The Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom speedruns have begun
Current record stands at 94 minutes.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom officially launched today, and the race to speedrun the game as quickly as possible has already begun.
An eye-catching run from YouTuber gymnast86, posted this morning, shows the game beaten in just 94 minutes. This is an any% speedrun with no assists from amiibo.
What's interesting here is nearly half of the run covers the game's opening portion without any major shortcuts. Even with knowledge of where to go and how to do it, this takes over 40 minutes.
From here, you can make a run for the game's finale, but gymnast86 spends a little bit of time on prep, picking up some weapons and equipment. This is something which will almost certainly be skippable in future, he notes, though for ease of use it's worth spending a bit of time on.
An hour and 12 minutes in, gymnast86 begins the endgame proper. We won't go into detail about that here, but it's impressive to see some smart-looking strategies on show already.
At an hour and 29 minutes in, gymnast86 reaches the game's final final boss, which he defeats to stop the clock as the finale cutscene begins at one hour, 34 minutes and 33.83 seconds. If you want to watch it for yourself, the full run is available to watch on YouTube here.
That's the time to beat for now - though we'll keep an eye on how quickly that gets cut down. Can you do better?
Alternatively, perhaps, you can play the game how Nintendo intended - with enough room to explore and sidequests to discover that you'll likely be adventuring for weeks to come.
"A terrific Breath of the Wild follow-up with some brilliant new systems, amazing views and more dungeon-type spaces, plus a slightly deadening emphasis on gathering resources," Edwin wrote in Eurogamer's Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review.