I’m not reading it for the same reason you aren’t, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s something similar to the game “Myst” from the 90s going on, because 10 minutes seems way too short. For reference, in Myst, the entire game was essentially puzzles to solve other puzzle to solve other puzzles, but once you had gone through it once, you could “beat it” in like 5 minutes because the you could just go to the last puzzle and solve it using your knowledge from a previous run.
Maybe there’s something you can do very early on that ends the game without having to progress through the actual game. I’m bookmarking the article to read after I beat the game.
Many games have “joke” endings as punishments for doing something incredibly stupid or out of character. Basically “this obviously killed you, but we’re going to have more fun with it than just ragdolling you”. They speedran to one of those.
I will read it too after I finish the game. But the speed runs I saw in other games used game breaking bugs or out of bounds game play to skip areas.
But it could be as simple as an how you play an NPC’s story-they would affect the main story and shorten the game to one of the many endings.
Reminds me of the old pick a path adventure books. “What do you do go right or left? I go right. A bugbear jumps out of the shadows and kills your character.” Game over you died. LOL
Having seen parts of the speed run, you start as an Origin character and do a lot of jumping (keeping this effectively spoiler free). I don’t think they’re using out of bounds, but they do “complete” the game before act 3 even starts. It’s an “Any %” run, which essentially is a run that takes you to the credits even if it’s not the end of the actual game. Apparently there is a way to trigger that state earlier in the game. Having pased that point, it makes sense what it is and why the game allows it. But it’s not something you’d likely run into on your first playthrough.
I’m sure there will be other categories added later, likely “Any % Act 3” or an any % category with other requirements, like specific boss kills or end conditions.
