It’s only been about a month since Doom Eternal came ripping and tearing onto our screens, and speedrunners have already found a host of exploits and collision bugs to help rocket them through id Software’s latest demon butchery sim. The development leads sat down to watch the current world-record holder run through Doom Eternal in an astonishing 27 minutes, and the results are pretty hilarious.
IGN had executive producer Marty Stratton, director Hugo Martin, lead level designer Jerry Keehan, and lead game programmer Evan Eubanks get together to watch Xamide’s record-setting 27 minute any% run of Doom Eternal. Xamide, of course, relies on exploits in level collision detection to bypass huge portions of Doom Eternal’s sometimes sprawling levels, and the developers react with a constantly shifting mixture of dismay, confusion, and delight.
As a viewer, it’s helpful to have some of Doom Eternal’s technical brain trust on hand to explain what’s happening in the speedrun. At one point, Stratton asks what exactly the ‘mouse wheel jump’ is, and Eubanks is able to describe the process of binding jump to the mousewheel, spinning it, and having the game’s code add massive amounts of velocity to the character when playing at high framerates.
And Xamide is playing at a very high framerate: using Doom Eternal’s Vulkan settings, he’s getting around 250 fps for most of the playthrough, and that’s essential to some of the exploits he uses in the run.
The developers note that many exploit-driven speed runs use the same principles, and that it’s not possible to stop people from doing it – better, they agree, just to have fun with it. They even suggest adding Easter eggs to Doom Eternal in upcoming DLC that only speedrunners will be able to find.
“It’d be fun to just mess with them,” Martin says, and Stratton suggests adding an unskippable, exposition-heavy cutscene that only triggers when you fling yourself up into the skybox the way Xamide does to pass over large chunks of the levels.
It’s definitely an entertaining watch – especially if you need a break from the latest Slayer Gate you’ve stumbled into while playing Doom Eternal the ‘normal’ way. There are also diskettes hidden throughout the game that let you use authorised cheats, so check out our guide to Doom Eternal cheat codes to find them all. And if you you haven’t read it already, here’s a link to our Doom Eternal review, as well.