I'm wondering what the bare minimum is that the player can do to get to Hoover Dam. With most games, a speed run is pretty simple: you just haul [censored] through the levels as quickly as possible, dodging as much combat as you can. Even in FO3 it's possible to skip a large amount of the game by going direct from Vault 101 to Vault 112.

For FNV, as far as I can tell this is the minimal number of interactions:
- Start at Goodsprings
- Sneak through Quarry Junction to Vegas
- Go to the Tops and confront Benny, talk to Yes Man, then talk to Vulpes outside
- Go to Cottonwood Cove and get taken to the Fort
- Get the chip and either upgrade or destroy the Securitrons
- Go back to the Tops, talk to Yes Man and tell him to ignore everyone (is this possible without first meeting them: Boomers, BoS, etc?)
- Go to the dam

Still seems fairly involved and length. Are there any corners that can be cut, or required steps I've missed?

why would you want to?

This is not possible i believe (feel free to correct me if i am wrong) but you need to meet the Boomers etc...

Here's one way to do it in an hour and a half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07LJ5YlVkXA

you have to make contact with those factions at the very least: ie, discovering Red Rock Canyons is enough to "meet" the Khans

Yes you have to meet the factions and I think talk to the main NPC guys initially or something.
My impression has been the biggest time sink is initially walking to all the places you need/want FT points (as well as NPC contacts) for. The walkin' takes a while.

I'm curious about this too.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of a speedrun. I don't expect to understand it, but I wouldn't mind hearing the why anyway...

There is no why. "Because it is there."

...it's just a mental/achievement challenge. Like, why do people keep trying to run a faster marathon, swim a faster lap, put together a jigsaw puzzle? Not much different than that really.

i'd be more interested in a Fastest Full-Quest Completion or atleast 90% completion since I know there are some quests that are either mutually exclusive or rep dependent

That... makes sense.

I've done a few speed runs in my time but the amount of knowledge/work/planning one has to do to get a truly awesome "speed" is usually to much for me.

And yeah, in FNV a speed run isn't terribly interesting. Some other kind of 'speed' challenge might be more intriguing.

My thoughts exactly. Doing speed runs is pretty common in linear games (especially old platforms), but for games like FO3/FNV I find it interesting because it's meant to be very in-depth and involved, I'm wondering how quick one could do a run if that was the focus.

Ironic this topic came up because over the weekend decided to do a speed run.
Why? Been waiting for the dlc, have multiple characters waiting to finish game, and wondered myself how fast i could play through
with what i know about the game. End result: just south of 9hrs.

Its not quite as easy as it may seem, here's what i did: made a female character (legion are all males), bumped luck up to 9 (you'll see why), lowered strength and endurance to 4, bumped agility to 8, tagged guns,sneak & medicine,
traits:small frame and four eyes (perception, trying to optimize character stats)

Upon leaving doc's house went straight to sloan, followed hills between black mountain and th I-15, went to freeside eastgate
then proceeded to go to the atomic wrangler (you need 2000 caps to get on the strip, thats where you need the luck) and gamble till you get banned, enter strip then leave strip, go to the medical clinic, get luck implant then go back to strip and talk to house (his quest line to me seems to be the path of least resistance), then go to to the ultra-luxe and proceed to get banned (there is a reason for wanting to get banned from the strip casinos)

From there, go to the tops, as soon as you take a few steps in the quest line will update to the ring-a-ding quest and you will level up (took the black widow perk, 2 reasons why to have female character, you'll see)
get banned before talking to benny, then approach him and take the option to sleep with him, kill him in his sleep and the platinum chip is yours, go back to house and start house quest 2. upon leaving, vulpes gives you the mark.

Go to the fort, talk to caesar, enter bunker, took out all the robots/turrets, upgraded then left, talk to caesar,then returned to house. Now house quest 3, on to the boomers. For brevity's sake here's what i did, cleared ants, healed wounded boomers and
gave them missles & scrap metal, that was enough to get idolized. Make sure you have a pressure cooker with you, talk to loyal then jack and go to lake las vegas and swim to the bomber, keep to the floor there, there are lakelurks about. Deploy ballast,go to the shoreline and raise bomber, now back to loyal then back to house.

House quest 4, go to gamorrah, gamble get banned then talk to cachino, follow his quest line, find troike, offer to help get him out of contract, find sal, tell him troike is worthless, help blow up weapons cache (take the guns), find clanden's room, pickpocket the key, get tapes confront him and kill him, return to cachino and confront the bosses, return to house.

House quest 5, brotherhood time, again brevity. Steal all the keycards and access the self destruct and get out of dodge.(i never fired a shot), return to house.

House quest 6, save the president. Something i learned, if you have no rep with the ncr and you get this quest, it automatically fails, he gets assassinated.

House quest 7,fire up the reactor. Sorry, failed to mention you can (hopefully) get a ncr uniform when sneaking around black mountain before entering strip.

Now, on to the end game. What i did, ran to the objectives, let the ncr & securitrons take out the legion.
once inside the dam, go to control room, go to door, make troopers hostile and get them to pull out close combat weapons, and keep moving, install override then run to powerplant and activate army. (I've not engaged a single enemy in combat yet)
Get back to the top of the dam, but this time you'll want to assist in taking out enemies, you will be wanting a anti-materiel rifle.
Legates camp, here's why you need the rifle, take out the 2 guards in the lookouts, and the 3 praetorians before meeting the legate. There is a small area with tents on the left hand side of the camp, lower corner with a couple of shipping crates, when fighting the legate this is where you want to be, they won't engage in hand to hand when you are up there, makes the battle easier,
when you finish defeating him, return to gate and talk to oliver then attack (i'll explain why) then turn around and run away, let the securitrons take them out. Thats it, Game Over.

Allright, now for the minutae. Inbetween all the questing, you'll want to be buying stimpacks and 9mm ammo (thats why you want to get banned). Why 9mm ammo, Maria will be the best weapon you will find in regards to finding cheap ammo and the rate of fire helps at the end of the game, and the stims, well the end battle is brutal, imagine fighting the legate and legion with nothing but a 9mm pistol and leather armour and you'll understand, plus with the money you get from the casinos, invested them in implants.

I ran this on easy, no mods, no hardcoe, just my game knowledge, it was, to say the least, a interesting play.

Also failed to mention, all skills just short of the tagged ones were crap, nothing not tagged reached 40, i was 11th level upon completion.

Then you're gonna want to keep a look out for my "Brain-dead Fred/Kill 'em all in less than 3 game days' challenge. Coming soon* to a computer near you.

*soon means after oWb comes out and we're waiting for LR with nothing to do.

-Gunny out

Here's my second and last installment for speed runs, this one is the yes man route.

Character: female, traits: fast shot, good natured, tagged small guns, medicine and science(these help you walk out of docs house with 20+stims), SPECIAL= 4, 1, 4, 1,10, 10, 10. Perks i earned=black widow, bloody mess, gunslinger and run n' gun.

This is what you get by doing the bare minimum possible= 2hrs,21min,14sec, that what the time was before talking to oliver,
and the game date was 10/21/81 20.27.

Why i did it; i have a character for every faction, gun specialists, diplomats, commandos and sociopaths, hoarders, etc...
also have characters with 200-300hrs, and i thought what haven't i tried yet, a speed run, so i thought let me try it and this
is what i got. The first was faction based, this one was purely on how fast i can play this game, so here it is, final result.

First one ran on pc, easy, no mods, no harcore
This on, xbox360, very easy, no hardcoe and the classic pack.