Hey, just starting a thread to clarify the motivation behind the rules and allow for future conversation on the topic. Don't hesitate to reply or PM me here or offsite, even if it's been years since anyone submitted a run 😄

When itsme_baruch submitted the first run they decided to treat the game as beaten when the final film reel (#5) is placed in the projector at the cinema. This film reel is found with the treasure in the vault. Since grabbing the film reel requires sitting through a long unskippable cutscene and doesn't add much value to the speedrun, I proposed changing the end condition to when you drop the last statuette and itsme_baruch didn't have a problem with it, so I updated both of our submitted run times to take the change into account. Might also help reduce differences between versions; I don't know if that cutscene changes length based on the game language.

The instructions for the asteroid minigame can be skipped by replaying uncle's recording. AFAIK it's the only time the game waits for speech to finish before doing something, so it's the only other situation where language would have been a factor without this abuse.

Well, that is, outside of all the statuette cutscenes, which cannot be skipped in any way, and I've yet to time them in French vs English. Honestly, I can't be bothered right now. I was worried about strats existing in one version and not the other, but it's not like we have ways to measure time accurately anyways. I'm pretty sure this speedrun will always be a competition between a player and the game, not between multiple runners.