Author: Game Infliction

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as soon as players completed the initial Great Plateau tutorial era, it was possible to grab a paraglider and sprint straight to the game’s final boss, clearing the game in under an hour. Based on our time with the game so far, it seems like a similar path is available in the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, albeit with a key difference from its predecessor.

WARNING: Spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom follow. Scroll below the video at your own risk.

Just like in Breath of the Wild, in Tears of the Kingdom you can finish the game’s “tutorial” of sorts on on The Great Sky Island, and then go straight to the end of the game. However, there’s a key difference from Breath of the Wild. In Breath of the Wild, you were given the quest “Defeat Ganon,” which told you exactly where to go and what to do to trigger the ending. But Tears of the Kingdom gives you no such quest. You have to already know where the end of the game is and head there without in-game guidance, and then know what to do when you get there.

The end of Tears of the Kingdom is only truly accessible once you finish a very early main quest to get the Paraglider. However, where you’re going and what you’re doing is actually a massive, massive spoiler – one big enough that we don’t want to touch it in an article like this. If you really, really want to skip to the end right away, check out our guide on how to do so. But really, we’re warning you, it’s a pretty big spoiler. Once you know, there’s no going back.

We have tons more Tears of the Kingdom content lined up in the coming days. In the meantime, check out our review of Tears of the Kingdom, which we called “an unfathomable follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made, somehow improving upon it in nearly every way.” And for help getting started, take a look at our Wiki guide to everything you could ever want to know about making your way through Hyrule.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an enormous beast with an incredible amount to see and fuse, but just how long is it? Here we’ll let you know exactly how many hours it took different members of the IGN team to finish the story, and what they prioritised doing with their time.

How Long is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

• Our fastest player finished it in 60 hours.
• Our “slowest” player spent 82 hours before credits rolled.

Everyone plays games differently, so read on for more details about how everyone played, how long it took to reach the credits, and how much extra time players spent exploring the world. Once you’ve finished the game yourself, be sure to submit your times on How Long To Beat and see how your time compares!

Brendan Graeber – Senior Guides Editor

While it’s probably more accurate to say that I beat the main story of Tears of the Kingdom after about 60 hours of playtime, I want it on record that I could have beaten it after the first few hours I spent taking in all that the tutorial island had to offer. One of the very first things I did after Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau was to march my shirtless Link right up to the final boss to give him a beatdown, so realizing Ganondorf obviously hadn’t learned his lesson, I resolved to do it again.

I won’t reveal exactly how things played out this time around, but I will say a handful of rocks taped to tree branches can only get you so far against the big bad when you only have four hearts. Afterwards, I spent much of my time just exploring the wide world, uncovering secrets, and revisiting familiar locations to see what had changed. When I finally decided to see how the main story played out, I still had so much left to explore, and hadn’t even completed most of the shrines I discovered. By now, I’m well over 100 hours in, and since I plan to see and do everything to help build out our wiki guide, I expect to be clocking countless more hours before I’m done.

Tom Marks – Senior Reviews Editor

I beat the story of Tears of the Kingdom around the 82-hour mark, but I let myself wander and get distracted along the way as that’s sort of the point. You could almost certainly beat it faster than that if you’re just trying to get to the end, but even after 100 total hours played I still have an absurd amount of stuff left to do – side quests to finish, secrets to find, shrines to complete, and so much more. The in-game tracker tells me I’ve barely passed 50% completion, and while the story itself is only a small fraction of that, the overall size of this game is truly impressive.

John Tyler Sullivan – Video Freelancer

It took me about 70 hours to get to the credits of Tears of the Kingdom with 35% of the game completed. Being on the video walkthrough often means replaying parts of the game to get good clips, but I didn’t have to do that as much this time around. I’m not exactly sure why but I think it has something to do with there being so many different answers to every problem.

I completed 16 side adventures, 10 side quests, 3 shrine quests, and about 72 shrines. If I hadn’t been on a deadline, I would have spent way more time getting distracted by everything else there was to do besides just focusing on the main quests. Remember that episode of South Park about World of Warcraft? Now I can finally play the game.

If you want to see how Tears of the Kingdom stacks up in length to the previous games in the series, check out our complete Playlist of Zelda games. You can sort it by HLTB playtime, rating, and release date. And you can of course make your own lists and rankings, too. And if you need a little help with anything in Hyrule, be sure to check out our Tears of the Kingdom guides.