This Echoes of Wisdom Animation Gives Viewers Hilarious Insight Into Potential Speedruns
Posted on July 14 2024 by Nicole Scott
The enthusiasm of the Zelda community is unmatched, and this mentality translates to its speedrunners. It won’t be long after release until avid glitch hunters and runners find route optimizations and exploits for Echoes of Wisdom. People are already guessing how this might look.
Animated sketch comic Matthew McCleskey docked up a laugh-out-loud interpretation of how Echoes of Wisdom speedruns may look in the iconic Joel Haver style. This was a delightful follow-up to his previous installment for Tears of the Kingdom.
The animation starts with familiar imagery from the Nintendo Direct trailer. This is likely a nod to the speedrunning community’s relationship to opening cutscenes, which are frequently unskippable. Then, it’s time to run. McCleskey shows Zelda obtaining the Tri Rod from Tri and basically ignoring introductions and tutorials. She speedily grabs Echoes of boxes, birds, and other items, ignoring and shoving every NPC in her path.
In the blink of an eye, Zelda is already in the final boss room. She was so fast getting there that Ganon’s minion didn’t even finish resurrecting him. Link appropriately encourages Zelda to smack the enemy with a chair, finishing the run. Something tells me a speedrun like this isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
For the full experience, check out the speedrun animation for yourself here. You can follow McCleskey on other platforms, including Patreon, X, and Instagram. Do you think the predictions in this animation will be how Echoes of Wisdom speedruns actually go? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Matthew McCleskey
Nicole Scott is writer for Zelda Dungeon from suburban Appalachia. She loves drinking espresso, seeing live music, building LEGO sets, being a completionist, and snuggling her two probably-alien cats, Tizo and Alarielle.
