US Nintendo Patent Seemingly Details Breath of the Wild 2 Camera System

Posted on September 07 2022 by Kora Burton

One of my favorite pastimes in Breath of the Wild is climbing up to high places and seeing how far I can glide down. Sometimes when I come in for a landing, there are enemies to dispatch, and while airborne, there’s nothing better than whipping out my trusty bow to fell enemies before my feet ever touch the ground. The problem? Sometimes aiming and making sure the arrows fly true can get pretty awkward and frustrating. This is an especially accurate sentiment when those tricky Bokoblins are standing right underneath Link as he descends.

It seems Nintendo might just be attempting to address this type of issue in Breath of the Wild 2. In a US patent filed by the company, originally filed in May 2021 and republished on August 30th, 2022, we have access to a treasure trove of information that seems earmarked for a future Zelda title.The patent includes diagrams featuring a character equipped with a bow and using a glider, along with a detailed explanation of how issues that come about when a player attempts to shoot while falling or in midair might be solved in future gamemaking.

This patent was originally filed in May 2021 and was first published in December 2021 amongst other Nintendo patents, as reported here. There have been no major changes to the patent’s description or exhibits between the two published iterations of the patent.

Here’s how Nintendo phrased the purpose of the patent:

…the present application discloses a storage medium, an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and a game processing method capable of increasing the degree of freedom of the direction in which a player character performs an action while naturally expressing the posture of the player character in the air.

If the official summary from the patent’s “Background and Summary” section is a bit jargony for you, you’re not alone. Here’s the bottom line: the patent dives deeply into the mechanics involved in making sure that the game camera’s functionality and a player’s ability to aim while shooting work together rather than against each other. Of particular interest to me is the variety of positions Nintendo is proposing the player character may take when in midair: “normal falling,” “low-velocity falling,” “diving falling,” “backward falling,” and “high-velocity falling.” I don’t know about you, but I want to find out what it looks like to play as Link and shoot an arrow while diving from the sky — and soon!

The patent includes 19 drawings, including diagrams of the player character in motion, illustrations of an unnamed game system and its inner mechanics (clearly the Switch), and flowcharts for the various systems and processing methods the patent highlights.

While Breath of the Wild 2 is not explicitly listed as the game for which this new patented system is intended, Breath of the Wild is listed as a referenced publication on the first page of the document.

You can read Nintendo’s new patent in full right here. It’s definitely worth a look.

This patent is not the first filed by Nintendo to relate to the upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel. Back in 2021, this and a handful of other patents hinted at new gameplay mechanics in the sequel, and earlier this year, Breath of the Wild‘s tech supervisor filed a patent relating to in-game clothing.

What do you think of Nintendo’s recent US patent? Do you think we’ll see more falling and aiming motion mechanics in Breath of the Wild 2? Did you notice anything in the patent that I didn’t? Let us know down below in the comments — we’d love to learn from you!

Sources: United States Patent and Trademark Office (via Go Nintendo)

Editor’s Note: While this patent was recently republished by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the patent itself was first filed in May 2021 and first published in December 2021, as reported by Zelda Dungeon here. This article has been edited to better reflect this information.