In early 2017, it was discovered that through watching an animated cutscene on a file while loading into a new file, it would skip that cutscene on that fresh file. This was ultimately banned at the time, but was brought back up recently.

One reason for the change happening this time around when it was shut down a year ago, is the recent change to the timing rules. You can read more about that here: https://www.speedrun.com/sly1/thread/pt7dn

The community came together in our runner's Discord server (link in https://www.speedrun.com/sly1/resources ) and the mod team decided that a runner's poll was the way to go in this situation. The poll ended at a total of 65% - 35% for allowing the animated cutscenes to be skipped using this method.

On one hand, this can be considered file manipulation, as we use a different file to watch the cutscene, and save the change to a fresh file. It's definitely a gray area. While on the other hand, this is a huge quality of life change that will make running the game much more bearable. We no longer have to watch minutes on minutes of unskippable cutscenes every reset, in a reset heavy early-game. The community ultimately decided to sacrifise some speedrunner's integrity for a quality of life change that will make running the game more enjoyable for most.

Once the decision was made, the mods had to decide how to integrate this change to the leaderboards. After some confusion, we ultimately decided to simply allow the change, and make no adjustments to the boards. There was a brief moment where the leaderboards were being adjusted, but that change was quickly reverted, sorry about that.

Here's a guide on how to set up a file for the cutscene skips: https://www.speedrun.com/sly1/guide/i3si6

The skips only works on PS2 (and BC PS3) to our knowledge, but PSN can skip the same cutscenes by restarting the game.

Questions or any sort of feedback is very welcome!

EDIT, August 12th: We've since this change allowed for watching cutscenes on different files and saving them to your starting file. It is also worth noting that all runs should start with 0 coins collected and 5 extra lives available.

The way the run has been timed until now, one would start the timer on new game, then load right away to skip the opening cutscene, which also resets all changes done to your file. This means that in order to change camera settings, one would have to waste time during the run by changing the settings while the timer is running.

Furthermore, the 'New game glitch' has been brought to our attention as a potential way to skip the opening cutscene. See Zen's video here, where he pokes the subject:

Our initial discussion was whether this should be allowed or disallowed, as it could prove to be useful and faster, but happens before starting a new game. Given timing definitions, the approach we deemed optimal is to begin timing on the initial 'Start' input to skip the game boot cinematic, as this sets up the glitch that would be used in the run.

This ultimately means starting the timer earlier than traditional means, which makes this method simply break even with skipping the cutscene by loading. However, the PSN version can't load to skip cutscenes, and this would easily save 40s there. This introduces two different ways of starting the timer, based on the strats used, as 'first input' would be defined differently between the strats.

Instead of introducing this inconsistent way of timing, why not find a solution that solves the issues regarding camera settings as well?

With inspiration from communities like Ratchet and Clank and Fallout, we want to introduce starting the timer on file load (saved past the opening cutscene). This allows changing settings as you please, while keeping the actual time difference to the current methods to a minimum. Runs may be adjusted by 2-3s.

Please keep in mind that your file should still have 0 coins collected and 5 extra lives available, to keep the file as close to a fresh file as possible.

Consider the New game glitch allowed (faster for PSN), then instantly obsoleted or walked around by the new timing rules. We are only able to change the timing rules this way since all versions can now skip the opening cutscene.

Thoughts?

Here is a video showcasing the new starting point. The timer is, of course, slightly desynced because HDMI on Elgato :)

After a discussion with the other leaderboard moderators, we came to the conclusion of allowing the use of the Korean PSN version for speedruns, which makes it the fastest known version. Here's the story:

It was previously thought that dubs didn't matter for Sly 2 (as opposed to Sly 3), but this was proven to only be the case for dubs available on the PAL version. Suappi realized that both Korean and Japanese have a faster dub than English. See his language comparison between English, Japanese and Korean here (PS2):

The Japanese version was never released to PSN, but the Korean version was. Oggy therefore tried his luck and ended up getting his hands on said version. After some initial testing, it was clear that Korean could save over 10 minutes! Here is a 5:16:40 run I did on the Korean dub, which is the current WR:

Here's the catch. In order to get your hands on the Korean PSN version, one needs a Korean PSN account. In order to make a Korean PSN account, one needs a so-called "I-Pin", only acquirable through the use of a Korean phone no. or something comparable to a Korean social security no. In other words: We can't simply make an account and purchase the game. We need to use an existing Korean account, or have a Korean person buy and download the game for us.

This is where the gray zone kicks in, and why this wasn't immediately allowed. The easiest way to get your hands on the version is to buy an account online, then add funds through 'Live Cards' and buy the game that way. It is specifically noted in the PSN Terms of Service ( https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/legal/terms-of-service ) that selling/buying an account is not allowed. However, the ToS appears targeted to online play and also states that "cheat, exploit or use any bugs, glitches, vulnerabilities or unintentional game mechanics in PSN Services or any of its products or services to obtain an unfair advantage" is also not allowed. In other words, they indirectly claim speedrunning is against the ToS. The ToS is likely extremely wide so that Sony can strike whoever they want. ((Personal opinion))

We would like to make it abundantly clear that should runners get the Korean version of the game, they run the risk of those ToS violations.

Despite this, all four of the leaderboard moderators voted for allowing it, pointing at previous examples within the speedrunning community. PC speedrunners allow the use of torrenting games to obtain pre-patched versions of games to speedrun on, and communities have allowed niche, rare and/or expensive consoles in the past (as long as they were "official" consoles) to save time in loads and/or lag.

There was also talk about splitting the leaderboards to maintain the current leaderboards; that isn't happening. There was also some arguments for adding a 'language' variable, but that was shut down in favor of simply using the already existing 'Platform' variable.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rrKLUwTcQ3zQKjTaQnA5gZCnrZdv9NHp9aElhGDWIkc

This is an unofficial, collective 'leaderboard' for episode runs that I threw together. There are two boards; a points ranking and a time ranking. The boards are inspired by that of the elite - https://rankings.the-elite.net/goldeneye .

Points ranking 1st = 10 points, 2nd = 9 points, 3rd = 8 points etc. Points are then added together to create a total score out of the possible 80. Since the amount of players are limited, I've kept all 15 players that holds a top 10 time in the final leaderboards.

Time ranking I've restricted this to 10 runners, and the runners need to have ran all 8 episodes, but do not need to have all their PBs within top 10. I have no way of telling who is the actual 10 fastest runners without manually adding the times together, so if I missed someone then please do tell me.

The constant 'K' is set to 25:34, as this is a shortcut to estimate a full-game run with episode PBs, similar to how Sum of Best works, I suppose. 25:34 was, when I made the leaderboards, all my "Start episode" splits (not golds) from my 5:25:28, plus my gold for Cairo (2:48.72), rounded down to the second.

I'm not sure if this is something anyone is interested in, but I found some interesting data here that caught my interest atleast. I've been pondering about where to post this, as it's not a resource, and certainly not a guide. I decided to throw it up here as a forum post, but please note that this is unofficial and not a mod post.

Questions and/or feedback are very welcome :3

Since everyone is throwing stuff at me from everywhere (see: twitter, twitch, Discord etc.), let's just put it all here for everyone to see, yeh?

I've moved the 'Ultimate Gauntlet' leaderboards (back) to the Individual Levels leaderboards! In addition to this I've added the 'Thief Reflexes' as a variable, like I did with previous Master Thief Challenges yesterday. (See: http://www.speedrun.com/sly3/thread/q39o0)

I've already moved all the runs for you, so you don't have to worry about that. I might've spammed your inbox in the process, so sorry about that :3

I'm posting (and stickying) this thread in case people are confused as to where the Ultimate Gauntlet leaderboards went, as suggested by Cooopercrisp.

Link to the new leaderboards: http://www.speedrun.com/sly3/Ultimate_Gauntlet

I just went through the trouble of adding the 'Thief Reflexes' gadget as a variable on the Master Thief challenges where you play as Sly, even if only for a minor part of it (see: Pressure Brawl).

If you don't know, 'Thief Reflexes' is the gadget for Sly that slows down time (to 0.25x iirc) without it affecting the in-game timer - allowing us to do precise tricks or movement easier .

When you submit future PBs, please set the 'Thief Reflexes' variable as either Yes or No. It should be set as required and defaults to No. If you want, you can go back and edit your older submissions as yes or no to save some trouble for the mods (more like save me trouble tbh :3) and to make the boards look cleaner.

In the near future I will go back and set the variable manually for top 3 times in every challenge. I would do it now but tacos :3

I am looking into adding it for Ultimate Gauntlet as well, but with its current position (misc. full-game) it seems impossible. I'm arguing to move it (back) as an IL as it's not a full-game category, and I doubt it gets more love when it's hidden by default anyway.