The newest game in the Nazi-slaying series is pretty short, at least if you’re a speedrunner.
Released on Friday, The New Colossus digs deep into American politics and the country’s legacy of racism and bigotry. The game doesn’t pull many punches, right from the very beginning.
Of course, you could also blaze through the game and skip over its grizzly reflection on fascism and just try to beat it as quickly as possible.
That’s what Finnish speedrunner DraQu did late yesterday when he turned in the game’s first official world record for reaching the end credits by whatever means necessary. He managed to do the entire thing in 1:19:16, just shy of 80 minutes including cutscenes (of which the game understandably has quite a few).
It’s not as bloody as you might think, in part because DraQu is too busy flying down corridors and hopping from one objective to another to dwell on the bodies he drops in-between.
Fighting back against Nazis in America is actually about running. A lot. In the hands of DraQu, The New Colossus almost feels like Mirror’s Edge at parts.
He spent some time earlier this year speedrunning The New Order and currently holds the first-place record for that game as well at 1:31:16, so it’s not a surprise he was the first one to turn in a record for Wolfenstein II.
It is somewhat surprising just how much shorter it is (you might also remember DraQu from the speedrunning frenzy around Prey back when that game first released).
Two of the big time-savers come at 15:25 and 23:25 during the world record attempt. Both revolve around cutting through the game’s level geometry during swimming sections and eerily beautiful to watch.
DraQu said another big part of his current run is utilise armoured stilts throughout in order to pull off some of the trickier geometry navigation necessary for bypassing firefights and other obstacles whenever possible.
The game also has a vaulting mechanic which didn’t exist in The New Order, something that makes it easier to get out of bounds and try to break the game.
DraQu currently uses it in a couple places and it’s likely the manoeuvre will lead to other breakthroughs that shave time off the existing world record.
By this time next week, it’s possible we could already be seeing sub-sixty minute runs.
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