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Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players are using long bridges to solve all their problems

The Legend of Zelda: The Really Long Bridge

An image of Link in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom standing next to a very long bridge made with the Ultrahand ability.
Do you think it’s long enough?
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
Ana Diaz (she/her) is a culture writer at Polygon, covering internet culture, fandom, and video games. Her work has previously appeared at NPR, Wired, and The Verge.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is rife with opportunities for cheating.

I’m not talking about actual hacking or cheating — Nintendo historically hasn’t been down with players cheating in its games. The cheating I’m talking about refers to playing the game in a way that may not have been intended by the developers. Fans of Tears of the Kingdom are taking that ethos to new levels: They’re building super bridges to solve all their problems, and sharing clips of their work on platforms like TikTok.

In Tears of the Kingdom, Link has a new ability called Ultrahand. This allows him to pick up and arrange objects, as well as glue them together to create a larger structure. It’s a key change for Tears of the Kingdom, and it introduces several sandbox mechanics, as players build machines and other structures to help them solve puzzles or navigate Hyrule’s rugged environment.

Most importantly, you can use this ability to make a bridge. You can essentially make a bridge out of anything. Sure, wood from a chopped-down tree works, but there are plenty of other random materials scattered across Hyrule that you can adhere together to make a bridge and get from one place to another. Players have been demonstrating just how much they can do with a simple, but very long, bridge.

If you build a bridge and then leave the area, whatever you build will disappear. So some people are just carrying their bridge from place to place like a goddamn 100-foot handbag.

@gamexplain

Building an “Infinity” Bridge...of Mine Carts?! (Tears of the Kingdom) #ZeldaTOTK #TOTK #Tearsofthekingdom #zeldatearsofthekingdom

? original sound - GameXplain - GameXplain

Others are convinced that they’ve broken the physics of the game by making a bridge that’s too long.

This person made a bridge long enough to rival the Bridge of Eldin and somehow crammed it into a shrine. Don’t ask me where all the pillars came from — it’s ridiculous.

My personal favorite is this clip in Mayachin Shrine — the bridge isn’t that long, but it is scrappy. It’s certainly a unique way to way to solve the puzzle.

It’s sort of the one-track mind, himbo-istic solution that just makes sense to me. Oh, you can’t get to a tower? Build a bridge. You don’t want to fight all the Bokoblins? Build a bridge to circumvent them. Don’t understand a timing puzzle? Just use the items to build a bridge. I can’t build a mech or a war machine or even a fully functional glider at this point, but do you know what I can confidently build? A bridge. And it works.

The next level of puzzles.

Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.

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