The Zelda series has always had a dedicated community of speed runners, and later this week May 12 he will return for the Tears of the Realm.
IGN recently spoke with Breath of the Wild speedrunners ‘Player 5’ and Tom “Thomas the Tallest” Rasmussen – asking them how they feel about starting over in Tears of the Kingdom and getting a taste of what to expect in the early days of the game’s sequel .
Both speedrunners are mostly looking forward to a fresh start with new game-changing mechanics consisting of Fuse, Ascend and Recall, as well as the Ultrahand ability:
Player 5: “I hope that none of [Breath of the Wild’s speedrunning techniques] carry over so we have kind of a whole new set of techniques to use… Because I can just play Breath of the Wild if I want to exploit those glitches… You should figure things out early in the game be fun, before there’s a set route.”
Thomas the tallest: “I’m actually not discouraged by the fact that the mechanics are changing. It’s going to be weird, it’s going to be an adjustment, but it’s definitely going to be something very fresh and very cool to use. I love helping develop strategies and learning settings… It’s one of my favorites speedrunning stuff… So I’m really excited about the brand new, ‘Explore and Discover All’ Tears of the Kingdom.”
The same speedrunners also mention that the new discoveries in Tears of the Kingdom could potentially improve speedrunning in existing Zelda titles – similar to what happened when a new technique called ‘Back in Time’ was discovered in Skyward Sword and then replicated in Twilight Princess.
In the end, Breath of the Wild’s speedrunning community managed to narrow down runs to just a few minutes, after years of discovery and error to speed up the whole process – so it’s probably only a matter of time before that happens in Tears of the Kingdom.
And although speedrunners are dedicated to getting through the game as quickly as possible, these players insist on taking their time with their first playthrough to enjoy the game as much as possible.
Thomas the tallest: “When I play through Tears of the Kingdom for the first time, I’ll try to break it as little as possible because I’m doing my first playthrough… after that playthrough is over and I beat the story or whatever, then I’ll go ahead and start really hard trying to break it and win quickly.”