I have been a long-time follower of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedrunning, as I find the speedruns of that game, especially the main any% category, to be particularly interesting and enthralling.
In terms of longevity and popularity, Ocarina of Time is a veteran, one of the big ones. It has been actively speedrun for a couple of decades, and it has been one of the most popular ones. The history of glitch discoveries in the game is long, rich and interesting, with the any% world record times being brought down year after year. The first speedruns were well over an hour long, but due to glitch discoveries these were brought down to below 20 minutes.
For quite many years 18 minutes was considered to be the lower limit of what can be achieved, and there seemed to be no way to get any lower. Then a new way of performing a particular glitch was discovered, which brought down this theoretical lower limit by an entire minute, the holy grail now being the 17 minutes mark, which for quite long seemed unattainable in practice (even though several speedrunners got relatively close to it, with the world record of 17 minutes and 7 seconds being unbroken for quite a long time.) Then a slightly different way of performing a particular glitch was discovered that allowed the world record to be brought just barely below the 17-minutes mark, by 2 seconds. While it was now proven that this lower limit could be broken in practice, it seemed unlikely that the time would go much lower than that, unless a completely new discovery is made.
17 minutes was thought to be the practical lower limit for almost 5 years, which is a really long time in speedrunning terms.
And now, a few days ago, a new exploit was discovered that completely changed the speedrun route and completely demolishes all those old times, with the world record as of writing this now being 12 minutes and 10 seconds (and it very likely to be sub-12 quite soon, as skills and finer details of the run improve). That's more of an improvement than probably during the previous 10 years of speedrunning this game (both in terms of absolute and relative time save).
Exciting news, right? The same stale techniques of the previous route were used for almost 5 years with very little change, with only very minor improvements slowly grinding the world record time downwards just a few seconds at a time, but now an entirely new and different route and glitches have been discovered that allow for an entirely new batch of speedruns to be made, that just obliterate the previous ones! Right?
Well, for many of the OoT speedrunning aficionados maybe. For me, however... meh!
The reason for this is two-fold (although one relates very closely to the other): The new glitch consists of performing an Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) exploit, which corrupts memory in a way that creates machine code that makes the game code jump from the beginning parts of the game directly to the middle of the end credits. It completely bypasses beating the final boss and everything. In my own personal subjective opinion, I don't really consider this a legit game completion, reaching the end of the game.
Which directly causes the second reason why I consider this to be so meh: It makes the run really boring.
Which of course brings up the (rather subjective) question of what exactly constitutes "completing the game", or "reaching the end of the game". While one might hastily think that this is an easy thing to define, it's not, especially with some games.
To better understand what I mean, assume this hypothetical scenario (which actually isn't so far-fetched, as I believe there's at least one NES game that does something similar to this): Suppose that the absolute final "THE END" screen of a game is actually part of the main menu, one of its sub-screens. It's not normally reachable from the main menu, but due to some kind of glitch or exploit, or doing something unexpected with the controller, the game can be induced into switching to this "THE END" screen. Without even starting the game proper! Suppose this screen is normally shown only after having beaten the game and watching a lengthy end credits sequence, after which the game jumps to this screen. But due to the exploit or oversight, the screen can be directly viewed from the main menu.
Would this be considered a legit "having reached the end of the game"? After all, this screen was not reached due to reaching the actual ending of the game, where the game proper ends. It was just this one "THE END" screen that was glitched into view without even playing the game proper. Would this constitute a legit game completion?
There may be many opinions about this, but I wouldn't it consider a legit completion. The actual end of the game proper wasn't reached, therefore the game wasn't completed.
Of course it becomes much fuzzier, and much more subjective, when the game proper is started, and played to a certain extent... and then due to a glitch the game jumps to the middle of the end credits.
The previous speedrunning strategy of Ocarina of Time did utilize major skips. Most particularly, it skipped directly from the beginning parts of the game to a tiny bit before the final boss fight. However, the final boss itself is fought and beaten, and the final time was considered when the protagonist delivers the final sword blow to the boss, killing it (which starts the non-interactive end sequences and ending credits). In other words, even though the speedrun skips the vast majority of the game, it does fight and kill the final boss normally, and reaches the end of the game as expected.
The new ACE exploit does not. Instead, it completely bypasses the final boss, and even the final non-interactive cinematics, and jumps directly to the middle of the end credits. On top of that, it does this by running custom code, rather than merely and simply making the game jump to the end credits due to internal bugs. (Sure, the custom code can be entered and jumped to thanks to glitches in the game, but the jumping to the end credits is not done because of any code in the game itself, but thanks to this custom code, which is not part of the original game.)
The vast majority of the speedrunning community, like always, is completely fine with this. However, I myself consider it uninteresting and boring, and not really a legit completion of the game.
So... meh. I have lost interest in watching Ocarina of Time speedruns now. I suppose I will be moving to something else.
In terms of longevity and popularity, Ocarina of Time is a veteran, one of the big ones. It has been actively speedrun for a couple of decades, and it has been one of the most popular ones. The history of glitch discoveries in the game is long, rich and interesting, with the any% world record times being brought down year after year. The first speedruns were well over an hour long, but due to glitch discoveries these were brought down to below 20 minutes.
For quite many years 18 minutes was considered to be the lower limit of what can be achieved, and there seemed to be no way to get any lower. Then a new way of performing a particular glitch was discovered, which brought down this theoretical lower limit by an entire minute, the holy grail now being the 17 minutes mark, which for quite long seemed unattainable in practice (even though several speedrunners got relatively close to it, with the world record of 17 minutes and 7 seconds being unbroken for quite a long time.) Then a slightly different way of performing a particular glitch was discovered that allowed the world record to be brought just barely below the 17-minutes mark, by 2 seconds. While it was now proven that this lower limit could be broken in practice, it seemed unlikely that the time would go much lower than that, unless a completely new discovery is made.
17 minutes was thought to be the practical lower limit for almost 5 years, which is a really long time in speedrunning terms.
And now, a few days ago, a new exploit was discovered that completely changed the speedrun route and completely demolishes all those old times, with the world record as of writing this now being 12 minutes and 10 seconds (and it very likely to be sub-12 quite soon, as skills and finer details of the run improve). That's more of an improvement than probably during the previous 10 years of speedrunning this game (both in terms of absolute and relative time save).
Exciting news, right? The same stale techniques of the previous route were used for almost 5 years with very little change, with only very minor improvements slowly grinding the world record time downwards just a few seconds at a time, but now an entirely new and different route and glitches have been discovered that allow for an entirely new batch of speedruns to be made, that just obliterate the previous ones! Right?
Well, for many of the OoT speedrunning aficionados maybe. For me, however... meh!
The reason for this is two-fold (although one relates very closely to the other): The new glitch consists of performing an Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) exploit, which corrupts memory in a way that creates machine code that makes the game code jump from the beginning parts of the game directly to the middle of the end credits. It completely bypasses beating the final boss and everything. In my own personal subjective opinion, I don't really consider this a legit game completion, reaching the end of the game.
Which directly causes the second reason why I consider this to be so meh: It makes the run really boring.
Which of course brings up the (rather subjective) question of what exactly constitutes "completing the game", or "reaching the end of the game". While one might hastily think that this is an easy thing to define, it's not, especially with some games.
To better understand what I mean, assume this hypothetical scenario (which actually isn't so far-fetched, as I believe there's at least one NES game that does something similar to this): Suppose that the absolute final "THE END" screen of a game is actually part of the main menu, one of its sub-screens. It's not normally reachable from the main menu, but due to some kind of glitch or exploit, or doing something unexpected with the controller, the game can be induced into switching to this "THE END" screen. Without even starting the game proper! Suppose this screen is normally shown only after having beaten the game and watching a lengthy end credits sequence, after which the game jumps to this screen. But due to the exploit or oversight, the screen can be directly viewed from the main menu.
Would this be considered a legit "having reached the end of the game"? After all, this screen was not reached due to reaching the actual ending of the game, where the game proper ends. It was just this one "THE END" screen that was glitched into view without even playing the game proper. Would this constitute a legit game completion?
There may be many opinions about this, but I wouldn't it consider a legit completion. The actual end of the game proper wasn't reached, therefore the game wasn't completed.
Of course it becomes much fuzzier, and much more subjective, when the game proper is started, and played to a certain extent... and then due to a glitch the game jumps to the middle of the end credits.
The previous speedrunning strategy of Ocarina of Time did utilize major skips. Most particularly, it skipped directly from the beginning parts of the game to a tiny bit before the final boss fight. However, the final boss itself is fought and beaten, and the final time was considered when the protagonist delivers the final sword blow to the boss, killing it (which starts the non-interactive end sequences and ending credits). In other words, even though the speedrun skips the vast majority of the game, it does fight and kill the final boss normally, and reaches the end of the game as expected.
The new ACE exploit does not. Instead, it completely bypasses the final boss, and even the final non-interactive cinematics, and jumps directly to the middle of the end credits. On top of that, it does this by running custom code, rather than merely and simply making the game jump to the end credits due to internal bugs. (Sure, the custom code can be entered and jumped to thanks to glitches in the game, but the jumping to the end credits is not done because of any code in the game itself, but thanks to this custom code, which is not part of the original game.)
The vast majority of the speedrunning community, like always, is completely fine with this. However, I myself consider it uninteresting and boring, and not really a legit completion of the game.
So... meh. I have lost interest in watching Ocarina of Time speedruns now. I suppose I will be moving to something else.
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