United StatesThe decision was made because the intro is consistent enough that the initial runners all ended up with identically matching times for the intro segment. The community then decided it was logical to skip it as there were no skill checks during that segment and we were mostly just waiting for cutscenes to finish. This was further proven when the jail cell skip was found, making the intro just a 3-second "run to the door and clip out and then sit in a cutscene for several minutes" section, which really wasn't fun nor conducive to doing multiple run attempts back to back.
There's nothing stopping you from doing that part in the run and just beginning timing after that, but for the sake of making resets quicker and more comfortable I'd recommend skipping the intro.
Some people have early access and will be playing the game as early as today. It's a 2 week bounty and some creators get it 3 days early.
This bounty seems too short to be fair, they get 3 extra days to learn the mechanics and route. 3 days for a 14 day bounty is massive.
Yo, so I did a few runs of this today and noticed that the bonus levels count as a level, so you can still complete Level 11 even with a bonus stage in the mix. Adding to this, the bonus stages take less time than the regular stages.
The rules don't really clarify this, but does completing Level 11 without killing the pirate ship boss not count as a complete run? Sorta need to know before I submit a run because my time with a bonus level in the mix completes the game 2 minutes faster than without bonus levels lol.
It's a fun idea, and by all means I'd recommend speedrunning the game in a way that's fun for you regardless of leaderboards/categories, but it's not really feasible for a few reasons.
The moderators already have a lot on their plate, and it's a rather thankless/payless job, so I doubt they'd want to moderate it. It's impossible to determine a clear start/end time for stages as it's not defined by the game, so it would require a lot of input from the community, and that's not to mention the timing of runs would likely need to be manually re-verified by mods. Coming up with arbitrary start and end times for stages would definitely require a lot of debate. It's also a bit of a redundant category, as in most categories the WR holder of an Any%/full game run would be able to submit their individual "stages" as WR's for the IL times. In the reverse situation, where a game with multiple stages also has an Any%/full game run, this makes a lot more sense.
Not to mention, the section in specific you mentioned (the Chris section) doesn't actually have any save points.. So if you want to reset, you have to fight through Heisenberg just to do IL runs for a segment that is just about the same length as the Heisenberg fight? It doesn't really make sense.
Like I said, you should run the game in a way that's fun for you whether or not a leaderboard actually exists. I definitely can't speak on behalf of the mods, but I don't see this being a workable category.
Hope that helps.
Not from what I know, no. As long as you're able to get above 350 fps as you're getting out of the crawl space it should be possible to hit. It's still inconsistent though, and it only saves 2 seconds, so I wouldn't stress too much about it.
For the record, I've only ever gotten it twice, and I can't "force" phone skip even if I set all my settings to super low, resolution to 640x480, etc., it still doesn't work for me.
You need to be able to get above 350 fps during the section while you're exiting the crawl space. It also helps to not press "Shift" while you're in there.
Even with 350+ fps and not pressing shift it still sometimes doesn't work.
On PC cutscenes don't count towards IGT (thanks to the Autosplitter/LRT.)
On console cutscenes do count towards IGT, so runners will skip them as soon as possible.
If there's any timesave from a specific language in a cutscene it's not going to make a difference. If there's any timesave from language outside of a cutscene (in the small dialogue scenes) it's probably so insignificant it's not even worth measuring.
So no, there is no fastest language. Currently.
If it could be proven that the intro section is consistently the same for everyone, and that it truly has no bearing on the run or no optimizations to be had, I would agree that there should be some consideration in it being cut.
As it stands though, it IS an optimize-able section. You CAN take better/worse lines and save/lose time in the section. It's not "on rails" by any means. It's not even like there's some large RNG section that we have to worry about at the end which determines if we have to reset.
Without even getting into the issues of console accessibility, how saves will be either created or shared, legitimacy of saves for the setup (manipulating DA before the save is made, figuring out setups to guarantee pickups later, or creating advantages we don't even know about given the freshness of the game), how many people are actually interested in a no-intro category, etc., I just can't see an argument for a no-intro category as it stands.
The boards aren't even up yet, so we can't compare, but I guarantee there will be disparity in the intro section in the first batch of runs submitted, and for that reason alone it IS a part of the speedrun as it's a part you have to learn and optimize. It's nearly 2 hours RTA, and there will be plenty of runs that get an hour or more in and need to be reset. You'll have to play through the first hour of the game again, and again, and again... That's just the nature of speedrunning.
Just to chime in with my support of this idea, but (of course) contingent on timer still pausing for cutscenes, and definite load removal to make sure everyone's on an even playing field.
SH4 is my go-to example of a game where most cutscenes eat IGT, and you have to memorize how many times to skip cutscenes and exactly when to avoid losing any precious seconds because you didn't skip quick enough. It's hella annoying.
Edit: Would also still like the ability to pause the timer for the escape menu for the sake of bathroom breaks, although I don't know how possible that'll be in an Autosplitter given the coding of Village's IGT.
