I don’t know about you, but there’s not many people in the gaming community I admire more than speedrunners. The planning, the trial and error, the sheer patience of it all to play the same game over and over again just so you can do it as fast as possible. I once attempted one myself in Pokémon Black 2 with no planning and finished in about eight hours, which, considering the world record is currently just over three hours, was far from a fantastic performance. I digress.
I’d like to preface this next paragraph with the fact that Oblivion’s main story generally takes about 28 hours to beat, okay? According to HowLongToBeat, if you rush it, you could get to the credits in just over 16 hours. Reasonable. Well, one player, who goes by the username Karsto (or Depardim on YouTube) has managed to smash all previous records, and finish the game in just over two and a half minutes, which is absolutely baffling.
If speedruns are a bit fast for you, perhaps you're more the type of person who'd prefer a nice relaxing getaway? Skyrim has you covered, as long as you watch out for the dragons...
To be specific, the completed run was two minutes, 33 seconds, and 180 milliseconds long. As you’d imagine, you don’t exactly get the full experience when you complete it that fast - the whole thing relies very heavily on glitches and exploits. This doesn’t make the speedrun invalid, though, as it was submitted for the Any% category, where essentially, anything goes - just get yourself to the credits.
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You can check out the video yourself below - keep in mind that the final record time doesn’t include any loading or waiting times, due to their inconsistency, which is why the video itself is longer (this is apparently the standard within the community).
At the time of writing, Karsto’s run is the world record, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be holding onto it for long. His time topped a different speedrunner’s submission, who goes by Dezmone, who’d took the record for themselves just a few days prior, with a time of two minutes 34 seconds, so it was really close. I can’t say that I think I could do better, anyway.
Featured Image Credit: BethesdaTopics: The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda