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The Fallout games are famous for many reasons, including their highly-customizable characters, unique post apocalyptic settings, and challenging action RPG experiences. On the long list of memorable characteristics of the Fallout franchise, brevity usually isn't included. Fallout 3 is designed to offer hundreds of hours of addictive gameplay, but some resourceful speedrunners have found a way to glitch through the game in less than a half hour.

Speedrunners are a unique subculture in the video game community and the dedicated and competitive players have mastered their way through classics like Ocarina of Time and Metroid and contemporary challenges like Destiny raids.

Fallout 3 has its own community of speedrunners and they've mastered the art of clipping through the world and finding unique ways to skip large chunks of dialogue. One speedster in particular, Rydou, just broke the previous record (which he also held) for fastest recorded run.

Rydou recorded the run for his Twitch channel, so viewers can watch him tear through the game from start to finish in 18 minutes and 53 seconds. This new record shaves four seconds off of his previous time. Rydou uses all the usual tricks to clip through the world in his run (not to be confused with the game's own hacking mechanic), as well as a quick save/quick load technique to get around a lot of the game's (very well-crafted) dialogue.

He explained his strategy on Reddit, where he is getting a lot of attention for his run...

"Everytime you quickload, the collision detection doesn't work during something like 10 frames, allowing me to clip through objects and walls."

Although the game's combat system is one of the major selling points for players who are working through the campaign at a normal pace, one of the tricks to Rydou's run is skipping nearly every combat encounter. In his own words, a big part of his strategy is 'running the hell away from everything.' With just over 18 minutes from character creation to end credits, it's safe to say that he is on to something.

Although speedruns might not appeal to everyone, there is definitely something very impressive about learning the ins and outs of a game to the point that you can trim down the play time by dozens of hours. Speedrunners have an incredible knowledge of game engines and code that allow them to walk through walls and skip levels as if they were playing in some kind of development build.

If you're curious about the rules for speedrunning, the community keeps an official list of requirements that is open to the public. For Fallout 3, the clock starts when the game's first autosave becomes available and the game's final level code is considered the finish line.

Do you think speedrunning is a noteworthy feat or do you consider glitching through a game's code 'cheating?' Let us know in the comments.

Source: Twitch