Distortion2 zips through this Elden Ring speedrun in under nine minutes

destructoid.com:

Speedrunners are relentlessly whittling down Elden Ring, and as someone who’s only been casually following the recent times they’ve been clocking, I got whiplash from this under-nine-minute Any% Unrestricted speedrun from Distortion2. With a finicky “zip” technique, it was possible to get through the Lands Between in 8 minutes and 56 seconds.

This run popped up in my feed yesterday and I couldn’t believe it.

I mean, I could believe it — things tend to get pretty wild in FromSoftware speedruns when the idea is to just reach the credits through any means possible. But after spending dozens of hours with Elden Ring, it’s hard to wrap your head around just how efficient a speedrun can become, glitches or no glitches. I spent more time on the Tree Sentinel!

“Imagine beating a Souls game without fighting anything,” Distortion2 tweeted.

In this case, the runner made full use of wild-looking (yet really meticulous) zips to clear huge distances, as well as “kill” some mandatory late-game bosses, like Maliketh.

So what are zips, exactly? A helpful pinned YouTube comment from Sketchy has our backs with a quick rundown: “A zip is performed by guarding and then walking at a specific time afterward for a specific number of frames. These are frame perfect. The zip is caused by the specific way the walking and guarding animations overlap. Zips are reliant on hardware (and are therefore only allowed in unrestricted runs) and lower resolution makes them more consistent. Macros are not allowed, these are done manually.”

If you’re looking for a more in-depth breakdown, here’s an explainer video from Daravae:

It’s the kind of technique that proficient runners can nail down to a staggering degree.

As for why many zones (and their bosses) can