How Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players are breaking an ‘unbreakable’ game

polygon.com:

Link isn’t that fast, but he can sprint for short periods of time — something that’s determined by a stamina wheel that players can upgrade as they progress in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Players clear shrines and gain a Light of Blessing each time, which they can spend on increasing that stamina wheel. It’s a smart system that ties Link’s strength to his experience, and one that works for the everyday player. Link’s early constraints fall away as the game moves on.

But speedrunners are not everyday players. Speedrunners need to go fast; the current official record for beating Tears of the Kingdom is just over one hour, in a game where it’s easy to clock 100 hours without touching the endgame. Tears of the Kingdom lets the player head straight toward the big Ganondorf fight at the end of the game; there’s just a bit of preparation needed. To get through it quickly, speedrunners and the glitch-hunting community are trying to break an “unbreakable” game.

Tears of the Kingdom, unlike The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild before it, is designed to be exploited; the Ascend ability started as a cheat code for developers, after all. It’s built into the game’s new abilities, like Ultrahand and weapon fusing, which let the player make ungodly combinations of things; Ascend, which negates ceilings to send Link swimming through stone; and the Recall ability that’s helpful for reversing time and mistakes. Nintendo hasn’t made any real “intended” solution for its puzzles, instead creating a sandbox that allows for experimentation and multiple outcomes. It’s hard to break a game designed around exploits, but the glitch-hunting community has done just that.

None of the glitches the community has found so far are