Skyward Sword: Cutscene Wrong Warping

So Skyward Sword has had some interesting stuff happen over the past week. On March 23, @Peppernicus2000 discovered a new BiT technique which we’re calling Cutscene Wrong Warping. Put simply: if you die in BiT, press continue, and then start your file, the game will very briefly flash the last entrance you came through in BiT before properly loading your file through that entrance also. The new discovery is that if you start your file within a specific 2 frame window, *and* your file’s saved Room ID matches the room you’re in, *and* your file’s saved entrance ID leads to a valid entrance ID in the current BiT map, the game will instead overwrite the current entrance ID with the one that's saved on your file during the brief flash before the file loads normally. Many of the cutscenes in this game are triggered with specific entrance IDs on the map they take place on, so this allows us to trigger cutscenes we otherwise wouldn't be able to see (although only during the brief flash), as long as we can get their corresponding entrance and room IDs somewhere else. If the cutscene is skippable, during the brief flash you can skip the cutscene and RBM whatever effects that cutscene may have...with this notable example that allows us to skip the Gate of Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQOWJRycuI

Initially this seemed pretty huge. However in typical Skyward Sword fashion, this doesn’t really work out all that well. For starters, this requires us to get bombs since we currently don’t have any other way of dying inside the Sealed Temple. That alone cuts down the amount of time this trick would save by over 10 minutes (as previous Any% routes skipped the item wheel altogether). Then there’s the fact that most of the game’s maps take place in room 0, whereas the Sealed Temple takes place in room 2. So already we can’t use most entrances in the game for skipping the Gate of Time since their room IDs don’t match what we want. Luckily, there is one map where we can reach room 2 and it has the entrance ID that we want (entrance ID 5 in this case): Eldin Volcano. Eldin Volcano is split up into different rooms depending on what part of the map you’re on. And it just so happens to have two different entrance ID 5s (one for room 2 and one for room 4). However these coincidentally happen to be some of the worst entrances imaginable. The first is exiting the Eldin Silent Realm which would add on the requirement of RBMing the trial gate open in a run. Using this specific entrance for Gate of Time Skip also requires us to beat Earth Temple for the trial gate layer AND requires that we get the Harp, otherwise the now different layer in the Sealed Temple will prevent this Cutscene Wrong Warp from working.

Due to all these compromises that have to be made to get the trick to work…it currently saves only a minute at best in the Any% route…

The other entrance 5 in Eldin Volcano is one speedruns have never gone into past the river of lava near the Earth Temple entrance. This one is only accessible during/after Bokoblin Base and it’s positioned in such a way that we can’t even jump to it from the out of bounds collision around the entire map. If we were able to enter Eldin Volcano from this entrance, and then get back down to the Volcano Ascent statue which resides in room 2, then we’d be able to properly save our file with room 2 and entrance 5 without needing to get the Harp or beat Earth Temple.

The good news is that we actually did figure out how to get to it! But it requires using a TAS precise trick known as Lava Hopping. Once you’re across and you’ve entered and exited the loading zone for entrance 5, you have to do another, MORE precise lava hop to get back, which you only get 1 chance at otherwise your run is over. So it actually is possible to reach this desired loading zone!...Just not in a way that’s RTA viable... (The entire sequence of lava hops requires 7 frame perfect inputs, 2 of which have no visual or audio cue, and 4 of which are motion based).

Lava Hop to entrance 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SR6p2XWFIY
Lava Hop from entrance 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtpkcqMebww

So that’s where we currently stand. After all these years, we can finally skip the Gate of Time. It’ll save substantial time in a TAS, but the compromises necessary to make it RTA viable (bombs, beating earth temple, harp, trial gate RBM, etc.) currently render it as only a minute timesave at best over previous routes.

It’s also worth nothing that due to different layers in Hylia’s Temple, we can't obtain the True Master Sword and thus have to fight the Horde, Ghirahim 3, and Demise all with the Goddess Sword. Demise isn't changed much, but being forced to use the Goddess Sword for the Horde/G3 adds multiple minutes onto the end of the run.

For a list of all notable cutscenes with regards to this new trick, see this page: https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/ss/BiT/bed-trick-death-trick#bed-trick-death-trick-applications