The Absurdity Of Celeste Speedrunning

on the 20th of November 2022 the Celeste world record had finally been broken in a legendary 25 minutes and 59 seconds which marks a Hallmark Moment In The Game's history as the first ever sub-26 with over 30 000 runs on speedrun.com over five years the world record has been continuously honed down by masters of their craft with some wondering how these runs are even possible leading up to this point Runner Isaac Tay had been grinding upwards of two years for the longest time as a completely unknown speedrunner and only recently had he achieved a time like this and with the help of the man himself I'm gonna dive into exactly what made all of this possible now this run comes sprinting right out of the gate as even in the tutorial players have ratted out everything down to the millisecond to make his way through the prologue Isaac will perform short hops across the floor which gives a small but worthwhile bit of momentum and with the nature of speedrunning every millisecond counts he'll do this all the way up until the cutscene where after lining himself up with the edge of the house he'll immediately skip the cutscene so far the games provided two out of three of the game's core mechanics jumping and climbing and finally to end the tutorial they'll attain the game's signature ability the dash a mechanic that may seem simple at first glance but upon further inspection is much more than meets the eye and in the hands of speedrunners can completely break the game Upon finishing this introduction Isaac Begins the first real level The Forsaken City and begins traversing the mountain the game takes place upon using all of his abilities and Harmony Isaac can fly through each and every room of the level rarely taking the intended route for example in this room where he'll perform a dash War jump straight up to the top and here where he'll fly right over the main Obstacle of the room to reach the exit immediately one of the ways he amasses all of the speed is using one of the game's first key techniques Piper dashing this is a trick that allows Runners to amass huge amounts of speed and can be done by jumping up dashing diagonally into the ground and jumping again to propel yourself in any directions there are all sorts of variants and evolutions of this trick which over the run I'll go over across the following rooms he hyperdashes his way to each exit to reach the final chamber which he barely scrapes through using a corner boost ultimately ending this first level he exits with a time of 1 minute and 27 seconds the first good city of the day an impressive split even for a runner of his caliber into the second level old site everything picks up right where it left off he performs a couple of hyperdashers leading into a quick fall where then he makes his way into a secret hole in the wall because of how frequently speedrunners race had these first few levels they've been optimized more than any other portion of the game with players repeating each movement over and over again to the point where it's ingrained in their muscle memory this means that despite practice tools the further levels in a run will always become more and more unfamiliar as the game progresses with the later levels considered somewhat of a deep water each level of this game features some kind of new mechanic almost all of which having an interesting interaction in the speedrun on the second level this comes firstly in the form of the dream block but more importantly in the speedrun a second mechanic will also come up this is the upcoming fight with battleland the main antagonist of Celestia pretty much acts as your reflection upon encountering her she'll chase you down through the rest of the level and to do this she'll copy your movements precisely and while in a casual playthrough this might come as a relief in a speedrun this isn't exactly the case as you'll match every single movement ticket lightning Pace to reach the runner fortunately unlike the Casual run Isaac knows his exact route before even launching the game ensuring his safety given his movement goes to plane overall Isaac quotes this as one of the easier and more consistent parts of the Run mostly focused on perfecting clean well-played movement and through the level he makes his way through with relative ease but on the other side of this difficulty Spectrum there is one exception a strategy known as the one and only Taz awake by far one of the game's most absurdly challenging techniques that barely even the top of the top runners go forth to the point that it's debated whether it's realistically possible in a human run this trick requires performing an extremely precise set of movements saving around 3 seconds over the last few rooms of the level Isaac has always labeled himself a safer Runner compared to his competition trying to avoid any high level risks or frame reading in favor of consistency there even despite his recent switch to a riskier play style he still stays clear of this technique next up in the Run he'll enter the celestial Resort a hotel run by Mr oshira which is in the way of Isaac's path off the mountain and in order to get into the hotel he needs to grab this key up on this platform normally to reach this key you're meant to complete a short platforming challenge winding around the room but by abusing level transitions he can reach out a second into the room when you go through one room to another in Celeste you'll reset your dash but still remain at the same height you were entering the room effectively letting you dash twice into the air with a single jump this is used a few times throughout the speedrun including all the way back in the Forsaken City and in this case to grab the key early upon entering the hotel he can Breeze through the room in a matter of seconds due to some unusual quirks in the dash mechanics where because of the uneven ground he can continuously suck up more and more speed without limit this is known as an ultra Dutch and is the next step up from a hyperdash now he's in the main section of the hotel he'll begin accustoming himself to the main Obstacle of the chapter sludge this comes in all sorts of variants like regular sludge sludge tendrils and most interestingly in the speedrun moving sludge which alternates back and forth in a fixed path this Sparks one of the most important Concepts in this run which is Cycles each of these moving obstacles operates on a so-called cycle rotating or moving in a loop over and over again in many pivotal points of the route players need these moving obstacles to be in the perfect positions to perform certain tricks and if you're even a few milliseconds too late everything will be out of order leading to a multiple second time loss waiting or an unfortunate death once he approaches the center of this level Isaac will talk to oshiro to uncover the main quest to fix up the hotel you need to activate three different modern scattered all throughout the level each taking a different path to reach and given this is such a long level especially this early in the game I'll speed things up a bit to reach the next major trick as always Isaac scores a great Cleanup in one minute and 19 seconds and now he'll enter the Elevator Shaft through here he'll make his way through a few short rooms until he comes across this roadblock where Mr oshiro has blocked off the main path with some sludge and the only way around this is taking a long detour below grabbing a key heading all the way back up and finally reaching the other side and being a solid wall this is more than obviously unskippable right well in all reasonable logic yes that insulates speedruns no all the way back in 2018 a user by the name of demo Jamison discovered a tiny gap between all sludge hitboxes and if you were to perform a Pixel Perfect Dash while crouched you could slide right through which is exactly what Isaac did in this run to bypass the Gap instantly and continue through the level as you reach the rooftop he entered the boss fight Chase with Mr oshiro quickly Ultra dashing through each and every room and opening every gate along the way until finally finishing the level with a time of 354. nice now that's a good result bringing the total runtime up to 7 minutes and 7 Seconds where most casual players would still be on the tutorial now he was on the fourth chapter Golden Ridge while entering this chapter is normally a nice breather after the resort this fact is not so true in speedrunning as while short this chapter is incredibly dense and features some of the most convoluted techniques in the game golden bridge takes place in the sky and because of this everything opens up and each room now has considerably more space to move around in and thus more space to perform skips for the first few rooms of the level he uses a combination of advanced Dash techniques to Traverse land Water and Air to reach the first cutscene which he immediately skips after this cutscene the game introduces wind a new mechanic found all over the level which can either speed you up or slow you down however due to the absolute speed players get amass wind has little impact on their strategy next asak will make his way into the next subsection of the level using this Pixel Perfect Spike jump where he barely avoids the hitbox and now the game has presented one of its most unique challenges yet Auto scroller blocks as you probably know Auto scrollers at any level in a game where the game takes complete control of the camera and you're forced to slowly follow along with no control over how fast or slow you are and as any speedrunner knows this can be a nightmare of time loss this ties back to Celeste as while there technically aren't any auto scrollers these blocks operate at a fixed slow rate and are normally required to finish rooms there are tons of situations with these all across the chapter and most of them are easily skippable these blocks could be skipped with another Spike jump this room with an ultra Dash and this with a reverse hyper however one particular room proved slightly harder than the others and Runners needed a solution in this room there's an auto scroller block at the start followed by a couple of obstacles over the course of the room's length upon first glance finishing this level without the block should be seemingly impossible as you would not only have to fit through this tiny gap which is clearly impossible but then make your way up all the way to the exit however as always Isaac had found a workaround by performing a hyper dash at the end of this level he can somehow scrape right past the very edge of these spikes Corner boost off the exact edge of this group of spikes and perform another Pixel Perfect Ward jump off these spikes to reach the exit and here finally he enters the elevator to the mirror Temple nine minutes into the Run bringing himself four seconds ahead of where he was last chapter the mirror Temple is the fifth level of Celeste and is made up of long winding pass to form a sort of maze-like theme and if you've ever played the game casually you'll know what I mean as this level is Infamous for how easy it is to get lost after taking your bubble through the first few rooms he performs a well-timed hyper Dash to weave through a spike tunnel skipping the intended route and saving around 10 seconds one interesting thing about this level is that players don't exactly play it as normal in fact players don't even fully play it at all as upon obtaining the cassette a minute into the level Isaac whips right out to the menu to instead play the B side the wiserless level system works is that every level contains a standard version by the name of the a side which has been every level eyes explodes so far then the game features a b and c side version of each level for extra challenges after you finish the game however the game technically doesn't specify which side you need to beat in order to progress through the game and theoretically you could start the a side unlock the B side then play through that version of the level in most cases this obviously ends up being a Time loss as playing multiple levels isn't exactly efficient but because the mirror Temple a site is so incredibly long swapping to the B side halfway through saves around 40 seconds at the top level one consequence of being on the B side is that now everything is much much harder even the skips like in this room here where he enters the room for two frames performs a pause buffer to stay beneath the platform he's supposed to be sent above and falls right back down where upon his death he respawns ahead in the level where he's meant to reach much later this works as because it should be impossible to re-enter from the room above the game doesn't set a respawn point and so after your death the game will look for the next closest position which happens to be at the exit next he performs a wall boost off the side of some spikes entering the next room which he can quickly make his way through using the bubbles and just like in the a side it can perform another well-timed hyperdash to weave through a spike tunnel skipping the intended route and saving around 10 seconds onto the Next Room he'll perform a spike staircase climb to reach the mirror at the top of the level continuing to go deeper and deeper Isaac can perform a respawn boost off this corruptor to launch his way past all of the room's obstacles and at last he's reached the strangest part of this level Theo in the up-and-coming ending portion of the level Isaac is tasked with escorting a crystal containing a fellow mountain climber in casual runs this is Infamous for being one of the most painful parts of the game but in this run as I can use the crystal to his Advantage allowing him to perform all sorts of new tricks like grab assisted Ultras and remote button presses which he uses in combination to make his way through each room and after carrying Theo through the final Challenge in a matter of seconds he'd finished the level in barely over 2 minutes and 10 seconds not that our match time he'd seen earlier in his last World Record but still an incredible mirror Temple nonetheless into chapter 6 Isaac Begins the first sequence by flying between each feather in the most direct route possible dashing right before each feather for a few seconds of time save and upon reaching the lake he immediately performs what's known as the lake skip normally in this room you'd have to swim all the way over to the cabin which you then lure back over to launch you up but just like many of the previous obstacles in this game these crystals have a few pixels missing from the hitbox letting you will bounce up to the top through here it can continue using feathers to fly through each room until beginning to stray from the main path by stacking the momentum of both the hyperdash and the speed of a Kevin he can fly right through this wall here where he grabs his second cassette of the running quits out to the menu pulling off the exact same strategy he used in chapter 5. only far far more difficult than before one thing that's Undisputed in Celeste speedrunning is that this level is undoubtedly the hardest level amongst all of the run it contains some of the game's most incredibly precise strategies including the return of demo dashing bumper boosting and worst of all asak's personal Nemesis reprieve multi-boost a technique letting you jump over Kevin twice the game much more speed the through the B-side he makes his way through each sub-chapter of the level with the use of Kevin hyperdashing and micro optimizations like this skip to slowly bring himself ahead of his last PB eventually he reaches a long downwards falling segment where he utilizes the quick full feature of this game alongside more and more hyperdashes to bypass parts of each room on the B side of this level the majority of these screens are incredibly long meaning any death can be an incredibly punishing setback to the run and even a reset at the top level of the leaderboards for the second half of the chapter he sent into a second boss fight with battlelin having to bypass various obstacles to consistently get attacks in during this fight battleland often launches various moving blocks at you to throw you off but in some of the luckiest circumstances Isaac can use the momentum of these blocks on top of the hyper Dash to finish rooms much quicker and right after this he can just make it to the end of the level at 18 minutes and 2 seconds over 10 seconds ahead of his PB now Isaac is entering the final level of this run and everything must go well if you happen to be observant you'll notice Madeleine's hair has changed to the color pink which means she now has two dashes instead of one opening up the route to all sorts of interesting strategies even more impressive than the previous as the more complex the game becomes developer error only increases and so does the opportunity for exploitation like this room here where he can slide right under the intended path with no regard for the ground even performing a mid-air super Dash on top of these spikes just barely avoiding the hitbox and after reaching the checkpoint he comes across the next key theme of this level for this chapter the game takes you back to the very bottom of the mountain and slowly progresses you through the game in little remixes of each level meaning it's one of the longest levels yet and can be a deciding point of the run and with the combination of this and the Double Dash the way each of these levels are played is completely redefined for example in the Forsaken City Isaac barely ever has to use the traffic platforms as the weight can slow him down and in the rare case he does use one it's with some Advanced Dash strategy now he's back in the old site where the movement has gotten even more broken with the combination of the Double Dash and the dream blocks it's safe to say that Isaac can pretty much fly at this point and there's nothing that can stop him and on top of this he can now much more easily and effectively perform dream hypers doing a mid-air hyperdash right after exiting a dream block to keep your speed up over and over again through the celestial Resort he blazed through as fast as he can good chatting together hypers and Ultras all throughout the level everything was slowly coming together from every part of the run from the constant Super Hyper and Ultra dashes to the demo Dash in the celestial resort to even an auto scroller skip that surpasses even the ones found in chapter 4. in the mirror Temple he's able to reach the key much earlier than intended with the use of level transition abuse performing a wall bounce on the room below to reach just enough height to grab the key in which he could continue through to the next few routes like the real level the mirror Temple subsection of the summit was one of the longer ones but fortunately Isaac's strategies kept that time loss to a minimum in the locked gate room he skipped every single gate with the use of demo dashes to just make it through the gaps as he reaches the true Summit at the level three thousand meters above the ground three minutes of the Run remains through each and every room he maintains the pace he'd spent years perfecting down to the point for upwards of two years now he'd been grinding away at any percent much of that time is a completely unknown Runner and now this was his shot at possibly the greatest speed run yet his twitch chat was full of anticipation and not a single mistake could be made as he approaches the top of the mountain the checkpoints begin counting down three two one and now all that's left is the flag the music went silent and his heart was beating foreign [Music] two strawberries six deaths and a time of 25 minutes 59 seconds and 70 milliseconds the world's first sub-26 after all these years since the last minute barrier and as expected the community was more impressed than ever this one stands high above the competition and while the future of this category is far from set in stone the next world record is more than likely a long way off but to who will achieve this and when this time will be time will only tell and finally if you made it this far thank you so much for watching I'd really appreciate a like and subscription if you're interested in supporting the channel and as always have a nice day

Channel: Pastryperson

Views: 359,000

Keywords: speedrun, explained

Id: d1YgYezAQpg

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022