Speedrunner Uses Exploits To Beat 'Bloodborne' In Record Time

Sony's ace of spades, the PlayStation 4 exclusive title "Bloodborne" has garnered universal acclaim. The spiritual successor to the Souls series of games consisting of "Demon's Souls," "Dark Souls" and "Dark Souls 2" has been generating a lot of buzz amongst both newcomers as well as eager veterans of From Software's action RPG series. Just like the "Souls" games before it, a speed run enthusiast has managed to beat "Bloodborne" in record-breaking time.

To put things into perspective, the average playtime for the challenging hack-and-slash game is around the 40-hour mark. However, a seasoned speedrunner known by his YouTube handle Oginam_tv has managed to best the game in just 40 minutes and 17 seconds, according to a Gamespot report. The time has been claimed to be a new world record, but the same speedrunner managed to shave off another four minutes from this time in a subsequent video.

It isn't surprising that the speedrun hasn't been achieved fair and square. This fact is overlooked because the speedrun has been classified in the "any%" category, which means that glitches and exploits are fair game. The speedrunner employs a variety of such devious workarounds that allow him to empower his character enough to best the most difficult bosses and even skip some of them altogether.

The item duplication trick employed in the Hunter's Dream area is the most crucial ingredient of the speedrun's success. Kotaku explains that this trick allows the speedrunner to make more of any stackable item and encash those for a ridiculously high number of echoes. Most of the challenging game areas and even some bosses are skipped altogether by exploiting some of the game's extant glitches.

VG247 reports that this exploit is no longer possible because the recent patch 1.02 has fixed the item duplication trick. The patch also addressed a far more important game-breaking bug that can prevent progress for some players by withholding the Lunarium key, which is crucial for game progression. The 300MB patch should download automatically, and it's compulsory because those who resist applying it won't be allowed to access the persistent online multiplayer component.

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Bloodborne speedrun in 44 minutes (credit: Oginam_tv YouTube channel)