The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may be light on dungeons, but it makes up for that with loads of shrines, the vast majority of which contain a puzzle which must be solved before they can be considered complete.
Some of these puzzles are actually quite tricky, but like so much of the game, they can be overcome by "exploiting" the stunning versatility of the game's engine.
Speedrunner Adrylek is arguably the go-to expert on this form of "Shrine Skipping". As reported by Kotaku, Adrylek has racked up more than 40 different videos showing how many of the game's shrines can be defeated in totally unexpected ways, such as using bombs to access high platforms, combining various rune effects with "shield jumps" and much more besides.
Adrylek admits that many hours have been spent finding these time-saving exploits, and that many of them require fast reflexes, perfect positioning and impeccable timing; the speed runner believes that many of the game's shrines can be beaten in such a fashion, but goodness knows how long it will take fans to find every single trick. In the meantime, check out the full playlist and prepare to be amazed.
[source kotaku.com]
Comments (39)
I've seen some of these videos before and they're really impressive.
I'd love to see stories like this come straight from the proverbial horse's mouth and not sloppy seconds from kotaku.
I must admit I've not really seen any of these videos but wow that's impressive stuff!
seems like i was supposed to block some fans in a couple of shrines, but i just stood on the platform and nudged the ball from afar. some of the shrines are really just very badly designed, unfortunately. but it did feel amazing running into those 7 giant statues.
It defeats the purpose of the joy of the game but that is still cool!
That's amazing!
@Spoony_Tech there was absolutely zero "joy" in that marble maze motion control puzzle -_-
Yeah, I've occasionally (like 1 or 2 times) beaten shrine puzzles with unintended methods.
But why forego the fun of solving the puzzles?
If someone really has trouble solving them, there are tons of guides online. I've used them myself for 2 or 3 shrines, when I had tried them for ages and became desperate (and needed the orbs).
Using a guide is definitely faster than using any of these workarounds.
@hippoeater What's funny is I had to do that 3 times. Once for myself and 2 more for my children lol. It's not that hard as long as you play in docked mode.
@Spoony_Tech but the point is there are so many ways to beat it. It's not cheating. My son and I are both playing this, and at 6 he has solved many shrines on different ways then I would have thought. Heck, he even showed me to use stasis in a hinox, shoot it in the eye, since it keeps trying to cover it once its health gets low. I guess that takes the joy out of fighting it.
@Donutman I never said it was cheating. I've also seen many ways to do the shrines but I like to solve them the way they were meant to be solved. For me that is the joy of the game.
@hippoeater @Spoony_Tech To be fair, I find most of the apparatus puzzles don't work very well/are kinda gimmicky, so I just tried to find ways around them (Stasis and launching the ball out of the maze, lighting torches with fire arrows, etc...).
@Spoony_Tech lol yeah I soon realized this. I tried soooo many times in handheld and couldn't do it - I switched to dock mode with my pro controller and did it first time
I'm not sure that beating a shrine in a non-standard way necessarily undermines the satisfaction of taking the orthodox approach.
Some of my proudest moments with the game have come from piecing together imaginative solutions that clearly aren't the 'intended' ones, if 'intended' solutions ever really existed.
Dynamic, 'multiplicative', imaginative gameplay is this game's bread and butter. The only way to undermine that is to watch videos of how to beat stuff before trying it out yourself.
@Darkhound1999 Or just intentionally loosing the ball then quickly angling the maze so the new one drops on the exit path. The ball mazes are so easy to cheese.
@Darkhound1999 @Jaxad0127 or just flip the whole maze upside down so have a nice, smooth surface to vault the ball.
Also, can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that this actually works?
Perhaps not to the same extent, but still, it continues to prove that show's enduring relevance.
I haven't started my own game yet, but have been watching my kids play on and off.
I watched 1 kid run around a big maze for about half an hour trying to find his way down to a shrine in the center in the bottom of a big maze. I don't think there were any "puzzles" or "tricks" - my go to for the kids is always try the magnet - just a big maze. When he finally did run down the right series of corridors that led to the bottom it all felt very anti-climatic. Not a single boulder or lever or rotating wall - my other kid got stuck in the magnetic rotating wall level for awhile - just a maze. Not even a boss to fight, at least the rotating magnet wall had a cool boss fight after.
So I'm all for any shortcuts or tricks that people come up with. I'm not a big fan of speed-running, defeats the purpose of playing a game, but if you can solve a puzzle a different way than everyone else, well more power to you. Watching somebody else do it and copying their trick kind of defeats the purpose of playing the game as well though.
@Spoony_Tech Like we always tell our kids, sometimes there isn't a right way and a wrong way, some times there are multiple ways. With over 100 shrines in this game I feel fairly certain the game designers had some of them set up with more than 1 solution. If all 100 only had 1 solution each that would be some really bad game design. What's the point of having all of those tools in the game - climbing, the magnet, that water to ice rock - if each puzzle only had 1 solution? It's not a 2D on rails platformer, it's an open world adventure, it's all about coming up with your own solution, they just provide the tools.
@Maxz That's incredible!
@Damo I know right. The legacy lives on.
@onex that's what I did lol. Also if your turn it around before the all fall, it lands directly in the last hallway, just flip the maze back around and your good.
It's cool the engine is so versatile, but I prefer to solve the puzzles, that most of the fun of it. The only one I got genuinely frustrated at was the one where there are two, and you have to go to one and put the balls in the Same pattern as the other one. Before I found the other shrine I was totally confused.
How does anyone figure this out, especially with that level of precision?!
@Spoony_Tech cgeating as in its a way inside the physics in the game to beat it. No hack/mod/cheat. And who's to say that there is a correct way? That's the whole point to this game. Now that I've beat it, I created a new character on my switch and am playing my own hardcore mode, if I die, I deleted file and start over. I'm enjoying trying this.
Genius.
@feelinsupersonic
8 Giant Statues...
Just watched the embedded video. That's quite neat and looks quite simple, and even like it's the 'proper' method.
I know I got a chest in a shrine in a non conventional way. It involved balancing two metal barrels on top of each other against a fence, but offset so they created 'steps', which allowed me to get to the top of a fence which then allowed me to get to the chest. It was too messy and inelegant to be the 'proper' solution, but I have no idea how I was supposed to do it. Shows what a great physics engine the game has.
ok, with the precision timing of all that...it would be easier for me to just solve the shrine puzzle the old-fashioned way, lol. I'm quite uncoordinated.
Only watched the first one, since that's a shrine I finished. Very impressive, very clever. And to think that the real solution is very hard (I think I have cheated here a bit too).
I'm surprised how many people dislike the apparatus puzzles. I find its very fun and relaxing manipulating the puzzles. I normally struggle through most Zelda games taking way too long to figure out puzzles. I had to look up the solutions to the constellation shrine and ice cube shrine but got the rest on my own "with my wife shouting a lot of the solutions to me" 😉
I'm glad they are so tough to pull off most of the time.
Whenever I think of something to share about the game, I hesitate and then just stop. So much fun is in just figuring stuff out, that sharing another solution is just like sucking the fun out for someone. lol. As if there isn't a ton out there.
I do feel sad for the thousands of people who will get this after they've seen many videos. There's a couple of levels of enjoyment just completely stripped away by doing that, but I guess the young ones are accustomed to watching videos of games and ruining their chances at enjoying the joy of discovering things themselves.
@Alikan I just brute forced the Ice Cube shrine by Stasis-smashing the cube through the flames. Was there a more clever way?
@Maxz just throwing it through normal. Melts a little and slides right through. I know, seemed way too easy to me to after I'd spent 15 mins trying to use the metal cube to protect the ice cube.
What do you mean he doesn't have time for puzzles? He solved the puzzle, just not in the way anyone expected.
I have to admit I've also found ways to skip some of the shrine puzzles as well. Only a couple, but nothing quite as elaborately thought out as this guy though.
I'm enthralled. They're all cool, but some are absolutely incredible, like the one in which he electrifies a block with a sword, or the one in which he uses the bowl to push himself deep underwater.
I cheesed my way through more shrines than i would want to admit.
Like many already said, they are poorly designed at best, broken at worst.
And once you know the ins and outs about BotW's inner workings, you can exploit most shrines pretty badly.
Although this is impressive. A lot of shrines don't really need it as they are easy. Actually that second shrine video is one of them. And can't remember the other one, but I think that was easy too.
However, seeing how you need perfect timing or so, means you should just focus on the right way.
The first one is more complicated than actually trying to solve the shrine's puzzle. LOL. But I love seeing players 'breakin the game' by thinking outside the box.
@Masurao If the gyro maze you're talking about is the same as I'm thinking, instead of doing the maze with the ball my wife solved it by doing a violent swing on the gamepad. The ball was thrown directly on the hole.
I remember thinking I had found the solution for a few of the puzzles before realizing that I had just skipped a lot of it and went straight to the end. XD
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