Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fan beats all four temples without Link’s paraglider
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom presents an incredibly expansive world for Link to explore. In addition, there are three world map levels – the depths, the main surface map, and the sky – which give the game an eerie sense of verticality. Fortunately, Link has a full toolkit that allows him to travel from the highest islands in the sky, through the deep rifts in Hyrule’s surface, to the game’s vast underground regions. Chief among these is the paraglider, which allows Link to glide gracefully through the air and spare him damage from falling once he lands. It is an important part of Link’s kit van The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that feels more useful than ever in this sequel.
And yet at least one enterprising player has forgotten about that paraglider in his playthrough. (Link doesn’t start the game with a paraglider – in the Great Sky Island region tutorial, he jumps into bodies of water, negating any fall damage.) Chris Brune has played significant parts of the game without the glider – and shared his findings on Reddit, to a stunned audience. Brune even managed to reach the four temples through the game’s “Regional Phenomena” quest, completing them without the necessary tool – a testament to the game’s true sandbox qualities, as well as a gamer’s absolute willpower.
Polygon interviewed Brune, via Reddit chat and email, to get his take on how he pulled this off and what inspired him in the first place. This interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
[Ed note: Spoilers for the “Regional Phenomena” quest line and mild spoilers for “The Dragon’s Tears” quest line follow.]
Polygon: What inspired you to run the game without gliders?
Chris Brune: I wanted to enter Tears of the Kingdom blind, so I avoided most of the marketing materials. That’s why I wasn’t even sure if the paraglider would return. After hanging around the Temple of Time for about an hour, I started to assume that wouldn’t be the case. When I came across the Zonai devices with wings, I remember thinking to myself, “Nintendo’s bold choice to replace the paraglider with this one.”
It wasn’t until I came across Impa that I was tipped off about the paraglider’s existence. After taking you in a balloon to get an aerial view of the first geoglyph, she says, “If you want to see the geoglyph from the ground, you can float down in a paraglider.” I had to put out the flame of the hot air balloon we were both in to get down.
At that point I had already completed the Lightning Temple and about 30 shrines. After that, my fiancé asked me if I was going to get the paraglider, and I told her, “I’ll make it if I run into something I can’t.”
That never happened.
Were there any disturbances, armor setsor gadgets (Zonai devices, builds, etc.) you relied on?
I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers, and with it most of the basic information about the game. I flew blind. My friend and roommate, Odi, and I spent hours designing, customizing, and testing various Zonai creations, especially when trying to access distant celestial islands. The device I used the most was a wing device with a control stick and two balloons on either side, each propelled by flamethrowers. The flamethrowers/balloons provided height and when the batteries were empty, the wing provided distance.
How far were you able to get? Why did you stop/what obstacles prevent you from continuing?
During day two of the playthrough, even before I was aware of the paraglider, I stumbled my way to the boss arena. I kind of suspected I was going there, but I wanted to make sure so I could avoid it while playing. By doing this I accidentally proved that I could access the endgame without the paraglider.
What were the hardest or most annoying obstacles and challenges?
The hardest challenge was definitely stage two of the Wind Temple boss fight. I spent about five hours testing different strategies before finally landing on something that worked.
Aside from that, accessing and traversing the depths was a huge pain. In that pitch dark sometimes the world just falls out from under you. Not good if you can’t catch yourself.
How in the world did you manage the Wind Temple and its boss?
I dragged along with this for a few days thinking it would be the end of the run, that it would be something I wouldn’t be able to do. (I didn’t know about the Wind Temple, but I assumed if anything ended the run it would be the region associated with flying.)
The entrance to the Wind Temple is littered with trampolines, but I wouldn’t be able to make any meaningful use of it without the paraglider. Zonai devices bounce off them haphazardly without gaining much height, so they were basically useless. Fortunately, the boats are guided by large floating rocks that serve as checkpoints. I used the aforementioned wing balloon device to fly from one rock to another, reassembling the machine at each landing site to refresh the duration of the devices. During the final approach I attached a stabilizer to the machine and ripped off the balloons when I was over the entrance of the storm. This kept the wing steady as I plummeted down to sleep, but I misjudged my momentum and had to dive down about halfway. Fortunately, the temple has a cutscene that starts once you’re within a certain range, preventing me from hitting the temple with terminal velocity.
The temple itself was pretty plain for the most part. I was able to climb up, down or over most targets. A grand piano with a few fans gave me access to everything else.
Colgera was a nightmare. The battle begins with Link falling into the air. Without the paraglider it’s just not a viable starting point. I found out pretty quickly that if you die to the boss, you spawn on a floating rock above it. With this solid ground, I was able to leisurely throw arrows at the boss as it circled below me.
The real problem came with phase two. The game spawns you back in the air, and there are no usable vantage points on the way down. Even if you survive the landing, the boss spawns tornadoes at such a frequency that you’ll be knocked off Zonai devices before you gain enough height to reach the weak points. It took me about five hours of testing, spread over two days, to come up with a solution: I started the stage by drinking a stamina-boosting elixir (this was still relatively early in the playthrough, and I hadn’t yet improved my stamina). Then I dived as close as possible to the boss’s belly. Once I was under the boss I cocked my bow and using bullet time Keese fired wing-fused arrows at all three weak points, killing the boss before I hit the ground. The Keese wings provided much needed extra firing distance to reach the two more distant weak points.
About how often have you died from fall damage? Not just this boss fight, but total?
Do you know the euphemism “lithorems”? After we got used to the playthrough limitations, dying from fall damage was less of a danger and more of a means of transportation (with help from fairies, of course). That said, I think I’ve died quite a bit from fall damage about 150 times.
Were there sanctuaries where you just couldn’t do without the glider?
I treated sanctuaries designed with the paraglider more like unsolved math problems than outright barriers. The solution existed, but it required active brainstorming or passive pondering. If I couldn’t think of a solution, I’d leave and keep it in mind while I explored elsewhere. I was especially happy with my solutions for “A Bouncy Device” [Morok Shrine] and “Unenlightened Blessing” [South Lomei Labyrinth].
The only shrine I never visited again was “Ride the Winds” [Gatakis Shrine] at Rito Village. I was able to bridge the first gap by surfing a rocket with a shield, but the second gap was too big for that.
Could you use skyview towers?
The quest you give the paraglider is also the one that activates all the map towers for use, which I didn’t know. Access to many of the map towers was difficult without the paraglider, so I didn’t go out of my way to activate one until well into the playthrough. I opened the door for one, saw there was nothing to interact with, and reasoned that the shaft leading to the sky meant I had to access the top of the tower (similar to BotW). It took me 20 minutes of climbing in the rain to reach the top. When I got there I saw a closed shutter and, again, nothing to interact with. The gliderless flight should also be a (mostly – I was still able to chart the depths) chartless flight.
Now that you have a glider (assuming you have now, since you’ve talked to Purah), are there any techniques from your non-glider that you’ll carry over?
I reluctantly got the paraglider so I could access the camera (which is necessary for certain quests). I still treat the playthrough as gliderless, even though I know in my heart it’s not true.
Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to share?
When I came across the Depths, I was amazed that the game had not just two but three layers. I intend to map as many of them as possible. Climbing many of the steep walls was simply not possible with the stamina and equipment at my disposal. Instead, I would have to re-enter the depths elsewhere. Somewhere along the way I had gotten my first fairy and I decided to treat it like a one way ticket to the Deeps. Picking a chasm, I jumped down, then crashed into a spur (activating the fairy) before tumbling down into the darkness and my now-inevitable death below. Navigating through gaps would require a more elegant solution.
Fortunately, the canyon I selected had building materials nearby. I constructed a cube out of wooden planks, held it over the center of the canyon, and brought it back so I could step in and close off the remaining gap. Then I reversed the time on the cube until it was above the center of the canyon again and dropped it. It worked perfectly. The cube survived the trip down, and since I only hit the ground once this time, I only needed the one fairy. Thus the Pain Cube was born.