A Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fan has decided to go against the grain and solve a shrine as if they were playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.
Twitter user @garrettkidney shared a clip of them completing one of the shrines in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without doing it the way Nintendo intended. As you can see from the video below, Garrett instead decided to use a shield to rail grind across from one platform to the other. It wasn't as simple as just hopping on the rail though, as they also had to find a way to get up onto the platform in the first place.
When asked why they had this idea, Garrett told us: "I couldn't work out the regular solution. I spent around ten minutes messing around with the wheels trying to figure out how they propelled the platform before realizing I could remove the platform completely." The Zelda fan continues, "I then tried to solve it with the platform upside down - this was a whole process - before once again failing."
This is absolutely positively not the intended solution and that it actually worked is what makes this game magic. pic.twitter.com/vyeCRdiCexMay 12, 2023
"I then thought 'Is there anything to it hanging sideways?'" Garrett explains, "And that's when the platform fell in a way that I could stack the wheels on top of each other and use everything to get to the rail and shield slide. It was a combination of frustration, coincidence, and creativity."
It's great to see that Tears of the Kingdom allows players enough freedom to try these kinds of things out. We asked Garrett if this was a thing they were attempting to do throughout the Breath of the Wild sequel, finding unique ways to solve puzzles, to which they responded: "I'm not sure. I guess it depends if I'm not smart enough to work out the intended solution and that's kind of the magic of the game."
"There is a way to complete all these puzzles but it's not the only way. And that's where the combination of blind luck and creativity can give you that wonderfully satisfying feeling of cheating the game," Garrett continues. Speaking of cheating the game, that's kind of what series producer Eiji Aonuma wants players to do. In an interview with Polygon, the developer discussed Tears of the Kingdom's new abilities revealing: "I’m somebody who, you know, if I can find a way to cheat, I like to do that kind of gameplay."
As for whether this neat trick will work on other rails in Tears of the Kingdom, the short answer is neither we nor Garrett knows. "I honestly didn't even know you could shield slide on the rail until that very moment. I half expected to fall flat on my face and plummet down the pit for like the seventh time," the Tears of the Kingdom player reveals.
Want to know what else you've got to look forward to in the game? Take a look at our Zelda Tears of the Kingdom abilities and powers guide.
