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As you’ve traveled through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there’s no doubt you’ve come across a few sneaky members of the Yiga Clan. These characters may first appear to be regular travelers, but a quick chat with them reveals their outward appearance to be a façade. Now we know there’s even more foolery going on than we first thought.

Discovered by Redditor justlookingfordragon, it turns out these Yiga Clan members aren’t just pretending to be regular folks; they’re actually carbon copies of NPCs found elsewhere in the game. You can see an example of what we mean in the image below.

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Yes, the person on the left and right are two different people, even though they look exactly the same. The character above is known as Bugut, and he’s a merchant found around Kakariko Village and the Dueling Peaks Stable. Unfortunately for him, a Yiga Clan member is mimicking his exact appearance, and no doubt giving him a bad name.

It’s not clear whether this decision was made by Nintendo as part of the story, part of gameplay, or just a data-saving mechanic. Did Nintendo purposefully duplicate select NPC appearances for players who have a keen eye? Perhaps Nintendo went with doubles in order to fool the player and catch them by surprise with a Yiga Clan attack. Then again, this could all be a way of Nintendo to cut corners and save some space. Whatever the reasoning, the end result is still just as intriguing!

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Comments (1)

hawk

1+ y ago

Well of course. They wanted players to sometimes be tricked by the travelers, so they pulled from that collection of faces to use for the Yiga clan.

I realized this back when people were thinking a specific NPC was a "Robin Williams tribute", but the first time I encountered that face, he wound up being a Yiga assassin.