We spoke with “Things You Didn’t Know About Breath of the Wild” series creator Max Blumenthal about the history and future of his show

Over the past couple years, Max Blumenthal has been going deep to find interesting things about Breath of the Wild that many people might not know. It’s easy to roll one’s eyes at this overused format of video on YouTube, but Blumenthal has done more than his share of homework. He alone has put in over 5,000 hours into Breath of the Wild, and he also has a network of communities and individual that he collaborates with. The highlights he brings to his videos are truly unique, ranging from unseen character interactions, to useful bugs, to exposing weird hiccups found in the game’s coding. You can find a playlist of these videos, including the most recent one, on GameSpot’s official YouTube channel.

We wrote to Max with a series of questions we thought would be interesting to gain more insight into him and his videos, as well as some thoughts for the series as it becomes “X Things You Didn’t Know About Tears of the Kingdom.” His responses revealed a lot of unique insight into the game, the communities surrounding it, and his own personality. You can read our interview below.

ZU: What first drew you into Breath of the Wild’s combat?

Max: When I first started playing Breath of the Wild in August 2017, I already had past history with Zelda. I was a fan of most of the mainline titles, such as Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, The Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess. But I also was a huge fan of fighting games (I was the main stage camera operator for EVO for 9 years.) Back then, I specifically loved BlazBlue. While I wasn’t too great head to head with other players, I absolutely loved labbing combos in training mode. I started making combo videos in various games such as Marvel vs Capcom 3, Soulcalibur, and even Tales games, such as Tales of Vesperia. I still continue to do combos and combat videos for GameSpot whenever its needed, such as Mortal Kombat 11, Guilty Gear Strive, and Astral Chain.

Because of my history of Zelda and combo videos, I saw some potential in Breath of the Wild‘s combat system with its parries, bullet time, and flurry rush system to basically make combos of my own. I think the Bomb Parry was the initial spark that kickstarted my engine to look for more tech back then. After that, I continued to mess with the game engine and its combat. It was apparent that, after my Advanced Combat Tech YouTube video and my Lynel combat clips on Reddit, I was onto something. I was going into uncharted territory; no one had seen stuff like this before. I was using techniques such as Jump Cancelling, Bomb Parries, and Switch Cancelling, and later found the Bow Spin. I was technically the grandfather of Breath of the Wild advanced combat. The first Breath of the Wild combat montage was the first serious attempt at making a combo video. Over the years, many players became a lot better than me though, haha.

ZU: What made you stick with Breath of the Wild versus other games, like Horizon Zero Dawn?

Max: Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West are both great games, and I really do enjoy Guerilla Games’ work. But, the game engine is the lifeblood of emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay that is created by the player is much more rewarding than pre-scripted events made by the developer. As Breath of the Wild‘s developers said during the Breaking Conventions GDC talk, they incorporated both a physics and chemistry engine into the game. These engines are what makes the world feel alive with the thousands of combinations and interactions everything has. Most open world games have waypoints, quests with storylines, and enemies to battle along the way. Breath of the Wild has these as well, but then it layers on these other complex systems on top. This creates moments that have players constantly hitting the Switch capture button. I’m sure you’ve seen clips of players setting up traps behind an impersonating Yiga assassin with a fully Stasis’d tree that kills them the moment the conversation ends.

Those are the moments that make it to Twitter, not some cool scripted areas in regular gameplay. The design of open-ended gameplay leading to multiple answers to the same problem is the base of the Breath of the Wild stew. Then you mix in the day/night cycle, weather, animal and enemy behaviors, NPC’s schedules and massive conversation trees for full flavor. Once I fully understood this from playing it enough, I stuck around for the long term. Also, Link is cool as hell.

ZU: What’s your favorite mode of transportation in Breath of the Wild, and why?

Max: Unfortunately, because I play for work and not casually for fun anymore, I play for efficiency. I need be able to capture footage quickly. So, I constantly use BLSS and Windbombs to get to locations as fast as possible to capture whatever I need. As for my favorite developer intended way, the Master Cycle Zero is hands down my favorite, probably because I’m a rider myself!

ZU: Can you explain the reason you wear your specific outfit in your videos? Do you plan on using any of the fancy new outfits seen in the trailers, or finding your “go-to” outfit as soon as possible?

Max: The main inspiration is Taokaka from BlazBlue, as I always played her in a white colored outfit. At that point back in late 2017, I rarely saw any players choose specific clothing to represent themselves. The big Zelda YouTubers back then, such as Nassi or Mety, often wore what was needed for the video, but weren’t recognizable otherwise. This outfit was basically my watermark and became recognizable over the years.

I would like to try the fancy new outfits seen in the trailers, but for work purposes I need to stick to my guns. I hope all of the original equipment is back in Tears of the Kingdom.

ZU: Your “Things You Didn’t Know” series on GameSpot has been an incredible source of random, fascinating information. How do you come across all of the things you include?

Max: Over the years, I’ve cast a pretty wide spiderweb of places I gather information from. This includes the obvious places, like Twitter, YouTube searches, Reddit, and Discord. I have my own channel with some people throwing a couple tips my way, but that’s never enough. If I find something from a YouTube video, I also do some further research and add an additional fact, rather than just straight up taking the information. I constantly comb over the Creating a Champion book for any images or info that hasn’t been talked about very much. I also go to many Japanese games media sites; like Famitsu, IGN Japan, and Automaton, and do some research because the Japanese and international Breath of the Wild communities don’t mingle too much. They often have some info sometimes we’ve never come across.

But that usually still isn’t enough. Because it is so late in Breath of the Wild’s life I have to dig much deeper than just clips and articles: I have to go into source code. I have several contacts to help me find information, such as SMMFO, Swiffy, Legendoflinkk, Letmethinkofausername, and many others. Websites I use include leotelino’s BOTW Source Code, MrCheeze’s Event Viewer, TheCuttingRoomFloor, and more.

Glitches are also a part of the “Things You Didn’t Know” series, which I use as sparingly as possible because I know many casual viewers will start to zone out on complex mechanics explanations. I tend to focus more on the interesting end result, such as diving into deep waters and going to outer space, rather than explain exactly how the process worked. Most of these are found and researched within the Breath of the Wild speedrunning community. The work to actually do these glitches is absolutely painstaking, and I hope the viewers understand just how much work it is to understand and replicate these situations. Examples include smuggling the Sand Seal out of Gerudo Desert to Puffer Beach, or IST/WMC glitches, Memory Storage, Blue Hyrule, and many more. These involved hundreds of hours of tedious work for a mere 20 seconds in a video. With eight separate profiles on my Switch, both with a normal and Master Mode file with different points of the game unlocked and different glitches completed or ready to go in many of them, I usually have any place in the game’s timeline ready to capture as quickly as possible.

ZU: We imagine your video series is going to take a small break to allow everyone to find all the major stuff on their own in Tears of the Kingdom. What kind of plans do you have when you start releasing videos again?

Max: Combing through social media will obviously be a place to look for interesting facts from other players, but I’m also pretty confident in my ability to start finding things immediately. Because I know the Breath of the Wild game engine like the back of my hand, and already have a huge baseline understanding of the game, I’ll likely find some things pretty quickly on my own. GameSpot already had a massive Zelda audience well before I was brought on board. I only put gas on the flame with my knowledge in the last couple years. I’m sure we’ll be making content as quickly as possible to keep up with the demand after launch.

I’ll want to cover both glitches and actual developer intended things. With the “X Things You Didn’t Know” show, it’s the specific combination that has kept the series alive. I don’t want it to be too plain for the glitch interested audience, but also not too complex for the casual audience.

ZU: What’s the first thing you want to do when you get your hands on Tears of the Kingdom?

Max: I already have a game plan when I get my hands on the game. First, beeline to Satori Mountain to get as many materials as possible! In Breath of the Wild, it’s a peaceful location with limited enemies and bountiful materials. You can find massive apple orchard, a flower garden, a mushroom garden, and tons of other clusters of various materials that are invaluable to Link’s adventures. While the Lord of the Mountain is active, the mountain also gains massive bonuses, and you’ll see wildlife explode in population around the hillsides. This is the best place to collect tons of materials very quickly for various needs, and is often my first stop when I have to complete objectives for certain footage. From the gameplay showcase it seems like getting lots of materials to work with for arrow fusing is only going to help. After that, I’ll likely do some testing and figure out the rest of the game!

ZU: I’ve seen Zeltik mention that things like Whistle Running have been fixed for the new game. How will these kinds of changes force you to alter your approach to the speedrunning style of movement?

Max: When people ask me about what I think about Tears of the Kingdom‘s changes, I say that I hope they patch up as much stuff as possible. I want a fresh new take on the game; I do not want to be using all of the same tricks I’ve been using for the past six-odd years. I believe Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall will play a huge part in new speedrunning tactics, especially Ultrahand. The Zonai machine parts have a lot of open ended possibilities, especially since I’m sure there are more machine pieces that we haven’t seen yet. Also, I didn’t even think about it until now, but the capsule machine that spits out Zonai parts will be absolute hell for speedrunners if they’re truly randomly generated items!

What I am also worried about is how quickly we tear apart the game. When Breath of the Wild first released, Nintendo was definitely watching players. Things like the World Reset glitch were patched because they were paying attention. We just have to be prepared for the first initial six months, maybe year, of Nintendo’s reactions to our discoveries.

ZU: How excited are you for the Ultrahand vehicle construction? Do you expect any of it to replace your favorite modes of travel from Breath of the Wild?

Max: I’ve never been a huge fan of building crazy structures or vehicles in most games that have that option. Some players can pour hundreds of hours into creating amazing things. I’m usually in the boat of prioritizing gameplay efficiency. What I’ve seen from the gameplay showcase, I want to build the most economical things to do the job with as few parts as possible. I guess it is the same mindset as “speedrun strats.” I am also very happy we get to move anything in the world with Ultrahand, compared to purely only metallic objects in Breath of the Wild.

ZU: What do you imagine will be your favorite weapon combo in Tears of the Kingdom?

Max: I’m a huge fan of boomerangs, in both the range and returning feature they have, so I think it has the most potential with fusion to other objects!

ZU: Is there anything else you’d like to let people know about your video series and its future?

Max: I’m extremely grateful to all of the fans of the “Things You Didn’t Know About Breath of the Wild” series. It always makes me delighted when people get their minds blown with new facts, and it’s a testament to just how deep Breath of the Wild really is. I’m looking forward to continue heading the series and GameSpot’s Tears of the Kingdom coverage starting May 12th!

Zelda Universe would like to thank Max for his time, and GameSpot for letting us pick his brain. Stay tuned for more coverage of Tears of the Kingdom from all of us!