Cutscenes count towards timers!

[GAMING_Alligator]

Seriously? Subcon well has an unskippable one just before you get to the timepiece and the timer keeps going up. I would have made at least one of the bonus objectives had that not kicked in.

That's got to be a bug, surely.

[Miri Ryllis ミリス]

Intended. It’s quite easy to get sub-1:20 on the timer even with it. Just go fast!

[MrSnowKitten]

You think it's just that one level? Nope, it happens in every single "speedrun". I had ten seconds left to pick up the hourglass at the end of "The illness have spread", but then the camera started panning and locked the controls down. And then hatkid died. And yes, I had the cutscene skip enabled.

If you've seen at least one of GDQ streams, then you must know that cutscenes at the end of the final level never count.

Death Wish is all about infuriatingly bad game design. It's purposely terrible.

[ToxicBoo]

While it's annoying, its a basic rule in speedrunning, the timer doesn't stop until you complete the speedrun, hence why the timer keeps going even if the game is paused.

Also, I have no idea what your talking about with how the first cutscene never counts at GDQ, which doesn't make any sense if they're doing speedruns.

[GAMING_Alligator]

OK, I don't know what GDQ is, but if the mechanic is by design, then it seems like bad design to me.

"Super-hard" platformers that I've played, like Meatboy, Celeste, etc... never put cutscenes in your face at all while you're working through a challenge, much less unskippable ones, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't keep whatever challenge you're working through going on while that cutscene is playing.

[Froderick Fronkensteen]

And they give you this time. Like the 30s you need to run to the well etc. They took it into account. Its just annoying and triggers people when they loose the challenge just because of a cutscene.

[ToxicBoo]

Yeah, an unskippable cutscene ruining a run sucks, its happened to me before, but I highly doubt they made death wish bad on purpouse, rather, they heard people saying the game was easy, and went overboard when implementing a hard mode.

[Miri Ryllis ミリス]

As has been said, cutscenes counting is standard practice in speedruns. They’ve set the timers to take cutscenes into account. Didn’t make it? You wouldn’t have made it anyway if cutscenes didn’t count. Very very few don’t count cutscenes. The only time they dont at the end of runs is if the player no longer has control of the game after that point. Notice how the timer stops when you grab a time piece. The only thing speedruns take out is loading times should the load time drastically vary depending on the machine being run

Don’t mistake your own misunderstandings for poor game design

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

Originally posted by marclev:

OK, I don't know what GDQ is, but if the mechanic is by design, then it seems like bad design to me.

"Super-hard" platformers that I've played, like Meatboy, Celeste, etc... never put cutscenes in your face at all while you're working through a challenge, much less unskippable ones, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't keep whatever challenge you're working through going on while that cutscene is playing.

GDQ is Games Done Quick, a speedrunning event where many speedrunners speedrun games for a live audience.

[Etheru]

I think "The Illness Has Speedrun" was easily the worst, since they show you where the flowers are. Even though you'd likely be familiar with where they are after the first playthrough. And how the game already highlights where they are anyway.

I hated the well one too, but at least in that one there's a lot of shortcuts. With Illness, you have to speedrun a level that's not only very large, but seems to actively try to hinder you with the pointless cutscenes.

[Elzquiem]

I don't like Speedrun challenges because I feel they are calculated to the nearest second, requiring often "nearly perfect" runs, or they just "destroy the magic" in levels I just loved in the base game (like the Subcon Well). I still made some, but I don't want to even go for the tighest chronos.

I speedran my deaths to instant enable P&T mode for "The Illness Has Speedrun" to do it without pressure. I've finished it in 7:14, while the base challenge is 7:00, so I felt that it was a good thing to enable P&T after all (Yes, I went off cliff to go faster).

And yeah, you cannot skip sutscenes. It a known constraint in the discipline, even if some game, like Axiom Verge, give you options to skip them to push your runs further.

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

The speedrun challenges require either trial and error finding the right path then doing it flawlessly. Or you watch a successful run online for the route.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

The speedrun challenges require either trial and error finding the right path then doing it flawlessly. Or you watch a successful run online for the route.

Yeah, I dislike this about them, for the same reason as someone above said. You have to do them flawlessly, there's literally no room for any second lost. That can be you doing something wrong (or *not quite perfect*), the RNG putting you into an impossible situation, a hitbox not being as tight as it should be, or (as happened to me a few times on DW Train Rush) falling through the world because you somehow jumped somewhere you weren't meant to when something else started a movement loop, or zooming off the wrong way entirely because you hit an obstacle at not quite the right angle.

I get that this makes it more dramatic when you get to the finish with 1 or 2 seconds to spare, but I guess maybe I just haven't got the patience and/or time anymore to practice a level 100's of times to get it that perfect.

Which is kind of strange, as I recently(ish) played Celeste, a game where my death count ran into the 1000's in certain levels, but unlike my experience with Deathwish, it kept on being fun even with that crazy amount of retrying stuff.

And I still dislike timers running through cutscenes. It's great if this is the way that "professional" speedruns happen, but I'm here to have fun, not compete.