Sekiro speedrunner completes game blindfolded
Sound of violence.
In what appears to be a world first, a Twitch streamer has completed a blindfolded speedrun of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Yep, you read that right.
Earlier this week streamer Mitchriz completed Sekiro's Shura ending with a time of four hours, 35 minutes and 13 seconds, all while blindfolded. Here's a clip of the moment he completed the run - spoilers for the final boss, obviously:
It's worth watching the rest of the run, too, as it's fascinating to see how Mitchriz navigates Sekiro's world using only audio cues. (Rather conveniently, he also has an input overlay so you can see what he's doing with his mouse and keyboard.) On sections near cliff edges, Mitchriz has to carefully count down the seconds to measure how far he's walking in any one direction, often darting forwards to help control his movements. On some occasions Mitchriz slashes with a sword until he hits a wall, with the change in sound indicating his position. Grapple points seem to serve as useful tools for navigation, while enemy sounds and cutscenes also help telegraph his position.
It wasn't all plain sailing, however: Mitchriz did fall off a cliff edge a couple of times, and in some situations had to use the homeward idol to return to previous points and restart a section.
As for the boss fights, Sekiro does (thankfully) have plenty of audio cues for enemy attacks, and it seems Mitchriz was able to listen to these to time his attacks, parries and abilities. His battle with Corrupted Monk seemed to be a particularly tense moment, as Mitchriz said this was "the one that we literally could not possibly kill if we ran out of items". He used fistfuls of ash, snap seeds and divine confetti to overwhelm Corrupted Monk in one go.
Somewhat incredibly, Mitchriz also beat the Armoured Warrior mini-boss in his first attempt, angling his final attack so the boss would fall through the side of the bridge - and even Mitchriz seemed surprised he managed this in only one go.
Guardian Ape proved more of a problem, however, with Mitchriz getting within one blow of killing the ape on his first attempt before being smacked down, and reacting a little two slowly on the second attempt. This meant he had to "do it the hard way" with fewer items, and it proved tricky: moving out of range of the ape's perilous blood scream attack in time was a particular sticking point. Mitchriz's perseverance paid off, however, and he finally beat the big monkey on his sixth attempt.
Eventually, Mitchriz made it to the final boss of the Shura ending, Isshin, and managed to defeat him on the second attempt. "Four and a half hours... that's actually fast," Mitchriz said at the end of the run. "I didn't think it would be a one try. I mean, it was hard... that did not go according to plan, but we did it."
The stream went down mid-run, so you can find part one here, and part two here.
Mitchriz at one point held the world record for the fastest Sekiro Any percent category, and currently holds the record for the fastest "no airswim" Shura ending. He appears to have been preparing for the blindfolded Sekiro run for over a month, and seemingly has no plans to stop anytime soon. He's since uploaded another stream focused on optimising the blindfolded run to improve his own record.
It's a truly impressive display of memorisation - not only did Mitchriz have to remember the exact movements required to navigate the world and beat bosses, but he had to navigate menus and remember the items he'd acquired during the run. In any case, this shura makes me feel a bit sheepish about my own, non-blindfolded Sekiro attempts.