Dark Souls speedrunners have unpicked an intricate series of actions that breaks the strategy for certain bosses wide open, with the potential to transform the community forever.
Last week, YouTuber catalystz outlined a feature known as 'AI Breaks,' present in the original Dark Souls. Years ago, players noticed that enemy AI would often malfunction as they swapped weapons, particularly if they did so while passing through a fog gate. That malfunction could through proper strategy out the window, particular in the case of 'The Bulldozer.' where bosses would simply sprint towards the player, body-charging them instead of performing any other actions.
In 2020, speedrunners started looking more closely at this phenomenon, but it would take them another year to discover that toggling weapons five seconds after loading in would break the AI.
The reason behind this is that Dark Souls produces an internal list of AI targets every 151 frames - or roughly every five seconds. Speedrunners also discovered that toggling between different weapons would cause their character to 'de-load' for three frames as their different model loaded in. If the three-frame window could be lined up with the 151st frame, the player would disappear from the AI's targeting list.
It's a handy tip, but very complex. Players have had to arrange a specific list of inputs in order to coincide with those frames, making only the most literally pixel-perfect strategies viable. The strategy is also not always very helpful - attacking a boss would cause it to recognise the player again, so bosses like the notorious Ornnstein and Smough still required some player skill. For a boss like Dark Sun Gwyndolin, however, who repeatedly teleports away from the player, the ability to 'disappear' from view before running up and one-shotting the boss shaves nearly 20 seconds off the best-possible approach.
As with basically all speedrunning communities, the long-term implications of this discovery are still being uncovered. While AI Break might not be a fix-all, catalysts suggests that that might have saved the community, ensuring that player skill will always be relevant, even as top runners discover new workarounds.
