Since its release in February, Elden Ring has gone down as one of the best video games ever. That sounds like quite a statement, but at the time of writing, Metacritic shows it has a score of 95 on PC, and 96 on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.
It was by far one of the most anticipated launches of the year, and for good reason too. Alongside that, those in the speedrunning community have been hard at work trying to find new ways to get to the end in record time, and one person has been relentlessly setting the bar higher (or lower, in this case).
In an April 12 YouTube video, Distortion2 shows that it’s actually possible to beat Elden Ring in under seven minutes, with their latest effort clocking in at 6:59 – an astoundingly fast run, especially for a new game.
The impressive speedrun was achieved is with a little trick called a “zip glitch” – a hardware-dependent strategy that requires a constant 60fps as well as stable frame rates.
The way the trick works is, through a series of “frame perfect” glitches that use a combination of blocking, holding walk, and pressing forward, it’s possible to essentially teleport over great distances, skipping large chunks of the map.
This isn’t the first time Distortion2 has set a new world record for speedrunning Elden Ring either. Previously, they were able to do it in just under nine minutes, and another impressive run shows a time of 12:13.
As time marches on, it will be interesting to see whether they or anyone else, will be able to use this frame-perfect zip glitch to shave off even more seconds.
It does call into question the nature of running a game like Elden Ring using this tactic. On the whole, it doesn’t break any rules, but some may feel it breaks the spirit of doing speed runs if players are able to utilize the glitch to complete the game lightning quick.
That is obviously the point of running, but websites like Speedrun.com have other categories for the game, such as “no wrong warp.” It’s still a very impressive feat for players to come along and, using strategies that have been found over time, complete a title like Elden Ring, which is already challenging enough, in the time it takes to do everyday chores.
