Fallout 3 All Quest FAQ

Q: Why? This doesn’t look fun.
A: The same reason people play racing games and MOBAs. Because it is fun to do and to also see a quantitative value (i.e. time) tied to your skill in a game, and it’s cool to see your skill improve. I’ve already put thousands of hours into the Fallout games outside of speedrunning, so this is another way I can play the game to have fun since I don’t find them fun normally anymore.

Q: You’re glitching, this isn’t a real speedrun.
A: You’re right, I am glitching, but this is a real speedrun. This is the All Quests category, meaning that glitches and exploits are allowed (as is with the any% speedrun). If you don’t believe me, look up some other any% speedruns. However, console commands are not allowed, because that is considered to be the same as entering cheat codes. Glitches actually make speedruns more difficult, because there is more margin for error than playing a game normally. If you were to run any% for New Vegas for three days, and then run glitchless for three days, I can guarantee you’d be closer to the glitchless record than the any% record.

Q: I don’t care what you said, this is cheating. Get a life.
A: If you’re that passionate about glitching in speedruns, you should check out speedrun.com for glitchless runs. Almost every game has a glitchless category, and I even have some glitchless runs on this YouTube channel, and hold the record for Fallout 4 glitchless. So don’t worry, I like to not glitch sometimes as well.

Q: Why does your timer stop between runs and during load screens?
A: The Fallout speedrun community (and almost every other PC speedrunning community) times our games in what’s called In-Game Time. This is the time that you’re actually playing your game, without load screens. This is because better PCs give faster loading screens, so it would be unfair to people who can’t afford really good PCs to include load screens in our time. The timer we use (LiveSplit) has a built-in feature where it reads the games’ files while they’re running, and is able to detect markers that indicate the game is loading. When the timer reads one of these markers, the timer automatically pauses.

Q: What difficulty is this run on?
A: The easiest difficulty.

Q: Where can I learn speedruns?
A: speedrun.com

Q. What mods do you have installed?
A. None, all runs are performed without mods.

Q: What’s the world record for All Quests? Is this still the record?
A: You can find the leaderboard for Fallout 3 here: https://www.speedrun.com/Fallout_3

Q. What is an All Quests speedrun?
A. Completing all quests that are in the base Fallout 3 game (i.e. no DLC) that increase the quest counter in the Pip-Boy (i.e. marked quests). The quests have to be marked as completed, so that means you can’t fail the quests (which there are many fast ways to do). In all, there are 32 individual quests that you can complete in the game that reflect the number in your Pip-Boy increasing, however two of these quests are completed upon typing 216 into the purifier at the end. This means that the quest counter must show 30 right before typing the code to demonstrate that you completed all the quests.

Q. How are you running so fast? Why did you shoot the ground repeatedly at the start?
A. This is a glitch called speed cripple. In Fallout 3, when you cripple a leg, the game does two things. The first is give you the cripple animation, and the second is reduce your movespeed by 60%. This means when you heal your leg by one of the many possible methods, the game removed the cripple animation, and gives you 60% additional movespeed, to bring you back up to 100% speed. If you make a quicksave while healthy, and then cripple your legs and quickload at the perfect time (this is why I repeatedly shoot the ground), it's possible to load your game where you're healthy at the same time as the game giving you back your additional 60% movespeed. This means that the game gives you 60% movespeed on top of your 100% movespeed from the quicksave, making you move at 160% movespeed.

Q. Don’t you normally do speedcripple by jumping off a cliff? Why are you doing it with a missile launcher now?
A. We need to get the missile launcher for the All Quest run anyways (for Oasis and Tenpenny Tower), so it makes more sense for us to perform speedcripple with the missile rather than the cliff. The missile is more consistent than the cliff, and you’re able to do more attempts quickly with it than jumping off the cliff. The slow part of the missile strat is grabbing the stimpaks in Vault 101 and then having to buy the missile launcher, but we have to do that anyways for All Quests, so may as well do the missile cripple.

Q. How are you glitching through walls and skipping dialogues by making your screen flash black?
A. Quicksaving and quickloading allows for us to skip dialogues and clip through walls. I have these bound to my mouse buttons to be able to do it faster than with my keyboard keys.

Q. Why did you grab all those bottles at Dukov’s?
A. I grabbed all the bottles so that I can perform a duplication glitch later on at the Super Duper Mart to get enough Nuka-Cola Quantums to complete the quantum quest later on.

Q. Why did you do missile cripple again after Tranquility Lane?
A. When you enter Tranquility Lane, you lose speedcripple due to models changing. This means you have to reapply the speedcripple after you leave it.

Q. How did you grab the GECK?
A. If you go into third person and position your camera carefully, you're able to interact with objects that are out of reach or behind walls, like the GECK.

Q. Why did you shoot Jonas?
A. Jonas normally has a talk with Father as they both enter the room, but if we shoot Jonas, it skips the dialogue.

Q. Why are you playing in English? Isn't some other language faster?
A. English is the fastest language that was released for the PC. Japanese is actually the fastest language for this speedrun, but was never officially released for PC, so English is the next fastest option.

Q. Why did you load a save to start the run instead of pressing "New Game", isn't that cheating since you're not playing the full game?
A. The Fallout 3 speedrunning community has decided that all our runs will begin at the moment you gain control of the baby character after the opening cutscene by loading a pre-made save right at the start. This is so we don't have to sit through the cutscene of being born every run, which we can safely remove from the run since there is no speed-tech in that part. Don't believe me? Head over to https://www.speedrun.com/Fallout_3 and check out the other runs to see that it is something that the community has deemed acceptable.

Q. What patch are you playing on?
A. The most recent one. All the glitches we do are possible on the most recent version of the game, plus the most recent version is the most stable.