They say you shouldn’t rush into a new marriage, but screw it. This is the funniest use of speedrunning I’ve seen lately.
While many of us are familiar with traditional speedruns that require completion of a game, sometimes, titles develop other categories with more esoteric guidelines. In this case, there’s a whole division of Skyrim speedruns that aim to get married as fast as possible, right after starting a new game. This inevitably means the player cannot be picky about who they marry, because deliberations only add to the timer.
Right now, the fastest anyone has ever gotten married in Skyrim is in 3:37, and the title is held by Twitch streamer 5exual_Tyrannosaurus. The lucky spouse is none other than Marcurio of Riften:
I just started a new save file in the Special Edition, and it took me longer to decide on my Imperial’s eyebrows than it did for 5exual_Tyrannosaurus to tie the knot with some rando NPC. Geeze.
Incidentally, 5exual_Tyrannosaurus is also the world record holder for completing Skyrim’s story in a whopping 33:06, a trophy that was claimed just yesterday:
So, how are these feats of time and space even possible? According to speedrunner DrTChops, “There is a glitch where if you start a sprint, quicksave, then end the sprint and quickload at the same time you keep the speed of the sprint.” This would explain 5exual_Tyrannosaurus’s quick movement; you can see a small pause right at the beginning of both videos. That’s a quick save.
There are a number of other glitches at work during these speedruns, and Fivexual himself walks you through some of the major ones, including dialogue skips and load warping, in the tutorial below: