It was bound to happen, but (perhaps given the incredibly early leaks) I hadn’t expected to see it happen so quickly – some madman has clocked the literally-just-released-today The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in less than two hours. Just 94 minutes, in fact.
As reported by VGC, speedrunner “gymnast86” has completed an Any% speedrun of Tears of the Kingdom, without the assistance of any amiibo, in a ridiculous 1:34:33.
Now, I would love to tell you how he’s done it, but given this is a complete end-to-end run it’ll massively spoil the ending. Watch at your own risk.
Also made an infodump video explaining some things about the run so far (will probably be outdated very quickly, lol): https://t.co/UbkQuRjveC
— gymnast86 (@MrGymnast86) May 12, 2023
The speedrunner also dropped a video explaining in detail how the run was achieved, and is quick to point out that this is only the beginning. We’re naturally going to see a ton of ridiculous attempts at completing the game as quickly as possible, much like we saw with Breath of the Wild, only this time players have Link’s incredibly versatile new abilities like Ultrahand, Fuse and Ascend at their disposal.
It’s pretty incredible that this has been achieved so soon, especially as gymnast86 explains that speedrunners are starting from scratch in terms of figuring out how best to bend the game to their wills. “From what we can tell, almost none of the glitches that were present in Breath of the Wild seem to have made it into Tears of the Kingdom,” he’s explained.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we won’t ever be able to perform these glitches, but just that the methods we know of activating them in Breath of the Wild won’t work in this game.”
There’s no doubt that we’re going to see some wild stuff over the coming weeks and months.
These folks might already be experts at beating Tears of the Kingdom, but if you’re just starting out on your Tears of the Kingdom adventure, check out our other guides to unlocking all of Link’s new abilities, and using amiibo figures to score some great unique gear.
