Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
I found some promising looking tech for speedruns, although I can't say for certain if it's known or not. I'm still in the middle of my first playthrough, and haven't looked around the web too much yet.
Out of curiosity, I did take a look at the beginning of the glitched speedrun. It seems the runners use some kind of a frame rate-related approach to going out of bounds near traversal points. This break-out allows doing the same thing without fiddling with frame rate, and it's pretty simple and quick to perform as well.
There are a few different ways to do this break-out, but my favorite one is to 180 Turn during a reload and then quickly use a prompt. This causes a mechanics overlap where the 180 Turn influences the cancel system of the traversal animation, allowing you to do normally disabled inputs during it.
0:00 - The most obvious use for this is to suddenly evade to a direction. Since James has the traversal animation properties for the moment, he is immune to collision (and gravity?) and can go through nearby walls. (Unfortunately, walls are not very forgiving to James in this game, and he basically gets stuck if he is surrounded by too much collision. He also can't freely drop off ledges, limiting movement out of bounds further.)
This clip enters the empty room 207 at Blue Creek apartments just for the sake of a demonstration.
0:41 - The longer the animation, the longer James is immune to collision and the further you can move through walls. This is a sequence breaking attempt at Blue Creek to go to the locked stairwell early.
1:18 - Even barring any larger skips, this break-out is so quick to set up that it should surely allow small navigation-related time saves here and there.
(Not on the vid: this technique does not work on "climb up" or "drop down" animations, but other kinds of traversal animations all seem to work.)
1:27 - As another interesting side effect, you can open the menu during the break-out. This lets you examine objects or documents during a traversal animation, followed by James regaining control while you are examining the object or document in your hands. You can run around without any animation (with slightly displaced graphics?), but most actions (such as aiming, attacking, etc.) end the glitched state.
(Not on the vid: using another traversal prompt while holding an item in your hands automatically causes you to break out.)
2:03 - Different timing lets you play while the camera is zoomed in to the object, which looks quite chaotic. (Nice cloth physics!)
(Not on the vid: turning works strangely in this state because the camera is locked on an object.)
I found some promising looking tech for speedruns, although I can't say for certain if it's known or not. I'm still in the middle of my first playthrough, and haven't looked around the web too much yet.
Out of curiosity, I did take a look at the beginning of the glitched speedrun. It seems the runners use some kind of a frame rate-related approach to going out of bounds near traversal points. This break-out allows doing the same thing without fiddling with frame rate, and it's pretty simple and quick to perform as well.
There are a few different ways to do this break-out, but my favorite one is to 180 Turn during a reload and then quickly use a prompt. This causes a mechanics overlap where the 180 Turn influences the cancel system of the traversal animation, allowing you to do normally disabled inputs during it.
0:00 - The most obvious use for this is to suddenly evade to a direction. Since James has the traversal animation properties for the moment, he is immune to collision (and gravity?) and can go through nearby walls. (Unfortunately, walls are not very forgiving to James in this game, and he basically gets stuck if he is surrounded by too much collision. He also can't freely drop off ledges, limiting movement out of bounds further.)
This clip enters the empty room 207 at Blue Creek apartments just for the sake of a demonstration.
0:41 - The longer the animation, the longer James is immune to collision and the further you can move through walls. This is a sequence breaking attempt at Blue Creek to go to the locked stairwell early.
1:18 - Even barring any larger skips, this break-out is so quick to set up that it should surely allow small navigation-related time saves here and there.
(Not on the vid: this technique does not work on "climb up" or "drop down" animations, but other kinds of traversal animations all seem to work.)
1:27 - As another interesting side effect, you can open the menu during the break-out. This lets you examine objects or documents during a traversal animation, followed by James regaining control while you are examining the object or document in your hands. You can run around without any animation (with slightly displaced graphics?), but most actions (such as aiming, attacking, etc.) end the glitched state.
(Not on the vid: using another traversal prompt while holding an item in your hands automatically causes you to break out.)
2:03 - Different timing lets you play while the camera is zoomed in to the object, which looks quite chaotic. (Nice cloth physics!)
(Not on the vid: turning works strangely in this state because the camera is locked on an object.)
