The level of freedom offered in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't just allow players to craft their own unique journeys throughout Hyrule, but it also lends itself well to all manner of challenges for players to come up with and attempt to accomplish. Aside from the usual speed runs to see who can reach and defeat Calamity Ganon the quickest, there have even been speedruns to bake bread as fast as possible. One player, however, didn't seek to complete the game quickly and presented themselves with a far more unique and incredibly daunting challenge.
Back in October 2020, streamer everest issued themselves the task to clear Breath of the Wild without once crossing over their trail. As everest best puts it, they were essentially playing classic mobile game Snake, which has the same objective. Normally, such a feat would be near impossible to track, but the game offers a map mode called the Hero's Path, which keeps track of Link's entire journey from start to finish.
Given how large Hyrule in Breath of the Wild is, one would be forgiven but thinking this challenge would be relatively easy to complete. But as everest breaks down in their Twitter thread, it was anything but easy. While they did eventually succeed, it took them eight months to do so. They even had to restart their run multiple times, completing it on the seventh attempt.
A full explanation and some extra info can be found in everest's thread, but basically, making sure Link would never cross his path was much harder than it sounds, even with the map logging it. For starters, if everest ever did cross their path, they couldn't load up an older save to undo it since the game still keeps track of Link's path regardless. And since they were playing on a proper Nintendo Switch and weren't using an emulator, they couldn't use save states, which would have circumvented this issue.
Not only that, but while some content can be skipped entirely, certain cutscenes will teleport Link to another location, which still draws a line on the map. Everest's only respite came from the shrines since they don't show up on the map, meaning no lines are drawn while moving inside them.
Aside from the Twitter breakdown, the entire challenge can be viewed on YouTube for anyone interested in seeing how they accomplished it. And for anyone wondering if they'll try it again when Breath of the Wild 2 is out, everest has emphatically said they will never again attempt this challenge.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available on Nintendo Switch.
Source: YouTube