Skyrim - Developer Speedrun

A bit of a fun item that doesn't provide any useful insight into the game whatsoever. The Bethblog announces they recently held their traditional developer speedrun with Bethesda Game Studios facing off against QA to complete Skyrim in a bit over two hours:

If Fallout 3′s speed run was that close, the Skyrim contest was… well, I can’t think of something closer than that Michael Phelps race. But this one was crazier — crazy like the final minute of this year’s Michigan-Notre Dame game.
At the beginning of the Skyrim speedrun, I asked Sam how long he anticipated it would take. He predicted two hours, fifteen minutes. He wasn’t far off. In the end, Jeff Browne finished the game first with an impressive time of minutes 2:16:30.
Congrats to Jeff, right? WRONG! 58 minutes into the competition, Sam had to roll back to an earlier save (ruled fair by the judging committee), so we had to wait several minutes after Jeff completed the main quest to compare their final times. Despite taking a totally different route to get to the endgame (in the Fallout 3 speedrun, they had virtually the same game plan), Sam’s time was 2:16:10 — 20 seconds faster than Jeff!!

More information.

Is it weird that I find that to be too long? That just tells me there is 2+ hours of linear faffing around you have to do in the maim campaign. Morrowind could be beaten in like 7 minutes.

So the guys stood there for 4 1/2 hours? Beth can no longer afford chairs!

Originally Posted by Tragos
So the guys stood there for 4 1/2 hours? Beth can no longer afford chairs!

4 1/2? Not only don't they have any chairs, but they also do all the work / play on 1 computer? Wow. We really need to start donating to poor Beth

Skyrim's main quest only takes two hours to complete!?! They've dumbed the game down even more than Oblivion!!!!

Sorry, had to do it.

The only reason it takes more than two hours to complete Oblivion is the "10 gate quest". I think we can all live without that particular quest.

Overall, this news doesn't mean anything - Fallout can be completed in 10 minutes or some such thing.

This speedrun news and related ones for Fallout and Oblivion indicate, at least to me, the relative freedom and choice in Beth's games which is something good in my book and I enjoy. So you can't do the same thing with games like Divinity II and Risen - they are good games with enough options and choices but not like Bethesda games - relatively truely open for you to do want you want in any order.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
Skyrim's main quest only takes two hours to complete!?! They've dumbed the game down even more than Oblivion!!!!

Sorry, had to do it.

Hehe

It's twice as long as it took Oblivion and Fallout 3 took. Doubt it'll be twice the game, but bodes well for a more developed main quest.

Sounds good to me…. It bodes well for the non-linearity whilst retaining enough narrative to make it an "experience" when you want it.

I found it interesting that they took different paths and still finished 20 seconds apart. Here I thought I played Bethesda games too much

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
Is it weird that I find that to be too long? That just tells me there is 2+ hours of linear faffing around you have to do in the maim campaign. Morrowind could be beaten in like 7 minutes.

The extreme speedruns by fans will always be shorter than the Bethesda speedruns.

Not sure about the time for Morrowind, but for example, the Oblivion speedrun by the devs took more than one hour because they are not using the same glitches as the fans who later beat Oblivion in 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I've been playing Oblivion for years and still haven't beaten the game.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
The extreme speedruns by fans will always be shorter than the Bethesda speedruns.

Not sure about the time for Morrowind, but for example, the Oblivion speedrun by the devs took more than one hour because they are not using the same glitches as the fans who later beat Oblivion in 10-15 minutes.

Well I guess what I meant was that Morrowind was the ultimate freedom game because you started with "hey the bad guy is here, go kill him when you can." I loved that about it.

I actually completed Morrowind by accident.

Originally Posted by Maylander
I actually completed Morrowind by accident.

How's that?

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
How's that?

Yeah considering you still have to strike the heart once with Sunder, 5 times with keening and then strike Dagoth Ur as well - all while having wraithguard equipped - that sounds like a pretty lucky accident.

Now you can accidentally break morrowind plenty of ways, including killing the heart with something that does more than 5000 damage in a single hit but I wouldn't count that as beating the game as the scripts break and do not allow you to finish.

Originally Posted by Maylander
I actually completed Morrowind by accident.

LOL I know what you mean.

I found Liam Neeson in FO3 completely by accident, just wandering around, exploring at a low level (found the gas station with Tranquility Lane). It blew my mind to find the place, but later I was disappointed that the game was over so quickly.

I played a second playthrough which lasted much, much longer.