If you cast your mind back to Breath of the Wild, you might remember that getting hold of the paraglider was essential to leaving the Great Plateau and progressing with the game (though there were some ways around this). Tears of the Kingdom, by comparison, has no such barrier and if you choose not to follow the direction that the game sends you in having completed the tutorial area, then there is every chance that you might not pick up the item altogether.
Some of us tried this for a while, ambitiously setting off into the wasteland knowing full well that we were missing out on a pretty important bit of kit. But we soon returned to where the game originally wanted us to go with our tails between our legs, realising that traversal is near-impossible when you can't fly through the skies. And yet, one player has proven us wrong and has managed to complete the four main Regional Phenomena quests without Link's trusty glider in tow (thanks, Polygon).
We will be discussing some pretty precise details of how this player, Chris Brune, managed to achieve such a feat in the following article, so if you want to avoid spoilers for the game's main quests then we'd advise against reading past the following image until you have crossed them off your list.
Brune originally published his achievement on Reddit, showcasing some rather shocked Purah dialogue that the, ahem, fan-favourite NPC will say if you have completed all of the Regional Phenomena prior to meeting her for the first time (and getting the glider).
Polygon interviewed the player to find out more information about his no-glider run, which, he admits, was not intentional until he had already completed the Gerudo portion of the quest line and poured around 30 hours into the game. Avoiding all marketing material prior to TOTK's release, Brune apparently believed that the Zonai Wing devices were a replacement for the glider, and found very few initial problems.
According to the interview, Brune mainly relied on "a wing device with a steering stick and two balloons on either side, each powered by flame emitters" to get around from high-up areas — the balloons providing lift, and the wing covering the handling.
This appears to have been all well and good until he encountered the Rito Regional Phenomena, which Brune describes as a "nightmare" without the glider. We won't go into the precise details of why this was so difficult here (if you know, you know), but glider-less Link had to make good use of the bullet time function and some speedy Zonai builds to pull it off.
Since the meeting with Purah that unlocks the glider is the same one that unlocks the Skyview Towers (your only way to see the map), Brune's run was also map-less. Travelling between the four regions with no glider and no map? Now that's really something.
Unfortunately, his journey came to an end when he realised that he needed the camera for a later quest, and thus had to bite the bullet and talk to Purah, "begrudgingly" unlocking the glider in the process. Even with this in his possession, Brune is still going about his mission as he always was: "I’m still treating the playthrough as gliderless even if I know in my heart it’s not true."
To read exactly how Chris Brune managed to complete some of the Regional Phenomena's trickier moments, be sure to check out the full Polygon interview here. And if you want to see the lovely Alex from our video team attempt the same task, then you can catch the first part of his quest down below.