Breath of the Wild Player Finds Haunting New Method for Fishing: Whistling

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may never cease to amaze, but a new trick that's gone viral this week is actually kind of frightening. If you stand on top of a platform in the water while facing a river's bank or the ocean shoreline, just whistling will send all the nearby fish in a frenzied swim towards land. Once they're all stuck on the sand, just mash the A button to scoop them all up... you efficient fishing fiend.

Posted to the Breath of the Wild subreddit by user charlieboy95, the clip demonstrating the trick shows it can actually work at a fairly long distance. You can stand on one shore of a river, whistle, and send all the fish scattering for the side opposite from Link. Below the original post, charlieboy95 advises that the trick doesn't work well in lakes because the slope of the ground is generally too steep for the fish to launch themselves up.

Breath of the Wild's varied sandbox means that we'll probably still be uncovering cool tricks from the game long after its sequel comes out. As strange and disturbing as this fishing trick is, it seems like it's the result of standard fish behavior (run away from Link/noise) working as intended while leading to a logical (if surprising) result. There's no manipulation of hidden timers or anything complex like that at play here, just Breath of the Wild's sandbox design serving up another memorable outcome.

Maybe this method isn't even all that shocking to one's sensibilities; after all, chucking bombs into lakes and rivers is a fairly common and effective method for catching fish in the game. Perhaps whatever dark fate is headed for Hyrule in the Breath of the Wild sequel has been sealed by Link's mistreatment of the game's sea life. Safe bet it's either that or Ganon again.