Hello,

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge but I've recently noticed two things:

The first cut scene is being counted in the ingame timer. What i found out is that even if you get a really early cut scene skip(while the screen is still black), when you then finally press pause and check the current time in game. The timer will have already have counted around 7-8 seconds.

Also is there a way for PC to compensate for not being able to do the helicopter trick? For those that don't know, the console version of the game have a phone app that grants them the ability to call in the helicopter while being in the pause menu where the ingame timer is paused.

Hi !

I didn't noticed first cinematic was in global timer, thanks for that info !

And sadly no, you don't have any way to "bypass" this advantage that console version have. The only way you can get close to it is by using chopper-calling grenade (sorry, I don't know its name in english) instead of iDroid. Still cost up to 4/5 seconds I guess :/

Sad to hear that is the only option there is on PC... but oh well, just gotta try to be faster t.

And i'm gonna do some more testing soon to see if it also counts the black screen moment before you gain control of snake.

But whether that also gets counted in the global timer or not, should there be done some kind of change to how we time the runs? Since losing time because one wasn't able to skip the intro scene fast enough is kinda dump in my opinion.

I think it does count that black screen you're talking about. But since this isn't a loading screen but a set time we shouldn't change anything tbh ; plus, if you didn't skip your cutscene fast enough, it kinda is your fault for not mashing enough your escape button :v. Real question is, if the first cutscene does count towards global timer, does both hostages cutscenes count as well ?

(Note that Reflex mode makes the IG timer go slower (or don't count at all, idk which one of them is the truth), therefore if you change how time is calculated it changes all of this game's speedrun, routes and everything)

Just tested what you talked about with chico/paz hostage scenes and the ingame timer.

The ingame timer is heavyly slowed down doing an alert moment. and the hostages cut scenes are counted in the global ingame timer.

What else im interested in is, the 100% next to the total in mission timer. As in, what does the 100% mean. Its not affected by cutscenes, going to recent checkpoint(be it doing death of by pressing it). It just continues to go up.

The cutscenes definitely count towards the in game timer. There're tricks to cut down, cancel or gain some time. For all missions the way to start the in game timer at 0 is to return to the title screen as soon as you gain control in a mission. Continue the mission from the title screen and when you gain control of Snake/Raiden the in game timer begins at 0. There's a trick on PS4 in the Ground Zeroes mission. After you skip the cut scene you want to press the PlayStation button to go to the xmb menu. Wait about 8-10 seconds and return to the game application and you'll start Ground Zeroes saving the time you would have used on the black screen after skipping the cut scene. As for reflex it can save a ton of time. I believe reflex last 8 seconds and only uses up 2 seconds in game time. So you want to travel as much ground as you can during reflexes. Also manually triggering reflexes can improve times a ton when done right. When in reflex you want to keep extending it every step by tapping the aim button. This will keep the reflex active for the 5 second duration.