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.