REDMOND, Wash. — Video game studio Parakalo announced that their upcoming release, Divine Infinite Ultimata, was inspired by their idea to make Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild.
“Coming up with an idea for a video game is incredibly difficult; we played a lot of different genres to get a feel for what we wanted to do with ours. But when I was playing through Breath of the Wild, I was struck with inspiration: what if we just make a slightly uglier version of this exact game? It was a revolutionary idea,” said Divine Infinite Ultimata director Brandon-Lee Fuller. “Taking all the mechanics and art style of Breath of the Wild, but making the protagonist a guy wearing more clothes? It’s never been done before. That’s why we’re so excited about what we’re doing here. I hope fans have fun cooking, climbing, and killing goblin-like creatures all over the wonderful landscape we’ve created for them. But with microtransactions or something.”
Despite the influence, some developers at Parakalo have denied that the game is “literally just us doing Breath of the Wild but changing some of the characters.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that we’re doing an exact copy of Breath of the Wild. Open world games have existed for a very long time,” said developer Isabella-Rose Beck. “And our game improves on that formula by having things like towers you can climb to unlock new areas of your map, the ability to climb any rock that you see, a gliding mechanic, cooking, a stamina bar, mini temples all the around the map that each have one puzzle or skill challenge, these cool little enemies called koboblins, weapon durability, and Zelda. Did Breath of the Wild do any of that? They did? OK then yeah, actually, we are making Breath of the Wild. But that’s still a really good idea, that game fuckin rules.”
At press time, Nintendo released a new trailer for Breath of the Wild 2, which fans quickly dismissed as derivative of Divine Infinite Ultimata.