Since its release, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been inspiring players to pull apart its massive open world and uncover the many secrets within. Few players have been as successful at this than the speedrun community, a group whose primary goal is to use a game’s glitches to finish it in record times. Such is the case with speedrunner Sketodara01417 who has recently completed the game in just over half an hour.
As reported by Kotaku, Sketodara01417 has claimed the world record time of completing Breath of the Wild in a staggering 30 minutes and 10 seconds, just barely pulling ahead of the previous record by forty seconds. These runs of the game are strictly done with no Amiibo support or DLC installed and played to any percentage of collectible completion. As you can see from the full run below, these speedruns rely on utilizing the game’s systems and movement options in some very unconventional ways.
The manipulation of the game’s incredibly dynamic physics engine is a mainstay of any Breath of the Wild speedrun. It turns out that Link can be propelled quite far with alarming velocity if he collides with certain enemies at very exact angles. Link’s Stasis ability is also frequently used to create momentum while his shield has been recently discovered to have game breaking clipping abilities, giving players previously unachievable access to early game areas.
Given that Breath of the Wild launched with the Nintendo Switch console back in March 2017, it isn’t surprising that speedrunners have found methods of completing the game in such stunningly short times. The longer the community has with a title, the longer they are able to pull at the edges to expose exploitable loopholes in the software. Just within the Legend of Zelda franchise, there have been countless attempts to speedrun Ocarina of Time since its release way back in 1998, culminating in a record-setting time of 17 minutes and four seconds.
The speedrunning community isn’t just in it for the fun or glory either, even going so far as to establish a twice a year event to raise money for charities. Games Done Quick has raised over 19.3 million dollars to date by hosting the worlds most popular gaming marathons and speedruns. Donations to the organization hit a new high in 2018 during the AGDQ event.
The upcoming Summer Games Done Quick event is planned for June 23 with information about how you can be a part of the experience available through their official site.
