Elden Ring speedruns are already completing it in less than 30 minutes

rockpapershotgun.com:

While Elden Ring is a vast game you can marinate yourself in for weeks, soaking up its vast open world and big vibes until you almost feel new arms budding along your shoulders, it's also a game you can tear through at breakneck pace. Speedrunners have been grafting to cut times, and now someone has broken the half-hour mark by finishing the game in 28:59. Ridiculous. Watch the run below.

I mean, obviously don't watch it if you don't want spoilers. I respect not wanting to know what's coming in a game like this.

That's the latest record from Souls speedrunner "Distortion2". It's an Any% speedrun so they're not killing everything, obvs, just doing the bare minimum to reach an ending. And yes, the timer is paused during load screens. But it's ridiculous. And it's ridiculous the pace at which runs are improving as players learn the game and discover new ways to cut times.

Four days ago, Distortion2's best time was 49:29. Over the week, they've kept cutting, and now they're down below half an hour. I wonder how low speedrunners can go. I don't feel the speedrunning urge in games not explicitly built around zip-zooming, but I respect the hell out of the efforts from people who do.

Of course, eventually I'll want to see someone echoing the feat of a blindfolded Sekiro run in Elden Ring.

In our Elden Ring review, Ed called it "an unmissable journey through the most impressive open world to date". Unmissable? Absolutely. But unskippable? Well...!