Nintendo Releases Zelda: Breath of the Wild Patch to Improve Framerate

There are two things critics and gamers have almost universally agreed upon when it comes to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: it’s a great game, but its framerate is not so great when played on a TV. In fact, the game’s framerate has been pretty lousy since launch, but it appears that Nintendo has finally taken action to improve it.

Ever the tight-lipped company, Nintendo was oddly cryptic about the update. “Adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience,” reads the lone sentence in the patch notes for Version 1.1.1 of Breath of the Wild. This is a far cry from the detailed list of bullet notes most developers provide when releasing an update to a game. Given Breath of the Wild’s known framerate problems, however, fans immediately assumed Nintendo had taken steps to stabilize the game and got to investigating.

NeoGAF users with the game began reporting that some areas of the game that were previously well-known to be plagued by serious framerate drops — such as the Korok Forest — seemed to be running smoother. Further, both Wii U and Switch players claimed to be seeing the difference, with things running better in both docked and undocked mode on Switch.

Meanwhile, over on Reddit, while some users report that the framerate does still drop at times, it appears to be much improved. In particular, players on both forums claim to experience more stable gameplay during boss fights and heavily forested areas, two portions Breath of the Wild that are particularly taxing and have caused many a framerate drop for players in the past.

To demonstrate just how stark the difference is before and after the patch, one player put together a video showing himself running around in heavily vegetated areas before and after installing the patch.

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