A new speedrun technique has been discovered for The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD that allows players to completely bypass the game's cutscenes. Wind Waker is a wildly popular game in the speedrunning scene, with players constantly competing for the speediest completion times since its release on the Wii U in 2013. Fans of the game have been hopeful for a Switch port in recent years, but it seems that Nintendo has other priorities for the Legend of Zelda franchise.
For those unfamiliar with this side of gaming, speedrunning is a competition wherein players from anywhere in the world record and time themselves playing through games as fast as they can with the intent of earning the lowest completion time possible. Over the years since Wind Waker's release, players have discovered numerous techniques to shave time off of their runs with famous tricks such as the castle barrier skip and item sliding. Exploiting every glitch at their disposal, these speedrunners turn the game against itself in ways that regular players would never even think of.
On March 26, user LegendofLinkk posted a short video on YouTube (via Kotaku) that demonstrated a newly discovered glitch which allows Wind Waker players to control the pause menu during cutscenes. The trick suddenly blew up across the speedrunning community when speedrunner Linkus7 posted a detailed explanation and tutorial showing how this can be used to skip cutscenes completely, noting the immense potential for faster The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker runs given that players can now skip events which would normally take several minutes each to get through. By utilizing this new technique, along with the myriad of other speedrunning tricks for the game, Linkus7 achieved a new world record time of 5:15:37 in the 100% completion category just a few days later. The cutscene skip marks yet another major milestone for the speedrunning community, potentially shaving off whole minutes from future runs and shaking up the online leaderboards.
As demonstrated in the explanation video, this new Wind Waker cutscene skip technique involves bringing up a game menu at the exact same time as entering one of the game's loading zones. This tactic allows players to control the pause menu during Wind Waker's cutscenes, letting them then quit to the main menu and reload their save, tricking the game into thinking the cutscene has already been watched and thusly skipping over it entirely the next time the player reaches it. While the new method requires frame-perfect timing to pull off successfully, runners have already created setups for getting it to work in specific spots 100% of the time. "This is probably one of the biggest glitch discoveries we've ever had in this game," Linkus7 announced to viewers.
The Legend of Zelda speedrunning community continues to prove their resourcefulness and dedication to the craft with every new discovery like this. Over the years, breaking games has evolved into an art form of its own, bringing people together from all over the world to dissect their favorite games and compete with other like-minded players for the number one spot on the leaderboards. This new discovery has already sparked renewed interest and dedication among The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD's speedrunners and it's only a matter of time before this record is broken yet again, as even the previous record-holder for the 100% category was overthrown in mere weeks. There's no doubt on the community's mind that even faster records will follow this announcement, it's only a matter of time.
Sources: LegendofLinkk, Linkus7, Kotaku