Sly 2: Band of Thieves any% speedrun FAQ

An FAQ based on Sly 2: Band of Thieves. I am to answer all questions regarding the game's speedrun here, and should you have other questions, feel free to direct them at me in chat.

Q: What version of the game are you running at?
A: You will be seeing me, and a majority of the other speedrunners, run the game on the Korean Playstation Network download version, usually just referred to as PSN download. The reason for this being that Korean people talk really fast. And for some reason, the Korean version is not limited by cutscene lipsyncing like any other language on the PAL or NTSC-U versions. A result of this is that the cutscenes will simply end before they otherwise would in English.

Q: Why the downloaded version and not disc?
A: For one, getting the download version is always a lot easier. Secondly, the PS3 collection of the Sly games adds in another screen when you restart the game. Furthermore the characters stutter whilst talking, as the game will load significantly slower from a disc than from an internal hard drive. The game subtracts data from the disc a lot slower than it would from a hard drive.

Q: Why do you restart the game so frequently?
A: After each "day" of each episode of the game, Bentley will introduce you to the next part of the setup for the inevitable operation at the end of each episode. Us speedrunners know the game well enough though, and frankly we don't speak Korean, so Bentley's briefing is pretty irrelevant to us, so we skip it by restarting the game. Thankfully it is also faster to do it that way, as the game turning off and starting back up is actually faster than all of the cutscenes in the game. This also applies to the cutscenes playing after beating an episode.

Q: Why are you turning your camera in such odd ways?
A: Often enough you will see me turn the camera around backwards, making the path I am running along hidden on the blind side of the game's camera. The reason for doing so is that guards won't spawn and therefore slowing me down. This is due to how the game's memory works. Is something off camera? It gets lower priority. As a result of that, guards will not spawn as the area will run at reduced priority. This does not exclusively work with backwards camera angles. Anywhere that isn't in focus for an extended amount of time will become of lower priority.

Q: Wait, how did that job just fail while you were in a cutscene?
A: We have found various ways of manipulating the game into killing us while we watch cutscenes. Dying within a cutscene skips the cutscene we'd be watching, enabling us to get going with the game faster than if we were to watch the cutscene. The ways we do it revolve around killing Bentley with his own bombs with very precise bomb placements, and with a technique we call fake floor.

Q: What is "Fake Floor" ?
A: Fake floor is a technique we take advantage of, primarily to skip cutscenes, either by killing Sly, getting him too far away from the job or killing guards in the world. This is accomplished by getting to a point, then getting far enough away from the point without hitting the ground. Getting far away from where you started, moves the point into low priority memory in the game. Once its in low priority, once you fall into water or take fall damage, the game will spawn you back at the starting point, only the starting point is now in low priority despite you being there. This also limits the game to only loading one zone of the map. This means the rest are in low priority, meaning the walls and floors will no longer be solid. Guards will fall through the floor and die, Sly will be able to walk through deloaded walls and should you enter a job in this state, Sly will fall while in the cutscene, either killing him or moving him far enough away from the job to trigger a job fail sequence.

Q: How are you jumping so high?
A: Sly can perform a glitched high jump by creating floor momentum while in mid air, to allow you to take off and do another jump. This is accomplished by performing the charge move by holding down square as you jump, then jumping once more once the move gives you ground momentum. You cannot do the move normally in the air, so its crucial that it is started while still grounded.

Q: How are you launching forwards like that?
A: Square boosting is a really neat strategy that we use. Pressing square and X at the same time allows us to carry our printing momentum into the jump, causing us to leap forwards without the normal speed penalty of a normal jump.

Q: What did you just do to that crawlspace/table?
A: Table clipping is a glitch in the game, where we crawl under a table while we start up the charge move. If done succesfully, the charge move comes out while you're under the table, which causes Sly to stand up while under the table/inside the crawlspace which will launch Sly away, either deeper inside the crawlspace or outside of it. We utilize this a couple of times thoughout the run.

Q: What is the world record?
A: The record is subject to change frequently. I would suggest keeping an eye out on http://speedrun.com/sly2!