The best moments of Break The Record: LIVE
Break the Record: LIVE lived up to its name when speedrunner Xiae smashed the Doom Eternal world record in a time of 1 hour, 8 minutes and 52 seconds.
Check out the highlights from the event:
However, with many personal bests recorded over 14 intense hours of speedrunning action, Xiae’s no major glitches run wasn’t the only highlight of the day. A peak of 10,000 concurrent viewers enjoyed the event, and now you can relive some of the finest moments with casters Karl Jobst, Bowie ‘BOWIEStheHERO’ Alexander, and James ‘ALTInsider’ Winovich, who shared their highlights with us.
Visconic’s final run was beautiful
Kaspersky / ESAALTInsider: I will always have a special spot in my speedrunning heart for visconic’s final run that provided a beautiful end to the whole event. While he didn’t end up with a PB for that particular run, he did wear his emotions directly on his sleeve.
I think everyone watching was ride or die with that run. After 13 or so hours had passed, visconic (and Xamide who PB’d as well) put a great exclamation point on the last hour of the proceedings.
Bowsr’s amazing chase
Kaspersky / ESAALTInsider: While it didn’t end up with a change in the leaderboards, given how much time bowsr has been on the top of Doom Eternal’s NMG leaderboards, you knew he had a chance to take home the WR during this event. After Xiae set the bar extremely high by getting the new WR however, focus for me shifted to Bowsr. Would he be able to reclaim his spot on top?
While he ended up coming up short, his best attempt at doing so was a great run the whole way through, and it would have been a new WR just a few short days ago. It was a great effort by him and I hope the battle for #1 on the leaderboards doesn’t end here.
Xiae and bowsr’s rivalry
BOWIEStheHERO: Xiae and bowsr’s rivalry was apparent from the start. The two fastest runners from the community put on an amazing show. Xiae would go on to post more PBs as bowsr struggled to get one across the line, and it really was fascinating to see the two sides of the coin.
- Read More: How to get faster at Doom Eternal
Eventually, Xiae put in a historic run with his brand new world record of 1:08:52. The first-ever Sub-1:09. Once again, another broken record. BTRL is now 2/2 on that front! Huge outcome. Bowsr eventually knuckled down, and after a few lackluster runs, posted his own new PB of 1:09:26, making them the second ever runner to sub 1:10!
Commentator’s curse
BOWIEStheHERO: We can’t just talk about highlights in terms of everything going right. But what about when things go wrong? The opening race. 43-ish minutes in, on the stage ‘Mars Core,’ my co-commentator Karl Jobst mentioned a potential situation whereby the game could sadly crash (the game is run on an older version for the sake of some cool strategies).
No more than five seconds later, that dark prophecy came true as Xiae queued up a BFG shot, and bosch… Blackscreen, in one of the most stunning cases of commentator’s curse I’ve been party to. Absolutely heartbreaking for the runner, but hilarious at the same time, in the timing of it all.
Everyone showed up with their A-game
Kaspersky / ESAKarl Jobst: My personal highlight was the overall level of play we saw on the day. You can never be sure going into an event how well the players will handle the pressure, but everyone showed up with their A-game and performed well. Six out of the seven runners achieved new personal bests, and of course, we saw a new world record with Xiae’s 1:08:52. You couldn’t ask for a better showing.
Bloodshot9001’s clutch last run
Karl Jobst: Bloodshot9001 was on a run that was behind the pace of his current PB, and we were approaching the cutoff at the end of the day for when players were allowed to reset. We were debating if he should reset and perform a new run, or if he should risk it all and see if he could clutch a good finish. Bloodshot9001 decided to keep going with the run he was on, and it was obvious by his demeanor that he was under a lot of pressure to finish strong.
- Read More: How Xiae beat the Doom Eternal world record
Despite having already played for 12 hours and feeling incredibly fatigued, he managed to overcome the pressure and perform his best finish of all time, setting a huge new personal best. It was a great moment.
A tough act to follow
Kaspersky / ESABOWIEStheHERO: There’s a few things that truly made Break the Record: LIVE presented by Kaspersky exciting and memorable. Doom Eternal is a brand new experience, and the community hasn’t had the longest time to build their conquest of the speedrun.
That said, since the event got announced, we started seeing our first few highlights. Qualification was pretty fierce, with the world record coming down from 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 9 minutes in the lead-up. It was a great showcase of the work speedrunners do to improve in their game. It’s likely the only chance to see more than two or three runners in the same place at the same time to really see how each runner handles it.