Glitch Upends Aussie’s GTA 5 World Record Attempt

The Big Score is the sixth and final heist mission in GTA V. If they player selects the “subtle” approach, they will need to drive their car onto a tractor trailer at a certain point or the mission ends in failure. Unfortunately, there’s a rare glitch that can make doing so impossible.

DarkViperAU plays a lot of GTA V, and holds world records in most of the accepted speedrunning categories. Except for the “Classic%” category. The current best time for that type of run is held by ToriksLV at 6:36:48 with load times counted. DarkViperAU was on his way to beating it by a lot earlier this weekend however, until a series of unfortunate events completely demolished his run.

Previously having finished the run at 6:38:56, the Australian was on track to potentially complete the game in 6:33:29 if he did everything right for the remainder of it.

Being a strange, gigantic, glitch-filled open world game though, GTA V had other plans. When DarkViperAU first approaches the underpass, gunfire from the police helicopter flying overhead shockingly takes out his back tire with only a few shots.

Then the game mysteriously throws his car into oncoming traffic on the left side before he’s able to get back on the right side with the trucks in sight. But by then he’s already lost too much time and can’t make it into the back of the truck.

He fails the mission and respawns, fuming in disbelief. “My god-like sub 6:35 died to a fucking bug I’ve never seen before,” DarkViperAU says.

That world record would have stood for a long time. The execution was impecable. RNG far from perfect but my game was A+. All for nothing.

— DarkViperAU (@DarkViperAU) October 7, 2017

In a thread posted later on, he explained just how unlucky he was,

“The helicopter shooting out my tire was unlucky. The bug occurring that threw me into the air and over to the other side of the road was insane. The loss of my tire then prevented me from getting into the back of the truck was infuriating. It was all nothing compared to how sickening that softlock was. Even after the first fail I was still on pace to WR by 2 minutes. That run was easily the best Classic% run that has ever existed and I don’t think it will be topped by anyone for a long time.”

Unlike a normal Any% run, Classic% follows a few strict rules that make it more complicated. Players can’t fast travel using taxis for instance, or save warping. Most importantly, they must finish the game using Ending C, the game’s perceived true ending in which the three main protagonists kidnap and kill Devin before putting an end to their criminal careers and live to return back to their previous day-to-day existences.

If DarkViperAU hadn’t gotten his tire blown off and encountered the bizarre bug that kept him from getting into the truck after failing the first time, no matter how many times he reset, his ensuing world record would have been a significant milestone in the game’s speedrunning history.

“I had not experienced this bug until recently when I was practicing that segment and trying to find an optimal route,” he said in a follow-up comment on the thread. “Once it occurred in the practice, no matter how many times I reset the truck would be just as bugged.”

“I even blew up the truck and it still spawned the same way next time round. I am not sure specifically what causes it, or how often it occurs, because I don’t normally fail getting into the truck.”

DarkViperAU also speculated that he could have used Franklin’s driving ability to slow down time and try to optimise the first attempt to get on the truck, but that would have cost a lot of extra time, something he was leery of doing given the magnitude of time he was about to save because of how tight the earlier pieces of his run had been up until that point.