For most Fallout players, going straight to the New Vegas strip seems impossible—the path there looks like it is gated by cazadores and other baddies. But for speedrunners like rydou, blazing through New Vegas in record speeds is no problem.
In this video, you can watch rydou not only take control of the strip, but also get through the Hoover dam battle in a whopping 24:54. That’s probably how long it takes me to just make a new character! The trick to this “any percentage” run is in the route, and in the technique.
First, rydou quickly creates a character and steals everything from Doc Mitchell. Then rydou answers all of Mitchell’s questions with the first available answer, and takes pretty much the whatever perks and skills the game gives them. And then run really takes off: rydou darts to the Goodsprings Cemetery, and breaks their own leg. This doesn’t seem like a good thing, but the fracture is intentional according to rydou:
When you cripple your leg, you get slower, and then when you heal it, you’re supposed to get your speed back. By quickloading just before getting crippled, you can confuse the game into giving you the speed back without actually ever losing it ( because we don’t actually really get crippled). So you get a huge speedboost, and walk at 165% of your walking speed.
This speedboost can appear in two versions : One which is “breakable”, it will last as long as you don’t quickload again. The second one is “unbreakable”, you can quickload or load a game without losing it.
The glitch is pretty hard to get, because it need a precise timing, which can vary with your configuration, framerate, and other thing that we probably don’t know about yet.
With this exploit in hand, rydou runs past all sorts of enemies on the way to the strip without a care. It’s not long before rydou is talking to the different factions at the strip, and eventually levels up enough to get the Black Widow perk. Using this perk, rydou talks to Benny, fucks him, and then kills him in his sleep. Rydou follows that hilarity by going into the Lucky 38, and killing Mr. House—and at this point, he’s only 12 minutes into the run. It’s amazing, if not brutal in its efficiency.
From here, rydou waltzes through the Nellis Air Force Base without blowing up, and quickly speaks to the Boomers. Then, rydou makes their way to the Hidden Valley. Immediately the Brotherhood of Steel aggros on rydou, but rydou manages to crouch before the men in power armor can get to to them—the game considers rydou ‘hidden.’ So rydou manages to steal an important key right from under the murderous Brother of Steel dudes, and uses it to further the story along. This is probably my favorite part of the entire thing.
After this, rydou finds the Khans, and then finally, after getting the low-down on all the factions in the game, talks to Yes Man to get the end game going—rydou opts for the independent strip ending, where the Securitron army keeps the strip in order with Mr. House out of the picture. And so 24 minutes into the run, rydou is at the Hoover Dam final battle. Funnily enough, instead of actually going through and battling everyone, as the game forces everyone else to, rydou simply jumps off the dam and into the water, avoiding pretty much everything. Using this shortcut, rydou gets into the Legate camp and convinces the Legate to leave with some speech checks. Voila: New Vegas beaten absurdly fast.
The speedrun, which was completed on easy, is one of the most entertaining Fallout-related things I’ve watched recently, so I encourage you to put some time aside to enjoy it. Now seems like a great time, given all the hype around Fallout 4. And in case you’re curious, the previous New Vegas any% was held by Kungkobra, and that run clocked in at 28:17 according to Speedrun.com
You can follow Rydou on Twitch here—sounds like rydou is confident this record can be beaten once more.