Feature: Inside The Mind Of A Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Speedrunner

Image: NintendoSince its release in March 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been an attractive game to speedrun for many reasons, and in our article last year, we were able to talk about its intricacies with two high-profile members of the community, including the world record holder. In 2023, the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, launched to acclaim from fans and critics alike, and speedrunners had a new game to break. Many runners took the challenge to beat this second iteration as quickly as possible.

Like its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom is home to multiple speedrunning categories, including the usual Any%, which sees runners attempting to hit the credits at lightning speeds, glitches included. Some categories restrict certain things or enable others, particularly exploits or certain “movement techniques” – it just depends on what you’re attempting to achieve. At the time of writing, Tears of the Kingdom’s Any% category is split into two areas based on the version of the game you’re playing: pre-v1.2.1 and v.1.2.1. These relate to the updates the game has received since launch, yet most runners primarily use 1.0.0 as the version with the most exploitable glitches.

To understand how Tears of the Kingdom’s speedrunning community has evolved, we sat down with Player 5, an American speedrunner, the current world record holder for Breath of the Wild’s Any% category and, at the time of writing, ranked second in the world for Tears of the Kingdom. We were able to discuss speedrunning, his journey as a content creator on Twitch, and how the scene has changed during the past six months.

“I started speedrunning in 2020,” Player 5 tells us. “Before then, I spent a lot of time playing Smash, but the pandemic started around that time, so my passion for playing Smash decreased, as I was unable to attend in-person events.” The change in world events also affected his classes, so he started to look at other means of entertainment, which eventually led him to speedrunning, and of course, a little game called Breath of the Wild.

“When Breath of the Wild came out, I did not play it immediately. It was on my radar for a while, so in 2020, I finally started playing the game, and when I saw speedrunning, I knew I wanted to try it out.” Watching content creators perform insane feats inspired him to pursue running himself and, after a lot of practice, he began climbing the leaderboard.

However, we’re not here to discuss BOTW; we were curious to hear Player 5’s thoughts on the differences between the two games from a speedrunning perspective.

Right now, Tears of the Kingdom’s speedrunning leaderboards are dominated by “fast and impressive” runs that have been completed in less than an hour. Although speedruns for the new game couldn’t be submitted until a month after the game’s launch, players who received the highly anticipated sequel early were able to experiment with running the game for significant amounts of time, so knowledge and resources made their way into the community Discord server extremely quickly.

Image: Nintendo Life
“This wasn’t the case with Breath of the Wild, to my knowledge,” Player 5 tells us with enthusiasm. “Back then, with the launch of the Switch, not many people had access to the game before launch, and it took longer for discoveries to be made.” Breath of the Wild launched on March 3rd, 2017 for the Wii U and as a launch title for Nintendo Switch. Tears of the Kingdom, on the other hand, launched during the seventh year of the Switch’s life when pre-launch leaks are common. Player 5 didn’t engage with the speedrunning elements of the game for a while, though.

“I didn’t start looking at runs properly until I finished my casual playthrough. After that was over, I started to pour over everything in the speedrunning Discord server, and there was already a lot of content to look at.” Most games with a speedrunning community use Discord to compile resources, discoveries, and discussions about how runs are evolving. For Tears of the Kingdom, the speedrunning Discord server is home to thousands of people, which Player 5 describes as “friendly and helpful.”

On the surface, Tears of the Kingdom may look practically identical to its predecessor in regard to its movement and overall appearance. However, according to Player 5, that isn’t the case from a speedrunning perspective — there are a lot of differences to consider when running the game.

“The intro in Tears of the Kingdom is a lot longer compared to Breath of the Wild,” he says. In the first game’s Any% speedrun, runners perform a glitch to exit the Shrine of Awakening without triggering the day/night cycle, but in Tears of the Kingdom, you have to sit through a lengthy cutscene before gameplay properly begins.

Image: Nintendo
Player 5 describes this as “frustrating” as the beginning of the run is dependent on performing some difficult tricks. One such trick requires you to position Link on a wall during the cave section with Princess Zelda, followed by a specific climb to glitch out of bounds. “There’s a lot of difficult tricks, so you’re resetting all the time, and then each reset is really long because of the two long cutscenes during the opening.” Performance in these early sections can be the difference between a personal best and wasting time, and it has become a common problem area for runners.

One of the more drastic changes in the sequel is the alterations in Link’s arsenal of abilities. In the previous game, he was able to use his Sheikah Slate to manipulate different aspects of the environment, such as using Magnesis to move metallic objects, and Stasis to pause time. Tears of the Kingdom, on the other hand, introduces hand powers with varying abilities, like Ascend, which allows Link to shoot upwards and ‘phase’ through the ceiling above him. In Breath of the Wild runs, using his abilities was second nature, but according to Player 5, that isn’t the case in the second instalment. “If you’re playing on pre-current patch, you don’t use Link’s abilities all that much. It’s mostly Fuse, as it makes your attacks stronger, which is nice.”

However, despite not being used all that much in Any% runs, Player 5 tells us “The most broken ability is Auto-build, as there is a glitch called ‘Auto-build cancel.’ It lets you interact with the Auto-build blueprint outside of the ability.” While this may seem somewhat redundant, Player 5 explains that this can enable Link to fly across the map insanely fast, similar to the trick from Breath of the Wild speedruns. It doesn’t end there, either, as Auto-build cancel can also be used to clip through walls.

[Note. There are some minor endgame spoilers below — skip the following paragraph if you want to avoid.]

In Player 5’s opinion, the biggest time save found since the game’s May launch is the option to skip the ‘boss rush’ at the end of the game. For those of you who don’t know, if you fail to complete the Regional Phenomena quest throughout Hyrule before encountering the final boss, you are forced into a boss rush against the bosses you would normally fight elsewhere. This isn’t new, though. In Breath of the Wild, if you didn’t complete the Divine Beasts, you would also be in for a nasty surprise if you rushed straight to Calamity Ganon. To skip this boss rush in TOTK, you have to perform a glitch called ‘Jumpslash Cancel Clipping,’ which sees Link Jumpslashing, unequipping or equipping a different shield, and leaving the menu. If done correctly, it skips roughly 10 minutes. “It saves a lot of time, it’s definitely the biggest time save in the game, and makes the final section of the run a lot easier. Before, you had to try your best to survive four difficult boss encounters, in addition to the onslaught of Ganon’s minions.”

Speedrunning takes a lot of time and effort to master properly. Out of curiosity, and with everyone’s Nintendo Switch Year-In-Review stats now available, we asked Player 5 about his TOTK playtime since release. “It’s got to easily be over 1000hrs of playtime at this point,” he says. “I spend a lot of time practicing, in addition to streaming the game, so I am quickly able to sink a lot of time into it.”

Player 5 strongly recommends more people give speedrunning a go if they’re interested and pointed towards the Discord server as the best place to learn. Despite only being released in May, Tears of the Kingdom’s speedrunning community has made great strides in a relatively short time, and we cannot wait to see more.

Image: Nintendo