People have played as Link and Zelda (and even Ganon) since the series first debuted, but these guys are (relatively) simple. They’re two-legged, they’re wearing clothes, you put on makeup, get a gun, boom, you play as a Nintendo character. But what about breath of the wild Wardens, those giant stone warriors that shoot lasers out of their faces, surely a human couldn’t realistically play as one of them?
Of course you can. It just takes brilliance, hard work and some very simple tricks of the trade. This is Allison Chase someone who specializes in big, complicated cosplayswho appeared as one of the ruined Wardens at MegaCon in Orlando earlier this year:
The size, the detail, the glow, the way the music and sound effects play, the way the eyeball lights up and changes as if it’s actually shooting a laser bolt across the convention floor… it’s perfection . Although now you’re probably thinking like I originally did, is this even cosplay? Isn’t that just a robot or a statue? No, it’s still cosplay. Chase is sitting on a stool in the Guardian:
And can move and control the Guardian in the same way that Kenny Baker could move R2-D2’s head while insideby rotating the different sections while seated:
To give you another idea of how big this thing is and how it all came together, check out this video of the Guardian being transported to the convention, a process that saw the whole thing disassembled and then with a couple of guys was transported on a truck put everything back together:
You can see more of Allison’s incredible cosplay work, including a Power Loader by Foreignera whole catbus out totoro and very articulate from Snowball Rick & Morty, on her TikTok page.
