The Witcher 3 Gameplay Speedrun Ps5

Setting Up for Any% Speedruns on PS5

The basic idea is straightforward: you're trying to finish The Witcher 3 as fast as possible, and the PS5 version handles that differently than you'd expect from the original release. Frame pacing is better, load times are shorter, and the game doesn't stutter through Velen the way it did on last-gen hardware. Most speedrunners on the leaderboard are using the next-gen patch now, so if you're starting fresh, that's what you should run. I've spent probably two hundred hours practicing route optimizations across different platforms, and the PS5 build has its own quirks that aren't obvious until you try them. The game runs at a locked 60fps in performance mode, which sounds great, but it actually makes some movement exploits feel less precise. You lose a frame of delay on certain interactions that runners relied on in the original.

The Witcher 3 Gameplay Speedrun Ps5

Getting Started With the Any% Route The standard Any% category requires finishing the main story and then triggering the credits sequence. You don't need to complete any side content. In practice, that means starting a new game, skipping most dialogue by spamming the face buttons, and learning to manipulate quest flags so you can skip entire sections of the narrative. The game tracks progression internally, and there are sequences you can skip entirely by manipulating quest states. One thing most people miss is the initial cutscene skip. When you start a new game, there's a long intro with the Prologue. On PS5, this loads almost instantly, but the cutscenes themselves still play at full length unless you know the button combo to bypass them. Hold R2 and L1 simultaneously from the moment the opening animation begins. It takes a few practice runs to get the timing right because if you press too early or too late, the game registers it as a normal input and the cutscene continues.

Movement Exploits and Sequence Breaks The core of any Witcher 3 speedrun comes down to movement tech. There are a handful of established glitches and sequence breaks that save minutes each. Border clipping in Skellige lets you skip entire island sections. You position Geralt against certain wall seams at a specific angle and hold a movement direction until the game registers you on the other side. On PS5, the collision detection is slightly different, so the exact position you need to stand at has shifted compared to the original build. I spent about three hours just finding the correct spot near the northern dock area in Skellige because the published glitch locations from PC runners didn't map directly. Another major technique is the water skip. Geralt can swim faster than normal by holding a specific combination of inputs while entering water near certain edges. This skips large sections of open world traversal. The timing window is tighter on the PS5 version because the input polling rate changed with the next-gen update. What took four frames of input recognition on the original now takes six, which means you have to hold the combination slightly longer or be more precise with your timing.

I ran into a particularly annoying edge case during my practice runs. Near the beginning of Velen, there's a part where you're supposed to cross a bridge. You can skip the bridge entirely by climbing a set of rocks on the left side of the river, but only if you approach from a specific direction. On my first attempt at this skip, I kept falling into the water and losing twenty seconds because my approach angle was off by a few degrees. The workaround was to load a save from right before the bridge section and adjust my camera angle by rotating it completely around once, then approach from what felt like the natural angle. It sounds silly, but the game's collision system has a slight asymmetry depending on which direction you're facing when you make contact with those rocks. Main Quest Manipulation You don't actually need to complete every main quest in order. There are quests you can trigger out of sequence, and a few you can skip entirely while still advancing the story flag. The key quest to understand is "Reason of State." This triggers a major story progression event, but you can reach that trigger point through multiple paths. Some runners avoid the quest altogether and just walk through the area at the right moment to activate the flag.

Dialogue skipping is where most beginners waste time. The game gives you three dialogue options in almost every conversation, and holding forward plus the interact button cycles through them automatically. This works in cutscenes too, not just regular conversations. I see a lot of new runners spend extra time here because they don't realize the auto-advance function exists in cutscenes. Once you know about it, you're saving roughly fifteen to twenty minutes over the full run. The Ending and Credits Strategy There are three possible endings in the base game, and one of them has a notably faster credits sequence. I won't spoil which one because the choice depends on decisions made much earlier in the game, but from a pure speedrun perspective, the faster ending is the one that triggers fewer additional cutscenes. The difference is about forty seconds from start to finish, which is significant at this level of racing.

Once the credits start rolling, there's a skip available. You just need to press the square button repeatedly. After roughly twelve seconds of pressing it, the credits advance to the end and the run completes. This part is mostly consistent across all versions of the game, including PS5. Common Pitfalls The biggest mistake I see beginners make is trying to learn everything at once. You should pick one category and one seed and stick with it for at least a month before branching out. Route knowledge matters far more than raw skill in this game, and spreading yourself across different categories just slows your progress.

Another issue is relying on save scums too heavily. While save scumming is technically allowed in some categories, doing it excessively adds up. Each load from a checkpoint takes about eight seconds on PS5, and even with the faster load times, you're burning significant time if you're reloading more than three or four times per run. There's a middle ground where you save before a risky movement trick and reload only if it completely fails, but using saves for minor mistakes just becomes a habit that inflates your time without making you faster. Resources and Practice The speedrun community for The Witcher 3 is active on Twitch and YouTube, and most of the current world record-level routing information is documented on the Speedrun.com page for the game. Look up the Any% category and watch recent runs, not old ones. The next-gen update changed several mechanics, so routes that worked on the original PS4 build may be outdated or even impossible on PS5.

I recommend watching three or four top-level runs in full before you start practicing. You'll pick up shortcuts, skip patterns, and movement techniques that you'd never find reading text guides. The visual component is essential because so much of this game's routing depends on precise positioning and timing that's hard to describe in words. If you want to practice the harder movement tech, start by doing the easy skips until they're muscle memory, then layer in the complex ones one at a time. My personal routine was to practice the border clip in Skellige for twenty minutes straight, then move on to the water skip for another twenty, then do a full practice run from start to finish without stopping. It took me about six weeks to get down to under two hours, and I'm still working on shaving seconds off my best times. The game is simple in concept but extremely deep once you start learning the details.