Nintendo recently revealed the Switch is about midway through its life cycle. There's no telling what innovative piece of hardware Nintendo will come up with next, nor how well the Switch will have sold by the time it's replaced. The console has already sold more than 90 million units and is very likely to sail past the 100 million milestone, as well as the lifetime sales of the Wii, at some point in 2022.
Although the Switch is only halfway done, a lot of the games the console will be remembered for are already here. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which is now the best-selling Mario Kart game ever. However, the game that might well go down as the Switch's very best once all is said and done could well be The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
The amount of content Nintendo managed to cram onto one Switch game is remarkable, not to mention the depth of its story. However, the most striking thing about BOTW is its art design. The cel-shading truly adds something special to the game and also aided its developers in covering up the fact it didn't have the same power as its rival consoles to play with.
One player couldn't help but wonder what BOTW might look like without cel-shading though, and the screenshot above is the result. Microflamer shared some cel-shading-less shots on Reddit and initially, the reaction was pretty negative. Some commenters compared it to the GTA remastered trilogy's graphics. A slight on Rockstar's new release, and probably a compliment to BOTW's team considering when the game launched and the tools they had to work with.
Others have said the shiny, almost plastic-like appearance of Zelda and Link reminds them of Toy Story. Whether that's a compliment or not is unclear. The biggest takeaway is that even though removing cel-shading arguably makes BOTW look less impactful, not everybody seems to hate it. Cel-shading quite clearly adds something very important to the landmark Switch title though, and we will hopefully be reminded of that when BOTW's sequel launches, maybe by this time next year