Splitting consoles by generation seems like the best way to address the issue. It's not too much different from how RE2make has PC splits for 60fps and 120fps, for runners who don't have enough power to get the game to run at 120fps and so can't enjoy the buzzsaw knife effect.

Well, it's probably fair to assume that anyone seriously competing for NG+ VoS would have unlimited stake and flashbangs. That would cut the time down quite substantially and largely eliminate serious threats from common enemies.

That's pretty huge even for casual runs, especially under challenges like no crafting or pistol only or something. Fantastic work, man.

People have claimed to kill him on casual NG+ with the WCX just holding down auto fire without him doing any of the phases, so on easier difficulties it certainly sounds possible.

Yeah, those extra enemies were really throwing me for a loop. I was actually pretty disappointed that they weren't in every fight. I expected samcas in the Dimmy fight and was disappointed when I didn't get any free money bags flying around, lol.

Static spawns are different based on difficulty? I haven't had time to clear VoS yet, but for the most part it seems like the spawns are the same as hardcore, but ammo count in them is roughly half that of HC.

Yeah I can't see NG VoS being a thing. I'm still on my casual NG+ VoS run and even with all my toys carried over it's still a meaningful challenge. All the extra friends they added in, on top of things being faster and about five times as chufty... I feel like a proper RTA speedrun would be impossible. I haven't died yet but I also haven't been seeing the little checkpoint symbol very much, either... so I'm assuming it's like RE7's Madhouse and if you die that's it, back to the start. The nice thing is that because VoS is still a decent challenge on NG+, it will offer an NG+ category that's not just purely just people sawing down angry traffic cones without stopping, lol.

Why the TAC? Is it more reliable for knocking enemies down/staggering them than the M97? I've noticed it's considerably less reliable for one-shotting enemies compared to the M97, but then again I try to avoid being in grab range of most enemies. Maybe the TAC does better when you're stabbing them with it? The 1911 seems like the obvious choice since it does considerably more damage than the stock LAMI and you probably won't be farming a ton of Lei to upgrade the LAMI in a speedrun.

Sitting in the crawlspace underneath the shotgun house works pretty well until the first trigger occurs. I just camp by the grating there and the lycans will just kind of path back and forth for a bit. I usually kill two with pistol headshots while waiting. Lycans upstairs will be attacking the shelf and eventually destroy it; this may be what triggers their AI to realize it can go underneath the house, or it might be due to the event flag (which appears to be purely based on time elapsed.) Either way you can have lycans come through the opening to the outside, or they can come down from upstairs, so I usually beat it once the Ethan makes his first quip.

I then ran to the ladder house, shoving the shelf over the door and looting. I waited a bit until I can see lycans visibly circling around outside, shot the red barrel (which kills some of them, the damage clearly bypasses the walls), then climb up the ladder. Staying on the roof tends to be really dangerous so I hop down and run to the red gates. Ethan whines about them being locked, and at about this time I have some more lycans tailing me, who I kill with the second barrel. The big guy is usually active either shortly before or shortly after I climb the ladder in the house. After that I just run a beat, leading the lycans on a chase, using the shotgun or pistol to stagger ones that are in my way. I'm pretty sure the game just makes a lycan magically appear and grab you to start the cutscene, kind of like Jack appearing out of the shadow realm slug you in RE7's attic.

This is on hardcore. I'm pretty sure that killing at least a couple of lycans is necessary, and they drop useful loot in any case, which I collect while evading them after using the second barrel. I can usually kill 2-3 with each barrel, and I usually pop at least one while camping in the crawlspace before leaving the shotgun house. Assuming camping on ladders turns out to not be viable, I would recommend unlocking the blue door that runs past the chicken coops (it's next to the "radio house") before moving on to trigger the village assault, since running in circles around and through houses was very necessary to stay alive. Lycans on hardcore are very fast and I haven't found any method of negating their grab attacks other than just not letting them get close. Trying to just run past them without staggering them usually gets me grabbed. Grabs hurt and the animations take forever. Don't get grabbed.

Mind sharing what you think the manipulation is?

I've noticed that he seems to get pretty confused if you hug the doors after breaking his guard. He'll typically throw a dart at me, then if I jump right as he reaches the stairs when he's dashing, he'll backdash to his original position, wait a moment, try again, and then back off and guard stance again.

I don't know if that would be relevant to a speedrun but it does make fighting him casually and going for the medal much more consistent in my experience. He does this on all difficulties, as near as I can tell.

I saw a clip of someone that got on top of the lower dragon with QCF kicks (what are people calling that tech? float kicks?) and then proceeded to just obliterate them in about 10 seconds with chained divekicks. They used Bunnymorphosis, if it's any use - I don't know if the time spent killing a Lili or two to try and get the shard would result in any time saved over trying to get the floor clip working. It might be possible to instead just switch to Lethal Boots (which you can get for free and relatively quickly from a chest near the first Zangetsu fight) after you have enough height to get on top of the dragon.

Tried to find the clip but the prick that posted it didn't name it something logical, it had some kind of snarky name so I'm not having any luck finding it with Reddit's useless search feature.

How about a category that requires you to kill specific enemies as a total meme category? The appearance of zombies etc is always consistent, aside from the ones that pile through windows... right? I suppose it'd be PC-only since it would probably require the use of the SRT to show enemy HP so people don't have to waste tons of time poking downed enemies to check if it's actually dead or not.

Requiring the player to have to kill specific zombies or groups of zombies, G-Adults, Ivies, etc would be an interesting way of increasing routing complexity, especially for 60fps/knifeless. It's still a total fucking meme, though.

If we're doing knifeless, I'd say it should be true knifeless - not even for defense. This stresses management of flashbangs and frags (which are fewer in number and can only ever be used once each) for defense against enemies, and would make Claire runs, in particular, much more difficult since there are only... what, 11 frags in total and she needs 6 of em for G4 (and almost all of them are a time loss to pick up, too!) This is counterbalanced by the grenade launcher being hilariously overpowered compared to the shotgun in the early game - shotty doesn't even come close to matching GL until after the extended barrel upgrade halfway through the game (meanwhile GL stock is kiiiinda useless so that's 1 inventory slot more that Claire gets!)

Handgun only in HC seems too much like a challenge run to be a valid speedrun category - even while it's PROBABLY possible for Leon A to handle it, Claire absolutely cannot complete it due to the obscene amount of HP G4 has (or, rather, just how many fucking eyes you have to pop) and Leon B is probably not doable without using the rocket launcher on G5. Claire could handle G5 if the minigun were allowed, but she'd still have no realistic way to kill G4. While you don't necessarily have to use the frag spam strat against him to win, you're definitely expected to have an SMG and the minigun to pop the eyes with. Pistol works, but even if you had 500 ammo I'd actually be concerned about running out of time.

In regards to upgrades and such - yeah, absolutely. I'd say that Claire can use the .357 SLS or the Jp3, but cannot use both. To simplify things, I'd state it simply as: if you take the jp3 from the trunk, you are not allowed to get the reinforced frame upgrade for the SLS in the sewers. I'd apply this logic to Claire B, as well. The burst fire Matilda and jp3 are pretty competitive with each other, I feel.

FWIW I'd imagine PC also has a huge advantage in regards to menuing since the game actually supports using the mouse cursor for inventory management. Kind of annoying to learn after being used to using the keyboard for RE7, but it's REALLY fast once you've got it into muscle memory. Just being able to drag and drop a key item into the first slot is going to save you close to a second or more every time you have to use the item in that slot. It just makes sense to separate PC and console.