When I finished Bloodborne on Sunday afternoon, my playtime was 46 hours, 21 minutes, and 13 seconds. The current world record is, well, way faster. How much faster? It’s 44 minutes!
As soon as Bloodborne was released, people have started digging into the game and finding ways to break it. Sometimes, it’s glitches that allow you to easily defeat bosses. In this case, it’s finding a way into the last third of the game long before you’re “supposed” to be over there.
It’s not surprising people are clocking through the game faster than I am, but less than an hour? I spent nearly two days fighting through Yharnam, so clearly something special is happening.
Let’s break down a recent run by YouTube user Oginam_tv.
Anyone playing Bloodborne will be familiar with this jerk from the game’s starting area:
He’s one of the most powerful creatures early on, capable of wrecking you with a single blow. When I first came across him, I was stupidly cocky, died immediately, and didn’t come back until I could fully whoop him. (I did). For Oginam_tv, though, clearing him out is crucial.
Once he’s down for the count, it’s time for a little jumping action. How come? Just over that fence on the righthand side is a shortcut that most players won’t unlock until far later into the game, but when done, quickly links you to a creepy place called the Forbidden Woods.
There are two jumps he needs to pull off to make this work.
Thanks for the boost, coffin! (I wonder if they will move that in a patch? Hmm.) Once he’s up there, there’s another jump required. Next up, the fence.
With that done, he slides down a ladder, navigates through a swamp, and emerges in the Forbidden Woods. If you’re playing Bloodborne like an average player, you won’t find the Forbidden Woods for many hours. This should be obvious, but this path isn’t recommended!
The big question, then, is how he’s able to tackle some of the game’s powerful bosses without having spent hours levelling up. He takes advantage of the item duplication trick that Patricia outlined this morning.
This lets him cash in hundreds of thousands of souls in seconds, allowing him to tackle the bosses that wait ahead. It’s how he’s able to quickly lay waste to, say, the Shadows of Yharnam.
While I’m sure later speedrunners will find ways to defeat bosses without resorting to power levelling — and From Software is sure to remove the item duplication in a future patch — this lays out an early template for finishing Bloodborne as fast as possible.
In fact, watching this run, it’s easy to see how it will improve. He spends several minutes trying to pull off the initial jump, gets hit too many times, and has to spend precious sends healing.
As for me, I’m pretty happy with my 46 hours!
Comments
14 responses to “Bloodborne, Beaten In Just 44 Minutes”
Makes the 3 hr bloke look a bit silly eh.
3 hour bloke was all bosses though, this guy is an any% type
As nexi said the 2-3 hour one was all bosses, but also of note is the fact it wasn’t using the item duplication glitch to overpower the character within minutes of starting the game.
How does he even know to jump the fence like that?!? 44 minutes, I will still be creating my character at that stage.
It’s probably not his first playthrough…
I just got up to the Blood-Starved Beast after what feels like 20 or so hours. Been doing a lot of exploring, dying, farming, and dying.
Once I finish the game, I think I may start another character and do the duplication exploit, if only to destroy the monsters that have given me so much grief already.
Shorter than The Order: 1886. 7.8/10
How do you check your play time?
You can select ‘Load’ from the menu at the start of the game instead of ‘Continue’ and it’ll bring up a list of your characters with their actual played time… Meaning that it doesn’t count loading screens.
Thanks!
I would guess not, that tough enemy who isn’t protecting anything particularly interesting makes me think that this shortcut is intentional.
That particular enemy has a chance to drop weapon boosting gems, which can be very handy early on and I suspect is actually why it’s there. So I doubt the shortcut is intentional.
There were a number of similar wall jumps and such in Dark Souls 2 that From patched pretty quickly.
Never watched a speed run before but this was waaaay worth it! What did he mean by “The real version of the final boss is way hard”? Wasn’t that “The only version”? Anyways that was rad.
There is 2 endings I presume like in the other souls games an “evil” version and “good” version.