Speedrun Fast: Skyrim

It’s easy to sink months of time into a game like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You’ve got quests to fulfill, marriages to uphold, dragons to shout at, guilds to glorify, glitches to laugh at. It can be difficult in this day and age to dedicate so much time to a single game, even as lauded a one as this. So what’s a Dragonborn to do? Well, you’ve probably already figured out the answer we’re going to give you: just slay Alduin in about, oohhh, half an hour should do? Yeah, you read that. Half an hour. Fus Ro Dah!

Look, up in the Skyrim! It’s a dragon! It’s a horse! It’s… a guy with a bucket. What? Whaaat? It’s Skyrim, of course he was going to use glitches. Huh? You say it would be hours and hours playing it legitimately? Heh heh heh, well, aren’t you in for a surprise. Fus Ro Dah!

Despite what the video title says, this isn’t the world record. This one was chosen for playing on Legendary difficulty. And no, that wasn’t a glitch right at the start – Knifechamber jumped out of the building the moment the broken wall stopped having collision, and the dragon’s wing never had collision there to begin with. This run is totally legit. Tsun says it right there in the thumbnail: They will sing of this speedrun in the Internet’s hall forever. But the world record lies elsewhere.

It’s hard to believe that such massive, intricate games can be simplified to the length of all the others until you see it for yourself. At their core, games are a sequence of things done until you reach the end, and it’s a question of doing them the best way. Sometimes the method is definite, like in these Contra runs, and sometimes it’s up to the player’s willpower and resourcefulness to create that best way. One thing that will always be certain: Skyrim is an incredible and brilliant masterpiece.