Speedrunner beats Fallout: New Vegas in 20 minutes

Want to see a guy beat Fallout: New Vegas in 20 minutes?

in 20 minutes? Then you should watch this video of speedrunner Kungkobra, who set a new recordby blowing through the entire thing in precisely 20 minutes and 47.6 seconds.

The mark is an “Any% Speedrun,” which means he can take advantage of any glitches and exploits, but not console commands or mods, to better his time. And clearly he does, taking advantage of quicksaving and quickloading glitches to skip NPC dialog and clip through walls, and by making use of the amusingly-named “Speedcripple” exploit.

“When you cripple your leg, your speed is set to 0, then [brought] back to 60% of your normal speed,” he explained on YouTube. “By quickloading just before getting crippled, you can confuse the game into giving you 60% without actually being put to 0 (because we don't actually really get crippled). So you get a huge speedboost, and walk at 160% of your normal speed.”

As noted on Reddit, the new record is the latest time in a back-and-forth exchange between Kungkobra and Swags_The_Dog, who managed a 20:54.1 run just one day earlier. With the gaps in time growing so small, every second counts, and so the character is built specifically for the task: Female (for the Black Widow perk), 10 charisma, with Speech tagged and the Good Natured trait. It's also why the NPC dialog is in Italian: The Italian voice actors say their lines more quickly than their English counterparts, so the cut scenes play through faster.

Thanks, Kotaku.