Learn How To Read The Fictional Language In The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
On Reddit, a user named Sparkthedarkness posted a key for translating The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's mysterious Sheikah language, helping players locate Link's lost memories—and uncovering a hidden message on the game's cover.
(If you haven't finished Breath of the Wild yet—which seems pretty likely—note that some minor spoilers that follow.)
As it turns out, Sheikah isn't all that complicated—it's just English using a different font. Each Sheikah character corresponds to a single, distinct letter in the English alphabet, which means that once you have the translation cypher, it's pretty easy to convert the ancient script into something a little bit more readable. Sparkthedarkness' key is all you'll need to get the job done, although if you want to become "fluent" in Sheikah, you can learn how to read it by playing an educational game made by Reddit user James0x57.
The fans' work is already paying off, too. Using Sparkthedarkness' translation guide, players have discovered that the text on the Breath of the Wild special edition box actually says "The Hyrule Fantasy" backwards. That's not just another subtitle: The Hyrule Fantasy is actually the Japanese name of the very first The Legend of Zelda game.
Learning how to read Sheikah has a more practical in-game use, too. In one of Breath of the Wild's many side quests, players must use 12 photos to find locations that will unlock Link's missing memories. That task becomes a lot easier if you know Sheikah, since each picture is labelled with a Sheikah text, which gives away the memory's general location.
If you don't want to translate the memory locations yourself, Redditor TheDudeWhoCommented has posted a full list in the Sheikah translation's comment thread (we'll let you click through to see the list, to avoid accidentally spoiling things for players who want to keep the messages secret).
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out last Friday, March 3, 2017 on both the Switch and the Wii U, and is by far the best game on Nintendo's new console—at least until these other awesome titles come out.