As Zelda fans, many of us have heard about “challenge runs” of one variety or another. Some folks strive to beat a particular installment without ever gaining additional hearts. Others refuse to take damage across an entire run. Heck, just using the word “run” to denote playing a video game immediately conjures up mental images of rushing — and, indeed, speedruns are among the most popular sorts of challenges around.
But if you’ve read the title of this article, and I have to assume you have, you’re already aware that one particularly dedicated fan has decided to play a complex game of Snake in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Via careful usage of Hero’s Path mode, an intuitive feature that tracks Link’s journey quite literally step-by-step in a convenient visual format, Twitch streamer Everest Pipkin embarked on an epic quest to traverse the franchise’s greatest Hyrule overworld without ever stepping in the same spot twice. Imagine, if you will, a certain childhood game; now, tweak it such that the floor turns into lava only after touching it once. The lava now runs freely from Eldin Volcano all the way into Hyrule’s snowy Hebra expanse.
“It’s a fiddly, spiraling, backtracking journey that will force me into increasingly byzantine paths through the world,” Pipkin prophetically decreed in the early hours of what would prove to be a nine-month endeavor. Pipkin’s struggles were not solely horizontal and predictable, after all. Breath of the Wild‘s verticality is one of its many highly-praised aspects, but for the purposes of this challenge, it quickly became one of its most nigh-insurmountable problems.
Breath of the Wild’s in-game map may be gorgeously detailed, but it’s also entirely two-dimensional. In order to adhere to his strict rules of never crossing an increasingly lengthy Hero’s Path line across the map, Pipkin needed to avoid ever showing up at the same spot twice — regardless of its height. For example, he couldn’t glide through the air above an area he had previously traversed on foot; nor could he stand atop any rocky outcropping high above grassy fields Link had already explored. If the game refused to acknowledge the heights and depths of Hyrule, Pipkin had to do the same.
“My very first restart was because I walked in the front door of the Temple of Time,” Pipkin explains in a Twitter thread reflecting on his wild time. “Two hours later, I would need to access the cutscene on the roof. Directly above me.” Fiddler on the roof, then. Time to wake Link up all over again.
Opting to play Breath of the Wild on its native Switch hardware rather than emulation meant that Pipkin couldn’t rely upon the sorts of workarounds that many challenge-minded streamers treat as a lifeline. Playing the game emulated, he could have saved his progress in a unique way, separate from the in-game save system. Doing so would have allowed him to bypass some of Breath of the Wild’s trickier aspects. Again, Pipkin had no choice but to play ball with some harsh caveats. (In fairness, of course, the game was hardly designed to be played in such a fashion.)
“In an act of ultimate cruelty, the cutscenes in Breath of the Wild physically move you in the world. They teleport you to a new spot and draw a line from where you stood to where you are standing now. this can be devastating.” Never in my life have I been so afraid of a colored line as I am from just reading Pipkin’s descriptions.
For many of us, the act of playing a Zelda game is magical enough to warrant return trips to Hyrule, Termina, the Great Sea, and beyond through the years. For those who seek fresh ways to experience the classics, there are people like Everest Pipkin who will gladly pave the way.
And start all over again if they accidentally pave twice.
