What a long but rewarding process this one was. Sporadically, over the last 2 years, i've been slowly putting together this gallery of BotW shots (it's the first of maybe two or three) and i can easily say it's the game i've put the most time and effort into when it comes to a single screenshot run. I've taken just over 7000 pics and i'm now in the process of picking my favorites and posting them.
Of all the games out there, this one called out to me the most (screenshot wise) as it's absolutely filled with life, atmosphere and endless charm. When you add on a killer art style and tons of nostalgia for the series, the urge to see what i could pull from it became overwhelming.
The main thing i needed to even consider it though, was at least a freecam, and for years that seemed like it just wasn't going to happen. Until a miracle transpired and Etra0 released one after working on it for a year. He's a true hero. After messing with the freecam for a bit and really seeing the full potential of the game, i went on a mission to find a way to pause time, because if i was really going to get some fun, unique shots, that was also a necessity. After a bit of looking around online, i came across another hero, Postposterous. He had made some cheat tables for BotW and after getting in contact with him, he graciously helped me with not only a way to pause time, but a ton of other things that would make this game even more of a blast to take screenshots of. Pretty much anything i asked him for, he found a way to do, if he hadn't already had it working to begin with.
After a good bit of effort from Posty, and the freecam from Etra0, i now had a full screenshotting tool set. I had 2 different ways to pause time, i could control things like the time of day, weather, atmosphere, Lod, player coordinates, and much more. But probably most importantly, i could now make Link do different body/face animations on command, along with the having the ability to spawn different game objects with the wave of my weapon.
From there i started testing all the different animations and spawnable objects to see which ones would benefit me the most (and which ones would just crash the game), and after about 2 weeks of doing just that (there were thousands of combinations to try out), i made a keybind for every cheat table command i was going to use, which ended up filling the keyboard twice (every key had 2 commands binded to it)!
Finally, it was time to iron out the image quality details. Using Cemu's graphic pack options and Posty's Lod stuff, i pushed the in-game graphics as far as they could go (after figuring out what in-game anti-aliasing, Lod bias, etc, i liked best). I also added Reshade for additional anti-aliasing, debanding, and Dof, along with tweaking other settings shot by shot sometimes. The last hurdle was testing and settling on as high a resolution as i could manage, which turned out to be almost 11k.
Now that all that was done, it was time for the mods (a list of them is at the end of the gallery). This was an ongoing process as new mods kept getting released, but i can confidently say i tried/used at least 70% of the mods on Gamebanana. Threw in a couple Tears of the Kingdom mods too, just for good measure. I think i hovered around the 120 mark for most of this run. There are too many names to list here, but i am immensely thankful for each and every person that made a mod i used. I do have to give a shout out to 3 people though, who were crucial to what i was doing (NiceneNerd, Banan039 and Sabbertooth441).
As i journeyed through the game, i tried my best to bring out Link's character and charm as much as i could, and/or express what a player might feel as they played through the game. This was mostly made possible by the custom animations, either with them playing out normally, or catching them in an in-between state (For instance, to make it look like Link is sitting down, or grimacing at some decaying bones). This is where a lot of the earlier testing time went, just figuring out how i could use all the in-between animations. I also used my ability to spawn different objects to make a couple fun scenes, like King Rhoam knighting Link, a romantic sun setting date on the beach, or just a big ole birb taking a birdbath in the ocean, or to add a little more flair to shot like with additional butterflies, trees, fog, etc. I also extensively used the time of day ability to get the best lighting i could, and changed the the weather/atmosphere all around (sometimes mixing multiple contrasting ones together) to make things interesting. You'll see i used the cool looking Lost Woods fog a few times.
Anyway, all this is just scratching the surface on the experience of taking screenshots of this magical, massive game, but for the 3 people that actually made to the end of this, i don't want to bore you anymore than i already have! Thank you for reading all this nonsense and for (hopefully) enjoying the pics!
