There’s no time to admire the densely beautiful world of ‘Stray’ if you want a speedrun world … [+]
I had a great time with stray, so much so that I stuck it out long enough to earn the catinum…sorry, platinum trophy. The last trophy I snapped up was for finishing the game in under two hours on my second run. I’ll admit, I was sweating things a bit toward the end, but I finished with around 15 minutes to spare.
There are no such concerns for players who have been studiously plotting the best routes through stray, though. Some speedrunners are already able to complete the game in under an hour. As spotted by GamesRadara French runner named Erims now holds the record of 54:21 on PC (they have the PS5 record too at a significantly longer 1:12:18).
That zippy time includes the length of various unskippable cutscenes. However, Erims does take advantage of some glitches, including wall clips and near-instant dialogue skips. The glitchless records, according to speedrun.com, stand at 1:19:06 on PC, 1:23:21 on PS5 and 1:39:33 on PS4. With a few optimizations, I think that PS4 record is prime for the taking.
I’m both impressed by the ways players are able to break a game that hasn’t even been out for two weeks and how they’re able to find optimal routes through the entire thing. The glitchless runs are certainly putting my speedrun time to shame.
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