God of War: Ragnarök (PS4) - the auto-walk glitch
20Here's a more comprehensive info package about a strange, potentially powerful glitch tech that only exists in the unpatched version of the game.
The idea behind this exploit is simple: it's possible to give unintended touch pad-input to Kratos or Atreus during any "auto-walk" sequence in the game.
So, what is an auto-walk? It's when the game subtly re-positions Kratos right after you choose to use many of the game's prompts so that its animation will not begin displaced.
So, what can you do with touch pad-input? Most touch pad-input pertains to the HUD, but there are three physical actions you can tie to it as well: Shield Parry, 180 Turn or Rage-activation. This means, you can do any of these three inputs during an auto-walk to interrupt it.
So, what's the use? Rage or 180 Turn don't necessarily help much. However, parries can be used to move away from a prompt after choosing to use it. During this time, the game automatically still tries to make Kratos auto-walk back to the prompt you left from, which makes navigation tricky, but not impossible. What's more, Kratos is (usually) immune to walls while he is doing an auto-walk, which means that with proper angles and positioning, it's possible to clip through a lot of walls in the game in the process.
So, what's the catch? I guess one pretty big one is that this glitch is patched and no longer works on the current version. It can't be started without a correct type of prompt in the vicinity. Also, quite critically, you can't end it at will. The auto-walk state is so persistent that there are only a few ways to end it, most commonly a checkpoint retry. So, to have any realistic hope of doing sequence breaks with this tactic, there would have to be a checkpoint past the walls that you clip through. Otherwise, you just end up accomplishing nothing.
This glitch tech also doesn't work in "no-attack zones", like near The Forge or the Vanaheim camp, which limits some of its potential.
For more info about moving around with a parry chain, I recommend reading the description of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-_P5xYCUo
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This exploit can be done with both Kratos and Atreus. Atreus' version is a bit more limited in the sense that he only has one type of a parry and he can't steer at all during his parry chain. To see more of Atreus' auto-walk glitch, check out f.e. this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkCFezTf3PY
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0:00 - Just the basics of the glitch tech. Also shows a failed attempt to skip the first Dreki-fight. The reason this tactic cannot work here is that there's no checkpoint past the crawlspace.
0:51 - I thought about going to the Alfheim desert early, but this didn't work either. The reason this time was because there's no prompt in this location that would conveniently let Kratos auto-walk directly towards the wall I want to breach. Going from the side isn't an option either because there's not enough floor out of bounds. However, in the process I learnt about some quirks that different type of prompts can cause.
With Mystic Gateways, I got a few different results when going fully out of bounds during auto-walk glitch. This first result is that I lose control of Kratos and he then starts slowly floating downwards instead of falling normally.
1:46 - Another result was that Kratos falls normally at first, but after a while he suddenly rebounds and launches high in the air. There's a chance that this is caused by the mysterious out of bounds floor under the Mystic Gateway; perhaps Kratos "falls upwards" against it for a while, and eventually when he slides past it, he launches with a massive built-up momentum high in the air.
2:32 - I tried if it might be possible to go through Svartalfheim first visit in reverse by clipping out of bounds at the pier near the Mystic Gateway. For this, I tried using a boat prompt. Although I didn't succeed, the boat prompt caused a pretty curious result when falling OoB in its own right. After Kratos falls for around 7000 meters, he smoothly rebounds back to the boat. However, the boat use is cancelled and the camera becomes stuck at a fixed angle behind Kratos indefinitely. Using R-stick does nothing during this time. The boat prompt no longer works either. Since there are no other usable prompts in the direction I'm facing right now, I get stuck.
4:03 - Another miscellaneous effect I got from a few different kinds of prompts (chest, a door, a boat) is that Kratos takes a few steps while hovering in air, then gets stuck in place forever. Perhaps you get this result if you're still relatively close to the prompt you started from?
4:22 - the auto-walk glitch can be activated inside some crawlspaces and indoors areas too, like Durlin's Office. This lets you go out of bounds in this location for mildly strange looking results.