The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is a massive game, with a world that’s estimated to be larger than 8 square miles and filled with hundreds of secrets to discover. It would take 100 hours to even come close to doing everything. But thanks to the freedom Breath Of The Wild affords, you could skip all of that and test your mettle against the final boss as soon as you land on the Hyrule mainland. It’s a dream come true for speedrunners, those gaming daredevils who strive to finish everything as quickly as possible by any means necessary. And of course, they’ve taken Breath Of The Wild by storm and have already worked out a way to bring down Ganon in short order. Just one week after the game’s release, some runners are able to reach the game’s ending in less than an hour. To be precise, the current world-record run (embedded below) by Venick is sitting pretty at 54 minutes and 5 seconds. Naturally, if you haven’t finished the game and don’t want to get a peek at the final boss, you might not want to watch this all the way through.
What’s incredible about these runs so far is that the players aren’t doing anything particularly outrageous. Breath Of The Wild is built in such a way that if you’re good enough and determined enough, you could totally finish it this fast, and the current speed-run strategy bears that out. After bolting their way through the four shrines on the Great Plateau, runners grab themselves a horse—whether by befriending one or using an amiibo to summon one—and head straight for Hyrule Castle, where they carefully climb a giant pillar of pure evil, collect some powerful weapons, and paraglide their way to the big boss man himself. From there, it’s just a matter of perfectly dodging some attacks and reflecting some lasers.