off just how impressive this upscaling is, the footage shared shows 8K Link walking through Korok Forest, which is notorious for being the most demanding area in the game. This in-game location, which is already pretty nice to look at, now features the most serene-looking rivers in all of Hyrule thanks to ray tracing, which although commonplace on PS5 and Xbox Series X, isn't actually supported in Breath of the Wild. 

Obviously, this version of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild isn’t being played on an actual Nintendo Switch, and instead on a PC emulator, however, it has given fans a glimpse at what could (well, almost) be possible if Nintendo were to release the highly speculated Nintendo Switch Pro which is rumored to support 4K whilst docked. 

Breath of the Wild 2 is set to release sometime soon after it was recently reported that the game was “proceeding smoothly” and that more news is on the way for later this year. It’s also rumored that Nintendo plans to release a new console before March 2022. Could this be the upgraded version of the Nintendo Switch that we’re all hoping for?

For more Legend of Zelda upgrade content, take a look at our Breath of the Wild PC mods list

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.