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Summary
- A nearly entirely AI-made Zelda: Breath of the Wild PC port has arrived.
- While PC port was created almost entirely with Claude Code, but humans reviewed and tested the code.
- Quality-of-life features include DLSS, FSR3, VRR, and 30-120fps.
We've seen the fast-growing, AI-assisted retro and modern video game port scene expand rapidly over the past few weeks, with Switch titles like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee recently getting static recompilations for PC. Now, a higher-profile Nintendo title has received the same treatment: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The team behind the project says that Savage Wind Recomp is based on LASRecomp, the Link's Awakening recompilation that recently dropped. As expected, a note at the top of the Savage Wind Recomp GitHub page states that "nearly all of the code, tooling, reverse engineering, and documentation" was written with Claude Code. However, the project was "directed, tested, and reviewed by a human."
The Breath of the Wild port is described as "playable," including the Shrine of Resurrection and The Great Plateau, but it's unclear whether any game-breaking bugs appear later in the game. It reportedly runs at 60fps with sound, voice, the HUD, and saving and loading, on moderately powerful PC hardware.
Key quality of life features include DLSS, FSR3, and VRR
The port requires you to dump your Zelda: Breath of the Wild Switch cartridge
Like with all recently released PC port recompilations, Savage Wind Recomp requires you to own a copy of the game that you've dumped from your own Switch cartridge (it needs to be version 1.8.2). Of course, you can also get this file elsewhere, but I don't condone that, and it's illegal.
Like LASRecomp, the Savage Wind Recomp requires an extracted Switch .NSP file. Quality-of-life features include support for higher and lower framerates, including 30fps, 60fps, 90fps, and 120fps. There are also other PC-specific features like DLSS, FSR3, and VRR.
Early impressions on Reddit are pretty positive, with a few users saying they were able to run the game at a relatively smoothly 60-70fps on high-end hardware. The project is still very early, but it's interesting to see a more high-profile Switch title get a PC port. I haven't tried Savage Wind Recomp myself yet, but I hope to take it for a spin this weekend. One thing is for sure, Nintendo likely isn't happy about how quickly these Switch ports are being pushed out.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild already runs pretty solidly on various Switch PC emulators, and Cemu offers several mods for the Wii U version. Still, a native PC port could open up the door for more comprehensive mods and lower overall hardware overhead if it eventually gets more optimized.