Before we dive into dissecting this incredibly impressive feat, let me give you some context on why this matters.
Why Pay Attention to a GTA 5 Speedrun?
GTA 5 has cemented itself as one of the best-selling video games of all time, approaching 170 million copies sold across three console generations. Even in 2023, it remains near the top of monthly sales charts, a testament to its lasting appeal.
Much of this sustained popularity comes from GTA Online – with its ever-expanding world and thriving community. But at its core lies the original single-player experience featuring one of gaming‘s most memorable story campaigns. It is this component that speedrunners have mastered with almost superhuman skill.
| Game | Average Playtime | Any% Speedrun Record |
|---|---|---|
| GTA 5 | 31 hours | 5 hours 56 mins by szau |
Let‘s take a peek under the hood at what enables such a blazing fast playthrough of this sprawling 100+ hour game when attempted normally.
GTA 5‘s Design Supports Speedrunning
Several key aspects of GTA 5‘s open world design lend themselves well to speedrunning attempts:
- Flexible Missions: Objectives can often be completed in different ways based on player creativity.
- Interconnected World: The ability to traverse using planes, helicopters, bikes, and more with little restrictions enables sequence breaking.
- Complex Systems: Police, pedestrian, and enemy AI behavior can be manipulated and exploited.
This provides a great canvas for creating a speedy route through objectives while bypassing large sections of the game.
Meet GTA 5 Speedrunning Legend szau
Our case study focuses on prominent speedrunner szau who burst onto the scene in 2020 and shocked viewers with world record pace runs of GTA 5. He steadily improved over countless attempts, eventually achieving a 5 hour 56 minute completion of the entire 69 mission story mode under 100% category rules.
This run claimed several world records:
| Category | Time | Improvement |
|---|---|---|
| Any% | 2hrs 13mins | 1st place |
| 100% | 5hrs 56mins | 12 minute lead |
For context, GTA 5 takes the average player over 31 hours just for main story completion. So how does szau do it?
Speedrunning Tricks and Exploits
Cutting over 25 hours off a normal playthrough requires mastery of dozens of tricks and exploits. Here is just a sample of techniques employed by szau:
- Trigger Skips: Precisely triggering missions to end cuts down on time spent in lengthy cutscenes and transitions. High risk but high reward.
- Sequence Breaking: Discovering alternate routes through missions to bypass significant content. Examples include wrong-warping and teleportation tricks.
- AI Manipulation: Forcing enemy behavior via luring, line of sight tricks, despawning. When mastered, allows easy evasion.
- Physics Exploits: Using irregular hit boxes or sticking to objects to reach impossible areas faster. Enables major sequence breaks.
- Optimization: Memorizing the most efficient routes across the entire map cut down on travel times.
Executing these frame-perfect maneuvers at full speed is extremely challenging. But mastery separates the top speedrun crowd aiming for world records.
Showcase Moments of Brilliance
While szau‘s entire run should be studied, here are a few standout moments that exemplify his skills:
The Paleto Score: Manipulated police AI despawning to escape easily from an intense shootout. Textbook mastery of systems.
Predator: Used risky motocross jumps between snipers to disrupt and defeat an entire veteran squad rapidly. Great creativity.
The Big Score: Final heist completed stealthily by precise movement. Skipped a 30 minute loud escape scene. Incredible finesse.
These moments demonstrate how intricately szau has dissected GTA 5 and formulated the optimal path.
Speedrunning a Blank Canvas
Many linear games have a largely set sequence, but open world games like GTA 5 offer near endless possibilities. This provides far more variables to account for and requires true problem solving dedication to create a speedrunning solution.
Mind-bending feats like szau‘s run advance the entire culture and science of speedrunning. It has pushed other runners to scrape to find mere seconds of improvements while documenting many new tricks for the community.
Will his records stand long term? With such mastery on display, it may take an equally ingenious newcomer to pose a threat in the years ahead. Either way, this spectacular run deserves appreciation.
I hope this deep dive has shed light on the inner workings to enable this legendary achievement. Let me know if you have any other questions!
