Breath of the Wild has gotten quite a few mods over the years, but few with the scope and ambition of Second Wind, a story-based expansion adding new characters, side-quests, and bosses.
“Second Wind is a large-scale expansion for Breath of the Wild that aims to add new content to the game in a similar way to official DLCs,” the projects creators write over on its Discord server. “We’ve also decided to take things a step further by providing various overhauls, bug fixes, tweaks and and new gameplay elements for players to explore.” It’s currently built for the Wii U version of the game, but a Switch version is a possibility down the road (mods are only available via emulation and on hacked consoles).
Here’s a video showing of development’s latest progress:
In addition to adding dozens of new animals, weapons, and enemies, Second Wind also includes changes ranging from tweaking the atmosphere in each of the game’s 120 Shrines to make them feel more unique, to more detailed bow quivers to make them “more aesthetically pleasing.” According to a project wiki, Second Wind also incorporates a lot of elements from other existing mods, rebalancing things such as crafting, horse riding, and the final fight against Ganon. It even includes masks ported to the game from Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, which give Link new abilities.
With over 50 people contributing to the project, the mod page for Second Wind says its currently 60% complete, but players are already beta testing it over through the group’s Discord. There’s even a roadmap with tentative plans for when remaining features will be completed. A new underground crypt mini-dungeon, for example, has a target completion date of June. Maybe by then we’ll have news of when Nintendo is planning to release Breath of the Wild 2, but in the meantime it’s nice to see enthusiastic fans moving ahead with their own unofficial expansions.
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