Random: Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Speedrunner Slices 34 Seconds Off The World Record

Sniper


What does it take to be a world-record-holding speedrunner for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Well, being French helps a lot. The current world record holder for BOTW, Player5, says that the French dialogue shaves about 4 seconds off his run, compared to English — and with a time of just 24 minutes and 15 seconds, 4 seconds is quite significant.

Player5’s record-breaking run was posted on Sunday, May 15th, and beat the runner-up by over 30 whole seconds, putting him well in the lead. “I actually don’t do a lot of practice off-stream,” he said while streaming the run. “Mostly it’s just the on-stream runs I do.”

The run is an Any% one, which means that the only required goal is to get to the end of the game. Other runs — like the “All Dungeons” one, the “All Main Quests” one, and “All Shrines”, are self-explanatory and take much longer; usually a matter of hours. The 100% speedrun record — which requires runners to complete all Shrines, all Divine Beasts, all quests, all upgrades, all Koroks (!), and all towers — is currently just over 16 and a half hours.

Speedrun

Using a combination of glitch tricks, Player5 whisks Link across the map, grabs the powers from the Great Plateau, chats to King Rhoam a bit, and then zooms his way over to Hyrule Castle for the final fight with Ganon, who is unsurprisingly a pushover despite Link only having two hearts. And that’s it!

Here’s how Player5 described the world record run:

Very good run with most of the timesave being in paraglider (loads) and castle. There’s still small amounts of timesave in the other plateau splits and blights, but overall I’m happy with the run. 24:0x is definitely doable, but sub 24 will probably require some riskier strats.

Player5 is no newcomer to the Breath of the Wild throne — he’s currently sitting on a first-place run for All Main Quests (2 hours, 21 minutes, 59 seconds) and All Dungeons (1 hour, 31 minutes, 49 seconds), as well as a first-place 28 minute 16 second run that’s entirely “Damageless”. He’s just very good at Zelda.

But 24:15 is only the best time… so far. According to the Best Theoretical Time, which combines all of the best segments from all of the best players, it’s humanly possible to complete Breath of the Wild in just 21 minutes and 20 seconds. So… stay tuned?

If you love speedruns, don’t forget that speedrunning and charity fundraising event Summer Games Done Quick is happening soon, beginning on Saturday, June 26th and wrapping up on Sunday, July 3rd. It’ll be in person again this year, and you can check out the schedule by vising the GDQ website!

Did you learn any speedrun tips from Player5’s run? Tell us in the comments!