Tears of joy as streamer completes back-to-back no-hit run of every single Soulsborne game

After 120 days of trying and multiple restarts, streamer dinossindgeil—or Dino—broke into happy tears yesterday as he became the second recorded player to complete "God Run 3": A playthrough of Demon's Souls (the remake), every Dark Souls game, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring in which he took no hits whatsoever.

The rules were simple: Dino had to play the games back-to-back—sans DLC—without taking a single hit in any of them. The only caveat was that fall damage didn't count, meaning Dino could take advantage of rings that buffed damage at low HP by repeatedly chucking himself off high ledges. If an enemy managed to hurt him, he had to start back at square one in Demon's Souls. As you can imagine, that was a pretty painful experience when it happened.

When Dino began the run 120 days ago, he was returning to the other Soulsborne games after several months of playing Elden Ring exclusively, making the early attempts a mind-bending exercise in shaking off months of Elden Ring muscle memory while relearning the intricacies of the other Souls games. As someone who still occasionally writes "2020" when I fill out forms, this sounds pretty much like witchcraft.

The God Run 3 is, you may have surmised, the third in the line of Soulsborne God Runs. The first God Run was composed of Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls series, and Bloodborne, the second added Sekiro, and the third bolts Elden Ring onto the already gruelling trial. 

This is the second time that the God Run 3 has been completed, at least on stream. Back in September, a Spanish streamer called BushidoYu also managed the feat, though they took a few breaks where Dino marathoned the games for hours each day. Dino actually made a very supportive reaction video when BushidoYu completed their run, remarking that other streamers attempting The God Run 3 were "fantastic at what they do and they deserve these runs for sure as well".

FromSoft games have a long and proud tradition of absolutely ridiculous challenge runs. Barely a month after release, players were already completing level one runs of Elden Ring, and it was only last month that a streamer beat the game on a dance pad having already beaten it using just one hand. It's nice to know that, however skilled I ever feel playing these games, there will always be someone ready to clown on me with a superabundance of talent and patience.