Kingdom Hearts III In Game Time. (THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AS MORE INFORMATION IS FOUND)

In this document we will explore how In Game Time(IGT) works in KH3. Rather than trying to advocate for use of this in speedrunning or not, I simply want to highlight the things we do know and how accurate or inaccurate IGT can be.

First I would like to cover where IGT starts and ends. This is not the same as traditional RTA timing because IGT does not start when you press “Yes” to the “Begin the Game” prompt. IGT actually starts after the first ‘Instagram Load’ is complete and there is the prompt to “Continue Game”. Loads are not counted toward IGT, but this would also eliminate the need to cache the first load of the game to not lose time in RTA. IGT will also continue all the way until the Final Results screen rather than ending on last input or landing the killing blow like KH1 or KH2 would(I am unsure of the other KH game ending times as I have not run them). This is significant because you would be required to skip the final cutscenes in order to have an accurate IGT for the speedrun.

IGT Start: IGT Ending w/o Cutscenes: IGT Ending w/ Cutscenes: (this video may be blocked because of the cutscenes but IGT is longer by about 43 minutes)

Unlike some previous KH games, KH3’s IGT does not account for certain things which makes it more viable as an accurate timing method across consoles. One of the biggest things KH3’s IGT does not count is ‘Instagram Load’ screens nor Room Transitions. This is significant because this will be majority of the loading discrepancies between different hardware setups (SSD/HDD, Pro/Slim).

Unfortunately there are still things that do not count towards IGT that would be convenient if they did. Two such situations are directly related to dying in the run. Idling on the Death Screen does not add to IGT. The other situation where IGT is not increased after a death is if the runner uses Continue instead of Retry. Continue works like KH2 and will reset the state of the game to the last time you had free control of Sora, which also resets the IGT. The biggest situation where “Continue” is likely to cause issues is when the player dies and runs out of items potentially needed to complete the fight, or dying to a random mob fight. Forced mob fights will still give a retry option like any boss, but if Sora somehow dies to an unforced fight you will be forced to use continue. Both of these issues may cause IGT to be invalid for speedruns, or a set of rules would need to be enforced to prevent the runners from abusing these.

Death Screen Idling/Retry:

Another situation we’ve noticed is that the act of opening or closing the menu pauses the IGT for a fraction of a second. The significance of the menu pausing IGT is debatable because if the pause in IGT is consistent across consoles, depending on loads, then it should make no difference. As you can see in this video, it takes 1:08 for the IGT to advance by 1:00.

Situations that should increase the IGT like normal include; Retry, Prepare and Retry, Gameplay, Menus, Pause Screens, Cutscenes, ‘Continue Game’ input after an ‘Instagram Load’. These are all acceptable places for IGT to increase as there is player interaction with the game and where we would want to measure speed. I have not made exact comparisons for these situations but they have individually been tested. I may work to have a more comprehensive set of comparisons but for now I want to get this information out before the embargo lifts.

IGT comparison between two consoles:

There is still much testing to be done but I think for now IGT is a good starting point. Running a RTA timer with the traditional start and end points would still be recommended, as we can always fall back to that if IGT is shown to be inaccurate.

Here a few RTA vs IGT comparisons. Most runners don’t traditionally skip the final cutscenes so it is hard to find accurate comparisons for now.

CrispyMe: 3:52:21 RTA, 3:27:36 IGT, 24:45 Difference Ninten866: 3:51:14 RTA, 3:25:58 IGT, 25:16 Difference Saiyanz: 4:33:42 RTA, 4:09:01 IGT, 24:41 Difference

All three of these runs are on PS4 Pro SSD and we see that there’s about a 25 minute difference between RTA and IGT. Once more runs are done on other setups those will be looked into but so far at least Pro SSD seems to be mostly consistent. For now I will try to track differences in the times on this spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yyiw9lIx-Fu8FjyAvjMbwa6KRWVgMHEcU3LBNGm0n40/edit?usp=sharing.