A4M1 (Someone's Knocking)
Don’t restart mission here because it doesn’t do anything. This mission is all about hacking, so practice it and check the hacking puzzle guide if you need a reference. The second and third hacks in this mission are the same, but the third hack just has some extra minor annoyances. After completing the mission, go outside and use the teleport to A4M2 (after Aiden is done talking).
A4M2 (In Plain Sight)
Restart mission.
This mission has a strat that may or may not work. Try killing civilians at the start of the mission to make them call the cops earlier. If it works, you will save a lot of time because you will need to escape from the police here to progress.
The van will spawn in one of two spots. While you’re running towards a vehicle, you can look down the road to see if the WKZ van is there; you should see a red tint/light down there if it is. If you don’t see a van in the first spot, move to the second spot. It seems 70-80 meters is a safe distance to stand away from the vans. Practice shooting the grenade launcher at the vans from that range at both locations. You can skip one line of dialogue from Aiden by bailing out of the vehicle (Don't do this if you manage to get the early scans from killing a ped early). Switch to one of the fast vehicles that spawn near both van locations.
When the scans start to show up, you want to be detected. Use the blackout a couple seconds after you are detected. Don’t activate a blackout at the same time the police spawn because that can bug things out. Watch the videos to see where to drive to. A second blackout can be used if you have an extra one. This video shows what you would do if you get the early scans:
A4M3 (The Rat's Lair)
Restart mission. After hacking the terminal and watching the cutscene, place lures or IEDs on both sides of T-bone's car door. Then go up the stairs. Use the indicated camera and keep spamming the button to move T-bone. Just direct T-bone to the stairs and exit out of the camera to use a blackout.
Blocking T-bone's car doors will make the autosave appear sooner for some reason. When you see the save icon appear, reload the autosave. This skips dialogue on the phone. If there is a bike, take it to the next place.
Start driving to the intersection before the Ambrose Theater. Stop your bike in between the steam pipe and the intersection. Use proximity IEDs and the grenade launcher to blow up all of the fixer vehicles. These cars spawn randomly, so practice this part. There is a fast mission completion that can happen randomly here. It tends to happen more often if you shoot the grenade launcher well, but that doesn’t guarantee it to happen. The A4M4 start is just up ahead, so take the bike up there if it’s not destroyed.
A4M4 (The Defalt Condition)
Restart mission. You have to restart the mission here, or else the mission will fail because the destroyed vehicles from A4M3 will scare the guests. One strat is to hack the terminal on the side of the building to unlock the door. The other faster strat is to hack the bouncer's phone:
You can hack cameras through the door by using some weird camera manipulation, allowing you to "skip" the wait for the Demarco dialogue. This camera strat is tricky so I show my reference here on the left. There is a time save of about 10 seconds if you do the new strat well. You have to wait until the autosave before you complete a hack on someone (otherwise you have to hack an extra person), but you can profile everyone first. Another reference point from Alienarea: "Dont sprint into the door, micro adjustments when you're against the right side of the door should do the trick."
I also have my own pattern of profiling the people inside, but I’m not sure if it’s actually the fastest. There are also a couple of system keys you can get inside, but you shouldn’t need them.
After finishing the hacking puzzles, a blackout occurs. My camera glitched out here on my 3:24:48 run. Reload your autosave if the same thing happens to you (Do it earlier than I did in that run and make sure to wait for the autosave first).
When you’re running up the stairs to chase Defalt, you can pick up a blackout. Run past everyone outside unless someone gets too close. Shoot him with the shotgun if that happens.
You can trigger the final autosave outside earlier by jumping on the vents, but it is safer to run down the stairs. You'll want to reload the autosave if you want to do the blackout strat in the next mission.
The Defalt car chase can be skipped. Hacking the blockers will glitch Defalt’s car and prevent him from driving the car forward. You want to spam the button while running to the car. Flipping Defalt’s car over will force him out of the vehicle. This also skips dialogue from T-bone. Flip his car over before T-bone says "All right. You stay close just like that." If you fail to flip the car over before he says that, you will lose 20-30 seconds.
After killing Defalt, you can bail out of the car to skip some dialogue. Watch my run for reference. Use the fast travel at the train station to go to A4M5. Or you can use the same teleport you created near the Brandon Docks ctOS. By using the cash run teleport, you can skip more dialogue and do blackout strats for Little Sister.
Skipping the dialogue of Aiden in the T-bone call is questionable. The mission can already pop up when you’re on the ground or in the vehicle.
A4M5 (Little Sister)
Restart mission. Go and hack the terminal. You can use a blackout during this mission to allow Nicky to run past the enemies. There is no need to reload the autosave to make it more consistent. To make sure it is nighttime during this mission, you have to teleport to this mission with a cash run instead of using the train.
Once Nicky starts going to the car, get in the truck and drive out of the area. Just be careful not to drive out of the area too early before Nicky gets away (because you will have to enter the area again and exit to end the mission).
Take a cash run teleport to A4M6. After you teleport, the route depends on which cash run you made earlier after Hold On, Kiddo. If you did the normal strats, get on the bike. Then jump off the bike to get some dialogue skips. But if you did the reload autosave strats, you can get a performance car in a parking lot near the gas station and use that or another random vehicle to do a couple of dialogue skips on the way to the mission.
A4M6 (Ghosts of the Past)
Restart mission. All you have to do in this mission is just follow the same path I did in my run. Just be careful not to drive into the water or fail to go up the hill.
Here's a backup strat for going up the hill:
After you finish the mission, teleport to A4M7 using the teleport point you created earlier. If there are no parked cars, take the fastest car on the road.
A4M7 (No Turning Back Part I)
Restart mission. Run to the fixed bike and take that to the next objective. The mayor cutscenes can’t be skipped, so you’ll have to wait.
After you’ve hacked the hotel security, take the bike inside. But you have to be careful here. Don’t go too fast to the hotel because you can drive past the checkpoint before it shows up. Drive the bike to the elevator and hack it. Then use your shotgun/grenade launcher/U100 to kill anyone that gets close.
When you reach the rooftop, use the blackout. That should allow you to run past everyone.
When you’ve reached the next room, reload the autosave. This removes the blackout effect and allows you to hack the blinds. In the room with Lucky, you can use the cover system to move quicker. Get the blackout on the counter when Lucky is talking. Doing dialogue skips in this area doesn't save any time. Unfortunately, you can’t skip this long cutscene.
After you exit the hotel, use the blackout. When jumping off the roof, you want to land on the slightly raised elevation of the floor. Take the boat and drive out of the circle.
Teleport to A4M8 using the teleport point you created earlier. This teleport requires a slight adjustment. Open up the phone menu before you exit the circle. If you’re using KB/M controls, don’t use your mouse to select the cash run challenges app. Use arrow/whatever keys you use to highlight the cash run challenges app before the mission is complete. Then all you have to do is hit one button to access the app once the mission completes.
A4M8 (No Turning Back Part II)
A4M8 - No Turning Back Part II
This mission is automatically started, so no mission restart is used here unless you mess up the cash run to this mission. You can do some dialogue skips while waiting for the cutscene to start. If you made a cash run closer to the cemetery, you can skip both of Aiden's lines. Bail out of the car around when Damien says “was the one who sold you out” to skip the first Aiden line. Then bail out of the car/bike when Damien starts to say “How could you let her play you?” to skip the second Aiden line.
Switch to the U100 to shoot everyone at the cemetery. Activating the blackout here should freeze the enemies in their position.
Teleport back to the hideout after the mission is complete.
A5M1 (Sometimes You Still Lose)
A5M1 - Sometimes You Still Lose
Spawning a Sayanora before this mission is worth it if you want to go for it. Taking a bike here isn't too risky if you activate a late blackout and take the same route as me.
Route with No Dialogue Skip
Don’t restart mission because it doesn’t work. The driving route for this mission is important, so follow the same one as me. Activate the blackout before Damien says “you are in for a show”. That should prevent Damien from messing you up. Here’s the important thing about the route. If you trigger a steam pipe explosion After T-bone is finished talking, Damien will call you. That means you also need to waste a few seconds on the drive. The Damien phone call is important because you want to get rid of it earlier. This phone call will actually happen at the central ctOS building if you’re too fast. It will prevent you from continuing because you will have to wait until it’s finished first.
Route with Dialogue Skip
You can do a dialogue skip before leaving the bunker island and still get the early Damien dialogue at the right time, but you do need a good drive to save as much time as the left comparison. It is also riskier because it's easier to crash since you are driving much faster.
The final hacking puzzle is not that hard to do once you understand it. Take it one step at a time. The point of the hack is to get all the blue lines to the final node. But the red switches all (I call the things you rotate around as switches) have a 2.5 second timer. There are also locked nodes that you have to unlock to get to the final node. Unlocking the nodes will open up another switch. These unlocked switches will also have a timer. Follow these steps in order for guidance (See the hacking puzzle tutorial if you need more assistance):
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Rotate the two switches to unlock the node closest to the final one. After you unlock that node, you have to rotate the switches so that the blue lines don't go through them (make it so that the lines are white). If you don't do that, the timer will run out. In other words, you rotate the switches to remove the timer. You can do that for each and every node you unlock. That is what makes the hack possible because otherwise the timer will run out. Rotating the red switches will not make a timer appear unless you connect them with the blue lines.
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Rotate the switches to unlock the node at the bottom right. Remember to rotate the switches back again to remove the timer. Now you have everything unlocked.
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Check the entire puzzle. Try figuring out how you will get the blue lines to the final node. Just take some time thinking about how you're going to rotate the switches so that the blue lines will reach the final node. Keep trying it and you will figure out how to rotate the switches.
You just have to think about where the blue lines go when you rotate the switches. Just keep trying it over and over again. Be sure to check my run also. Slow the video down if you have to. You can reload an autosave to try again. Once you've memorized how to rotate the switches, do it to complete the hack.
After the blackout, the rest should be self-explanatory. Take the bike down to the boat if you did the Sayanora strats. Go to the lighthouse and finish the game. It is faster to enter the lighthouse through the back by climbing on some rocks. You can also climb onto the railing of the lift as it is going up. To do this, you have to climb as you are aiming the gun. You need to climb the lift when the fence is preventing Aiden from vaulting over the lift. Continue aiming the gun until you have climbed onto the lighthouse. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxS3F9cd40Zt4AYR6b__oYsN7fr4aFyCre
The reason the run doesn’t have the epilogue is because the community agreed to not include it, so the timer ends when you shoot Damien.
Runs on the leaderboard are now timed with loads removed. The autosplitter is recommended to be used if you are running on PC to obtain the time with loads removed. Console runs will also be split from PC now because of this.
