Hi everyone. I've been following the state of Splinter Cell speedruns since I started running in 2018 and I am now a mod for multiple Splinter Cell games. Let me share my view of things. First of all, let us talk about Chaos Theory to clear some stuff up. There are more No QS/QL runs in there because of the simple reason that it was the default Any% category back in the day and QS/QL was outright banned from the beginning. After I started running the game, I pushed for the change to make QS/QL become a thing. It is now the more popular category by a big margin (except for ILs, where people still prefer No QS/QL). The new Any% was created some time in 2022 if I am not mistaken, so it is still very young.

Now let us get back to Splinter Cell 1. The Splinter Cell 1 community has grown by a lot over the last years and while the community is still tiny, it seems that slowly more and more people are starting to get interested. I pushed for a couple of active runners to get modded (and also became a mod myself at some point) so that some of the rules and categories could get updated for the better. There have been quite a few positive changes very recently and the work is still ongoing. For No QS/QL as a category, I have been in favor of it for quite a while. We are finally at a point where enough runners have expressed interest in it to reasonably allow it to become a separate category. That being said, the active mods have already given the green light to add the category when I talked to them about it. So the good news is that it WILL be added. Just give us a few days (maybe a couple of weeks) to formulate some rules for it so we can introduce it officially. We are quite busy people and some things just take a bit of time. :)

Hey FRACTALFOX840,

I don't think this is a good idea for multiple reasons. Let's start with the biggest one. Binding a glitchless category to a platform is very unusual and doesn't make a lot of sense. The console versions still have glitches and they should be allowed to be used by default.

Furthermore, I can assure you that the shortcuts were not patched in the Xbox version because the Xbox version is the very first version of the game that was released. The PC version was released later. I assume you simply mean that some of the shortcuts don't work. This is probably because the tricks that you are referring to only work when you have high enough FPS.

You also have to keep in mind that new skips could be found in the future that are console exclusive. What then? Glitched runs are generally the default category in speedruns for a good reason.

Another thing I want to add is that when you play on Xbox, you probably shouldn't compare the times to the PC version runs. You can filter by platform in the leaderboards and all runs on the same console will be on equal footing.

We are considering adding Category Extensions for Splinter Cell games, however. Glitchless categories could become a thing there. For now, you are free to run glitchless on your own and track it for yourself.

I hope you understand why I refuse to make console runs a "by default glitchless category".

It wouldn't save any time because you have to wait the same amount of time until you can hack the PC in Nikoladze's office again. Technically, skipping that dialogue would lose a tiny amount of time. That is why I choose to not skip it at all.

sub 53, man. We are not at sub 52 yet! :D

I would like to update the Estimated Halo 5 Legendary time for both A_Royal_Hobo and me to 2h20m. New skips have been found and we have improved our times considerably since the submission.

Furthermore, I would like to mention, that the Halo 5 times are not tracked on speedrun.com, but on haloruns.com, so that is where the progress can be tracked.

Thank you!