A number of Zelda fans recently shared on Reddit that they are working on a new mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that will allow for two players to play the game together in cooperative multiplayer.  Little is known about the mod so far, but a number of screenshots have been shared, which look promising.

From what we’ve gathered, the mod is a serious undertaking, perhaps even larger than it may seem at first.  A commenter on Reddit shared that the mod is “very VERY early in development”, and only works locally on a single shared PC.  The mod also requires two Cemu clients (cemu is an experimental Wii U emulator) operating at once, which is “really unstable”.  According to a separate post on NeoGAF, the mod works by changing the location of an NPC within the game, changing the model to Link, and then giving control of that NPC to a second player within the same game as the first player.

Sounds simple enough, but apparently not so.  While the original commenter on Reddit stated that he expected the project to take “many months”, the mod’s creator Fooni shared that he believed the “multiplayer mod won’t be ready in a few years”.

Whether this mod will last remains to be seen, as Nintendo does not have the most forgiving track record when it comes to allowing for fan modifications/adaptations of their IP.  In regards to Breath of the Wild specifically, a fan recently accomplished the remarkable feat of turning the modern Switch title into a classic NES-style adventure, only to then have it shut down by Nintendo weeks later, so the future of this new Zelda multiplayer mod are yet uncertain.

Updates on the mod’s progress can be tracked on the group’s Discord server.