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Japanese mom/hardcore Zelda fan makes huge hand-drawn map of Breath of the Wild’s world【Photos】

Oct 24, 2019

And what’s even more amazing is the incredible way she made it.

At some point in the history of video games, hardware become powerful enough, and gamers passionate enough, that developers could start creating worlds that were too vast to be memorized. Because of that, it’s become pretty common for modern games to include in-game maps, especially if they’re designed as exploration-heavy, open-world experiences.

Sure enough, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has an in-game map that you can bring up at any time. Just press the minus button on the Switch controller and you can pan and zoom all over it, helping plot your course across the biggest, most ambitiously lifelike version of Hyrule in the 33-year history of the franchise.

Or, if you happen to be Japanese Twitter user @itika89, just ask your mom if you can borrow her amazingly detailed, painstakingly accurate, 100-percent hand-drawn map of Breath of the Wild’s game world.

This isn’t some vague sketch depicting Hyrule in only the broadest of strokes, either. Each and every road, river, and ridge is present and accounted for, with topographical lines representing the height of the game’s countless peaks and valleys. In addition, @itika89’s mom has also marked the location of every hidden Korok Seed she’s uncovered (a total of 900 are scattered across the realm), as well as the game’s 120 shrines. Also listed are the locations of periodically respawning mini-bosses like the giant Hinox, Stone Talus, and Lynel monsters, and she’s even marked where certain cooking pots and replenishing items can be found.

▼ Oh, and Mom’s map is massive.

Looking at the labor of love, “Wow,” is the first word that comes to mind, quickly followed by its Y-word brethren “Wait…why?!?”As mentioned above, Breath of the Wild gives you an in-game map right from the get-go that automatically marks the location of shrines and seeds, and, in a very user-friendly move by Nintendo, also lets you place stamps on the digital map. However, the number of stamps you can have on your in-game map at any time tops out at 100, and you have to choose from a handful of pre-set designs (like a sword, gemstone, or skull mark). You can’t add text, and even if you could, Breath of the Wild has way more than 100 places of interest in its game world, and Mom wanted a complete, proper annotated visual guide to Hyrule, so she had no choice but to make her own.

Twitter commenters were deeply reverent, reacting with “A legendary hero has appeared,” and “Your mom is way more hardcore than I am,” but we haven’t got to what might be the most impressive part of the whole thing. Because of how huge Breath of the Wild’s world is, pretty early on the player encounters wild horses which you can catch and ride, to speed up the process of getting from Point A to Point B. But @itika89 mom? She skipped all the horsey action and made the entire map by adventuring only on foot.

So yeah, your parents may tell you about how they used to walk to school in the snow when they think you’re too pampered and lazy, but @itika89’s mom can tell him “When I saved the world, I walked to Hyrule Castle in whatever weather the game threw at me.”

Source: Twitter/@itika89 via Otakomu
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he still remembers when the original Legend of Zelda’s map felt unbelievably huge.


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