Consider this example: A hypothetical game exists which has a very hard difficulty mode that has a permanent death mechanic. If you play on this mode and fall off the first ledge you see, you will see a short cinema of how the world is doomed because you died, then you see a "The End" screen and must start a new game. Any achievements for completing the game are not unlocked by doing this. Does this count as completing the game in a few minutes for a speed run? Is there a difference between reaching a permanent game over screen as opposed to completing the game?

If the game doesn't reward achievements clearly labeled, "Complete the game," does it still count as completing the game?

Everything is arbitrary and everyone has their own definitions for things. What is considered beating the game for Outer Worlds is/was defined by the active community for the game.

This may differ from your own definition of beating the game, but it is what the community has settled on as a valid ending for the game, and meets the community's requirement of beating the game..

In case you hadn't figured it out, I'm talking about Outer Worlds. Skipping the hope to the sun, like all of these speed runs do, doesn't reward achievements for completing the game. So do they count as legitimate speed runs or are they really just reaching permadeath as quickly as possible?

Is there a place to find where the active community decided what is considered beating the game? I think it's more likely that someone found a quick way to end the game without completing it and submitted that run, which became the basis for all other runs. I'm not a speedrunner myself, but more of an achievement hunter. Often I steal the speedrunners tricks to get achievements faster, and I found myself confused on what consists of a speedrun.

To further follow your line of logic, dying in Outer Worlds doesn't provide a 'The End' screen and credits, whereas skipping the Hope to the sun does, which is why it's considered valid ending to the game. It may be the 'Bad Ending' for the game, but it is still an ending in a game that doesn't consider just dying to be a 'Bad Ending' as well.

If the game treated every death with a 'The End' screen and credits, then we would have a different situation on our hands, but because the only way to get to the credits is via the successfully skipping the Hope and finishing out the resulting quests, or skipping the Hope to the sun, then skipping the Hope to the sun is very much a valid ending to the game rather than just dying and saying that we finished the game.

If you'd like to discuss the game further, the best place to talk with active runners is in the speedrunning Discord server for the game, link is on the left side of this page.

ok, thank you. The definition of completing a game is more complex than I thought. Games like Mario had only 1 ending, so it was obvious when you reached it. Now they are more complex and so require some judgement. Reaching the credits is a valid reason to conclude you've completed the game. This was merely a philosophical argument anyway. I completed the game, got all the achievements, and enjoyed it. Thank you to the speedrunners who discovered the skips.

This is hilarious. The developers watched a speedrun and they do consider skipping the hope to the sun a real ending.