Guinness World Record holder breaks down his half-hour Dark Souls speedrun

GamesBeat discusses the Darks Souls world record speedrun with Fred "Thantaos" Vasquez. What are the elite tips and tricks used to beat one of the hardest games ever made in less than 30 minutes?

[wita]

Awesome.

[MariaHelFutura]

This deserves an actual trophy.

[JKelloggs]

He gets a plaque, so that should be good enough, surely?

[blackbeld]

Wow nice speed run.

I will try it myself just to have the same feel of excitement.

[SilentNegotiator]

You abuse glitches to skip around parts of the game, I'm only impressed with a 2 minutes or less speedrun.

"In Dark Souls, whenever the player rolls, the player becomes immortal for a set period of time, roughly 0.6 or 0.7 seconds. During this time, no damage nor conditions will be applied to the player, making it a better way to avoid damage than even the greatest of shields, assuming good reflexes and timing are used when rolling"
-
I just hate how some of the enemies have MUCH longer immortality from rolls/hops/etc.

[nix]

shit... i haven't even managed to go past one of the big boss on top of the castle... i must be losing touch... never had to struggle so much in Demon's Souls. /:

[No FanS Land]

@nix

Same here, Finished Demon's Souls without too much problem, and I struggle as F in Dark Souls.

[knowyourstuff]

And guess what ladies... he's single!

[showtimefolks]

damn

[xyyyr]

He uses a glitch which cuts out half of the game... Some people don't count that as a complete run some do. There are some Japanese players who beat the full game un-glitched in 57 minutes which was very impressive.

[zerocrossing]

I wouldnt really count it if he used a glitch, that's like cheating right?

[SolDojo]

@zero

a lot of the speed running culture believes that anything you can do to cut time out to get to the end screen is OK, as long as any other player can also use that glitch it doesn't actually change the mechanics of the speed run.

you'll see that many of the top speed runs for old school games involve a strange wall glitch to remove large parts of the game

[JoySticksFTW]

Yeah, after obtaining the Lord Vessel he glitched the heck out of the game to by-pass collecting the souls to open the gate to the Kiln (final area). Basically cutting out some of the more bothersome areas and boss battles of the game.

Still crazy impressive the way he rushed through Sen's Fortress and later the dreaded Silver Knight Archers like it was nothing.

Heck, I was blown away the way he ran across and leapt off the beams in Arno Londo. I had to snipe those assassins and crawl along those high beams at a snails pace.

[ElitaStorm]

world record half-hour, real time spend more then hundres of hours just to figur out how to make everything perfect

[Flavor]

Glitches to complete. Totally worthless. Guinness needs to do their due diligence.

[PurpHerbison]

I totally agree. Only reason this is news is because it is KNOWN that we will bitch and complain that the speed run isn't legit because it just flat out isn't... Thus creating some element of typical N4G drama and bringing in hits. All part of the plan.

[roblef]

I could watch that repeatedly. Super cool.

[brodychet]

agreed. best game evar, evar.

[brodychet]

on second thought; upon finishing watching these videos, and seeing how he used a glitch to finish it, and how mean he is: I don't really respect the videos or him.

[onandonandon]

Just wait until u discover porn!

[roblef]

I can only watch porn 4 or 5 times a day. In 5 minute increments.

[darkronin229]

Crazy! And here I am still struggling to beat Demon's Souls.

[I_LOVE_MYSELF]

Keep at it, man. It will be quite a rewarding experience. Any part that is giving you trouble?

[violents]

Me too, I just finally picked it up and wow, you will die doesnt even begin to describe it. I wanted to play demon souls before dark souls and now dark souls2 is coming, i feel so behind the times. That speedrun was amazing.

[PurpHerbison]

Don't worry, out of nowhere you will just learn the mechanics. It seems extremely hard but the learning curve is actually quite easy.

[Tolkoto]

I would be happy to just beat the game.

[Sadie2100]

Ditto. Or if I don't spend two hours just trying to get past one section.

[Lifeequals42]

Amazing.

[onandonandon]

If that amazes you you really need to broaden your horizons!!

[NeXXXuS]

I doubt he enjoyed the game that way.

[DragonKnight]

He enjoyed the game enough before the speed run that he learned how to do this. Speed runs aren't done on the very first attempt at playing the game. They require extensive playthroughs, learning the ins and outs of the game, and in short speed runs that aren't tool-assisted are done by hardcore fans of the games they speed run.

[NeXXXuS]

well he obviously had to learn the game before doing this. i already knew that. it just doesn't seem fun rushing through it just to beat a record.

[No FanS Land]

it maybe doesn't feel fun to watch, but I can assure his adrenaline muast have been through the roof the whole,

"don't make a mistake, don't make a mistake, don't make a mistake, don't make a mistake.... "

Must have been both thrilling and infuriating at times.

[soundslike]

I've been replaying Dark Souls with new characters for fun. Each time I get more efficient and get to areas faster just by virtue of having played the game enough to know where to go.

They are just doing the same thing but with actual strategies and such. Whats with the hate on people who love the game and want to find new challenges for themselves?

Oh they have "no life" right? I'm sure we could take a look at a list of your save files and add up the playtime to make the same conclusions. Those in glass houses...

[Kran]

Did anybody else suddenly read it

"Guinness World Record holder breaks down during half-hour Dark Souls speedrun"

xD

[DV_Bastian]

Ha, that would have made for an equally interesting video!

[violents]

I could see that happening, i just started playing demon souls and have rage quit a bunch. I don't even want to know how many times he had to play through the game to get this good at it.

[MidnytRain]

omg, I totally saw that... X)

[JKelloggs]

Never played Dark Souls, seeing as the sequel was confirmed at the VGAs, I may have to pick it up.

On topic, nice going :P

[kingmushroom]

oh crap so thats how you get that badass sword, it comes out of the dragons ass.

[castortroy]

honestly that one-shot parry-riposte of the silver knight on the ledge after running halfway through anor londo was so epically badass.

[castortroy]

and i can't believe he went after smough first. super ornstein is so much tougher than upgraded smough.

[castortroy]

last comment: those slow black knight armor rolls while fight gwyn were hilarious. followed by repeated riposte punishment. awesome video.

[rpd123]

Hahaha, he just runs around every enemy.

[Mister_G]

Uses an exploit, now patched. The actual record for non glitch speed run is just under 1 hour.

[Skizelli]

I was really impressed up to the point he used that glitch. I know that some people find this acceptable in speedrunning, but I don't. If you're going to use such a glitch, then what's the point? You might as well use a cheat device, cheat codes, or trainers to the same effect.

[RuperttheBear]

If you can do it any faster using the glitches, then by all means do it. Regardless of glitches or whatever, the guy still has skill.

[Skizelli]

Using a glitch in order to bypass a closed door is roughly the equivalent to recording a Doom demo with no clipping enabled. It kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think? I never said he didn't have skill, hence why I was impressed prior to him using the glitch.

One of the reasons glitches shouldn't be allowed in the first place is the fact that they can be patched out, making the speedrun irrelevant after the fact.

[jon1234]

YOU DEFEATED!!!

[2pacalypsenow]

I like to enjoy my games while im playing them.. but good for him i guess

[SimpleSlave]

Wrong post

[Cam977]

What is the silver amour in the picture on the web page?

[Tzuno]

Gwyn defeated like in a movie last stab while kneeling to his last breath. Sick.

[PurpHerbison]

The fact that glitches were used only make this speed run "cool", if that. It isn't a legit speedrun.

[RXL]

every few minutes id forget it was a speed run and start thinking "wth man you're doi...oh..oh right.."

[rpalma28]

Such a hard game, such a difficult thing to do. Just awesome by this guy.