Nintendo recently released a patch for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that boosted the game’s frame rate for a noticeably better performance, particularly on the Nintendo Switch. Outdoor areas like hills, mountains, terrain which Link needs to traverse to get from A to B were previously locked in 20FPS, a number which has now been raised to 30FPS unless frames run past a 33.3 millisecond render time. Even from a cursory glance, the visual differences between the current patch (1.11) and patch 1.10 are marked, with the current version delivering a more consistently smoother gameplay experience.
Impressively, the benefits of the patch apply to both docked and handheld mode, with handheld mode having an edge. The same level of improvement can’t be said of the Nintendo Wii U, which seems to display a marginally improved frame rate that is more consistent with the previous patch.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s first open-world style game in the Legend of Zelda franchise, a standard which is set to remain.
