So, it must almost be time for the Bethesda Fallout 4 intra-office speedrun contest. Previous winners and winning times (Googled):

Fallout 3: Sam Bernstein, 75 minutes.

Oblivion: Chris Krietz, also about 75 minutes.

Skyrim: Sam Bernstein, 2 hours, 16 minutes, 10 seconds (Some non-Beth guy apparently did it in 54 minutes! using various exploits)

Fallout 4: ?

Not that I really care who won, but the winning times are sorta interesting if you note the jump in completion time from Fallout 3 and Oblivion to Skyrim. What should we expect from Fallout 4, I wonder?

I know that some companies allow their games to be 'friendly' to speedrunners (though I find it a bonkers activity).

• To complete Skyrim in 38 mins
• Oblivion in under 3 minutes
• Fallout 3 in 15 minutes

Not my idea of fun but I understand it's quite competitive.

The morrowind speedrun. (using in game exploits) is insane.. it's 3 minutes, 14 seconds.

Fallout 1 and 2 speedruns are under 20 minutes. You don't even have to use many exploits.. simply the knowledge you gained from previously beating the game.

Speedruns are fun to watch.. Kind of wish the devs would record their speedruns as they'd be really fun to watch since they are most likely not using the bigger exploits most speedrunners end up using.

Since speedruns aren't an accurate portrayal of the game I'm sure this won't be info learned until after the game is released. People would probably go all mental if the speedrun took only 10 minutes.

Yeah, I'm not into it at all myself, just found it interesting that they for some reason do this internally at Beth. These are the people who made the game, so they have all the knowledge, so I guess it's a decent measure of main quest line.

I watched a speed run once on YouTube for Morrowind without mods. Watching that guy was insane.

iirc they do it as a final/close to final test of the game, but I could be wrong. I'm fairly sure other companies do the same, though. But I mean, if anything, it could just be a tight knit company having fun with their game.