The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is truly an enormous game. With its massive open world and fleshed-out physics engine, players are still discovering new tricks nearly four years after the game's release. Among these dedicated players are Twitch user named joedun, who has just pulled off one of the most impressive feats in the game's history; a perfect, 100% speedrun of the game where he took absolutely no damage.
As fans would know, a 100% run of Breath of the Wild is an impressive feat in itself. Even before the Champions Ballad DLC, Hyrule's map contains 76 sidequests, 84 bosses, 120 shrines, and infamously, 900 Korok seeds. This is on top of main story content, such as conquering all four Divine Beasts, finding all 12 hidden memories, and of course, defeating Calamity Ganon itself. The concept of doing this all without taking any damage sounds ludicrous, but one speedrunner viewed the idea as a worthy challenge.
In January of 2021, joedun finally achieved his lofty goal of 100% completing Breath of the Wild without taking any damage. This wasn't easy, as the streamer describes failing over 100+ times in the lead-up to this victory. Many of these failures would happen over 30 hours into the run, losing entire days worth of gameplay from one easy slip-up. Upon finally completing the run, his final time clocked in at 31 hours, 58 minutes, and 9 seconds; the first and only record in the damage-free 100% completion category.
Due to the breadth of the game's content, the Breath of the Wild speedrunning community is quite active. From beating the game as fast as possible to gathering and cooking bread at record speeds, there's no shortage of challenges for speedrunners to take on. However, no other player has managed to match joedun's feat, likely due to the extremely tricky and time-consuming aspects of the challenge. Nonetheless, joedun has accomplished something truly monumental, and he plans to continue his endeavors by finally playing through the Champion's Ballad DLC.
Breath of the Wild clearly resonated with the gaming community, especially considering how much it has remained in the limelight since its release. Few games continue to get regular news when approaching their fourth anniversary, after all. While some fans are pushing the exciting game to its limits, others are eagerly anticipating the untitled sequel to Breath of the Wild, which fans still know virtually nothing about. As little as fans know about the game, they can only hope that it is as timeless and replayable as its predecessor. At the very least, it should be fun to see how long it takes for players to complete an 100% no-damage run of the sequel.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now for Nintendo Switch and Wii U.
Source: Polygon
