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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild runs at 900p docked and 720p undocked, and performs really well

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has two different resolutions. The Switch is going to make it even harder to fit relevant frame rate and resolution information into headlines.

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was on show in London last week, which gave the tech-heads at Digital Foundry a chance to check out the game and the Switch console, both of which release in early March.

If you don't have time to watch the full video, or you're tired of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild footage, here's the executive summary: there's a substantial improvement from the E3 2016 Wii U build, which had serious performance issues.

When docked and played on a big screen, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild runs at 900p. Undocked, in portable mode, it drops down to 720p.

The resolution drop, however, is probably why The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild holds an almost rock solid 30fps in both modes. The only time you'll see dips are during very heavy alpha and post-processing effect situations, and possibly sometimes from streaming issues.

The results are good enough to get the thumbs up from these incredibly tough critics, and although we haven't yet got footage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in its portable mode, their hands-on impressions are that it is "incredibly crisp" and ran very, very smoothly.

It's worthwhile watching the video if you're on the fence about the Switch, as there's a lot of discussion of the portable's potential, some of the user-friendly decisions Nintendo has made, and the hardware's place alongside home consoles.

It is, unfortunately, a real wait-and-see moment, as we're yet to see blockbuster-style games build specifically for the Switch. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is, of course, a port of a Wii U game. Super Mario Odyssey is where things will start to get pretty interesting.

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo Switch

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Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.
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