The Zelda series has always had a dedicated community of speedrunners and later this week on 12th May they'll be returning for Tears of the Kingdom.
IGN recently spoke to Breath of the Wild speedrunners 'Player 5' and Tom "Tallest Thomas" Rasmussen - asking them how they feel about starting over in Tears of the Kingdom and to get an insight into what they're expecting in the early days of the sequel.
Both speedrunners are generally looking forward to a fresh start with the new game-changing mechanics made up of Fuse, Ascend and Recall, as well as the Ultrahand abilities:
Player 5: "I'm hoping that none of [Breath of the Wild's speedrunning techniques] get carried over so that we have kind of a brand new set of techniques to use... Because I can just play Breath of the Wild if I want to use those glitches… Getting to figure stuff out at the early stages of the game should be fun, before there's an established route."
Tallest Thomas: "I'm not actually discouraged by the fact that mechanics are changing. It's gonna be weird, it's gonna be an adjustment, but it's definitely going to be something very fresh and very cool to use. I love helping develop strats and learning setups… That's one of my favorite things about speedrunning… So I am super excited for the whole new, 'Let's explore and discover everything' of Tears of the Kingdom."
The same speedrunners also mention how new discoveries in Tears of the Kingdom could potentially progress speedrunning in existing Zelda titles - a bit like what happened when a new technique dubbed 'Back in Time' was discovered in Skyward Sword and then replicated in Twilight Princess.
In the end, the Breath of the Wild speedrunning community managed to narrow down runs to just minutes, after years of discoveries and glitches to speed up the entire process - so it's probably only a matter of time before it happens in Tears of the Kingdom.
And although speedrunners are committed to rushing through the game as quickly as possible, these players insist they'll be taking their time on their first playthrough in order to enjoy the game as much as possible.
Tallest Thomas: "When I play through Tears of the Kingdom the first time, I'm going to try to break it as minimally as possible as I'm doing my first playthrough...once that playthrough is over and I've beaten the storyline or whatever, then I'm gonna go ahead and start going really hard at trying to break it and beat it fast."
Have you ever tried to speedrun a Zelda game? Will you be watching Tears of the Kingdom speedruns? Comment below.
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[source ign.com]
Comments 21
They should be!
I'm excited to see how the grand, amazing, difficult Ganondorf fight will be made trivial with the use of attaching turtle poop to a soup ladle.
feels like nuts & bolts which was a criminally underrated game
I want to see how far you can go lol.
Can i also add weapons and shields to my construction? Imagine an own made figjting robot 🤣
the vehicle stuff is what I find most off putting about the game.
it was cute once with the motorbike, but to this extent feels quite un-Zelda to me.
@Uncle_Franklin I 100% agree. I'm hoping I'm wrong and it's a great game, but I'm skeptical.
@JH1022 Your comment made me even more skeptical than you.
@JH1022
I think it'll be a great game regardless,
but that aspect could make it feel a little off to me.
Booo… bring the next Zelda game. I don’t need to build spaceships and tanks in this franchise. Keep it in the medieval fantasy theme.
These features are exactly tailored for YouTube influencers and followers. This isn’t Fortnite or Minecraft
I do hope it’s a good game but I can’t wait until we go down another route for the next Zelda game
Looking forward to the weird stuff they're going to find, even though speed running is not for me, personally. I love watching it. I'll be exploring every nook and cranny of Hyrule myself, without exploits, and play the game as intended.
Guess I am far from alone with my sentiment about this game. Not just the tractor thing, the Link going fluid straight through stone cracks also felt silly to me, and I never liked floating island type fantasy so I am not looking forward to it at all. My kids are dying to play it though...
The question is, when runners inevitably find some technique that's 'broken' to the extent that if you know about then there's no point using anything else, will Nintendo fix it with patches?
This game should really hype me because I love the Zelda games since they've been released. But I can't shake off the feeling, that Tears of the Kingdom won't be what I'd like to see from a Zelda game. Of course I hope it'll be a great game though.
Nah, it'll be an amazing game...right? *gulp
Not particularly into speedruns myself, not even watching them, but I hope people who enjoy them will have fun with Tears of the Kingdom, too!
Not a speedrunner myself, but I'm looking forward to see how people find glitches in this as they did for botw. Got my vacation ready from Friday until September. Gonna be a great summer 👌
@ManaOwls I was really hyped for Breath Of The Wild until I got 20 hours in and realized the entire game was just shrines and korok seeds, and Link never got any cool/fun equipment. I'm skeptical about Tears Of The Kingdom being much better, so I'm waiting for the reviews to come in. And I'm going to skip every review that gives it a 10, because they will gloss over every flaw, or change those flaws into essential features. I'm not going in blind again. I need to see something amazing before I buy, and the trailers didn't show that.
@Lightsiyd Your comment pushed me beyond skeptical into conspiracy theory induced paranoia, thank you!
I completed a 120 shrine run of BotW recently, and let me tell you that learning how to do wind bombs drastically changes your experience. You can cover ground absurdly fast, and if you know the general whereabouts of where to go you can get there very quickly, or use it to completely bypass some of the intended puzzles and challenges.
Wind Bombs was viable specifically because you had the round and square bomb runes and can use them together during bullet time, and then let the physics of launching the second deployed bomb into Link carry you really far.
I doubt the new ultra hand abilities will make something quite like that possible but we'll see.
Not interested in speedrunning as to me personally it ruins the experience. A game of this nature is supposed to be explored at a steady pace and honestly it irks me a bit that people are even talking about this now when the game hasn't even launched yet.
@sForzan I just don't see the point of it when most of them look for ways to break the game by way of exploits and glitches. I don't acknowledge speedrunning when people play the game this way but if people are looking to finish a game the proper way with no exploits or glitches used that's what I prefer to see. All of this being said if they enjoy it so be it.
@sForzan Couldn't agree more with you and to be clear when I said I'm not into speedruns and not even watching them I simply meant that, other than not doing them myself, I prefer watching people experiencing a game for the first time, replaying a game they like and sharing knowledge about it etc., but I definitely can see the appeal of speedruns and so hope that people who enjoy doing and watching them will have fun with Tears of the Kingdom, too!
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