The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild might only have been out for a week. But the speedrunning community is already setting a high bar for challengers.
Although only a few runs have been completed so far, American user “gymnast86” currently holds the world record for an any percentage run of the game at 58 minutes and one second.
Fellow American “Orcastraw” also got under the one hour mark, but fell five seconds behind gymnast86. The two runners are no strangers to Zelda games, holding top times in games like The Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, and Twilight Princess.
Although the game was a launch title for the Nintendo Switch, both of the sub-one hour times have been posted on the Nintendo Wii U.
Consensus among the community thus far seems to be that there are a few more minutes that could be shaved off, as the routes and strategies continue to be refined. At this early stage after a game’s release, the lines runners take are unlikely to end up being the best in time.
Runners have also begun to attempt to post times of completing all the game’s dungeons, with the current record sitting at three hours and ten minutes.
Zelda games are among the most popular with speedrunners, particularly Ocarina of Time. It’s the game with the third most number of runs on Speedrun.com, with the current any percentage record standing at 17 minutes and 13 seconds.
