Skyrim can be beaten in just over two hours (if you're a developer)

It's true: in two hours and change, Sam Bernstein, a member of Bethesda's QA team, managed to reach the end of the main campaign in Skyrim. Sam's time was 2:16:10, a mere 20 seconds faster than his competition, level designer Jeff Browne. The two are actually no stranger to the Bethesda speed run circuit, having participated in a similar event a few years ago in Fallout 3, in which Sam was also victorious.

So what does Sam win, aside from immortal glory on a video game blog? Well, he gets a pumpkin pie from Todd Howard and he also gets the trophy you see above. What's Dragon-speak for "winner?"

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/13/skyrim-can-be-beaten-in-just-over-two-hours-if-youre-a-develop/

It apparently took them half the time to beat Oblivion during that speed run. I guess they know the right ways to glitch through mountains. It's kind of crazy the skills you acquire playing the same game for months on end.

Oblivion was beatable in 10 minutes.

With paintbrushes.

I just felt like posting this here. This kind of stuff always blows my mind.

There are people who can beat games less than an hour where as it takes me about 7

The game's 2 hours long? Goddamn console call of duty bullshit is shortening every game. Ugh.

(sarcasm, don't freak out)

There's a Morrowind run that was done in under 5 minutes up on YouTube and Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour.

I think the most fascinating part is that the Skyrim guys were 20 SECONDS apart.

@B0HICAH said:

There's a Morrowind run that was done in under 5 minutes up on YouTube and Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour. I think the most fascinating part is that the Skyrim guys were 20 SECONDS apart.

I would imagine they were doing the same thing but one was slightly more efficient.

@DarkShaper said:

@B0HICAH said:

There's a Morrowind run that was done in under 5 minutes up on YouTube and Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour. I think the most fascinating part is that the Skyrim guys were 20 SECONDS apart.

I would imagine they were doing the same thing but one was slightly more efficient.

One of them probably just got stuck on a rock.

Good. The meat of these games are always the peripheral things like side quests. When I play these games for a couple hundred hours and decide I've had enough and want to finish the story, I don't want to have to plod through yet another 10 hours to see the ending.

I don't know if I like knowing this..

@Funkydupe said:

I don't know if I like knowing this..

dont worry. i know someone who beat FO3 in under 2 hours. a speed run like that means nothing.

@XII_Sniper:NO SKYRIM WILL NOT BE 2 HOURS LONG CAUSE THAT GUY ANT MLG CAUSE SKYRIMMS AN MLG GAME AND IM MLG WAAAAAAAAA.

lol i dount care but still cant wait to play the main quest oblivion took me a week to complete the main. =)

@XII_Sniper said:

The game's 2 hours long? Goddamn console call of duty bullshit is shortening every game. Ugh.

(sarcasm, don't freak out)

I'm all for this. RPG that can be completed in 2 hours or less. I'm sick of spending close to 100 hours in an RPG to get to the end. I have others things to do like write stupid comments on GB forums.

@B0HICAH said:

There's a Morrowind run that was done in under 5 minutes up on YouTube and Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour. I think the most fascinating part is that the Skyrim guys were 20 SECONDS apart.

I would imagine they were doing the same thing but one was slightly more efficient.

don't forget. developers can beat this game less than 3-4 hours at least because they have worked on this over 4 years. this is what they do everyday. if you are not stupid, you understand this.

All things considered, that actually speaks quite well for the game I think. I mean, these guys have probably beat the game so many times they have lost count and yet it still took them over two hours to complete it. Imagine how it will be for the rest of us who stop to fuck around with NPC's, explore random dungeons and just absorb the great scenery. FUCKING A come out already!

Eh, at some point someone beat Fallout 3 in 30 minutes. This time can be beat.

Speed running through a game has always fascinated me.

@Hizang said:

There are people who can beat games less than an hour where as it takes me about 7

I beat MW2 on easy in less then 5 hours...

@XII_Sniper:

I was gonna say....sweet baby Jesus, that's an overreaction. Lol, But seriously, CoD and the like are shortening most games. Of course, there are those games like GTA (everything since III), Demon's Souls, the Elder Scrolls games, Infamous, etc. where you can play for 40, 50, 60, or 100's of hours. But most games are still linear and are getting shorter as the years go by. It felt like BF:BC2's story was almost tacked on as a side-piece to the multiplayer...which it was, but the point remains the same.

@Funkydupe said:

I don't know if I like knowing this..

It is a little weird when you think about how big the games are, but this is actually much longer than their speedrun times for Fallout 3 and Oblivion, and we all know how massive those were.

@SpencerTucksen: I actually like the shorter games. It means I'll see the game through for once, instead of playing 20 hours, and then shelving it for eternity because it's tuesday and something else came out.

Also game writers have very rarely been able to keep a story interesting for longer than like 6-10 hours. Look at all these massive JRPGs, I tend to abandon them halfway through because in the 50 hours of grinding I've forgotten why I even wanted to progress. COD games play like 6 hour long action movie epics, and they show. Their stories are the perfect length for what they're trying to convey. I wouldn't want to play a 15-20 hour COD campaign because it would get boring after a while.

I wish they never made the speed run public.

Now all the retards are coming out of the woodwork...

You can finish playing World of Warcraft in under a minute.
Just close it.
 
Hell I don't care, half of this game is exploring/sidequests/falling off cliffs.

Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour.

@Grimluck343: Same here. I have been watching a lot of speed runs and races lately, mostly of zelda games. I just think it is awesome how there is a fairly large community of gamers who play a single game so much just to find every exploit in the game and get better playthrough times.

@ShadowConqueror: Would be interesting to see the real speedrun time of that Oblivion video. He would have had to speedrun the dungeon which would have taken up a large chunk of time. Hiked to the town. Found enough paintbrushes scattered about to make a ladder, etc. Seems it would have taken a hell of a lot longer than 10 minutes.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

You can finish playing World of Warcraft in under a minute. Just close it.

Wish you could like posts.

@kingopork said:

@ShadowConqueror: Would be interesting to see the real speedrun time of that Oblivion video. He would have had to speedrun the dungeon which would have taken up a large chunk of time. Hiked to the town. Found enough paintbrushes scattered about to make a ladder, etc. Seems it would have taken a hell of a lot longer than 10 minutes.

The run I watched was under 10 minutes and he never touched a paintbrush.

Apparently you can look down and drop/pickup items and jump in rapid succession to boost your way up to the top of the temple.

@ShadowConqueror said:

Oblivion was beatable in 10 minutes.

With paintbrushes.

It takes over 15,000 jumps, if specializing in Stealth and having Acrobatics as a major skill, to get to 100, and even longer to find that many paintbrushes without console commands(no console commands in the speedrun) or duping (I doubt they used glitches either). Nice video though.

@Geo7877 said:

@DarkShaper said:

@B0HICAH said:

There's a Morrowind run that was done in under 5 minutes up on YouTube and Bethesda did a speedrun of Fallout 3 in just over an hour. I think the most fascinating part is that the Skyrim guys were 20 SECONDS apart.

I would imagine they were doing the same thing but one was slightly more efficient.

One of them probably just got stuck on a rock.

I was reading that in my college's computer lab and your comment made me burst out laughing in front of everyone