Oblivion:Cutscenes

Cutscenes are parts of quests where the game forces the player to wait for a pre-programmed sequence of events to occur before they can progress. Ideally we will want to find ways to skip cutscenes entirely via glitches or sequence breaks in quests or at least speed up each cutscene in the game.

Mechanics

Although much more research will need to be done, currently cutscenes appear to be handled in three main ways:

1. Disable Controls: Some cutscenes completely disable the player's ability to move and interact with things and others allow the player to move around.
2. Free Movement: Some cutscenes allow the player to move around but still have predetermined events that need to occur.
3. Full Motion Video: One cutscene is a full motion video that requires the player to watch the whole video before returning to the game.

Cutscenes appear to work based on some combination of a series of timers as well as logic checks for when certain NPC interactions have occurred. Daedric shrine quests are a simple example of a cutscene. They disable the player's controls and then cycle through a series of audio clips of the statue talking, then enable the player's controls again once the list of audio files has played. The Audio Source Glitch showcases how this works, since these cutscenes advance instantly if the sound files are prevented from playing in the first place. It appears that in some situations, Quicksaving/Quickloading can advance dialog faster as well, although some quests actually take longer when this is done.

Disable Controls cutscenes have a unique way to skip them by using Load Warping to perform Cutscene Overlapping, allowing the player to regain controls during the cutscene.

Free Movement cutscenes are hard to determine how to skip given how each one seems to be programmed differently, so the current strategy is to find other objectives to achieve during these cutscenes.

In a unique example, the Full Motion Video cutscene can be skipped by minimizing the game and reopening it on PC.

Activating Player Superposition while moving and then activating a shrine, you can freely walk around while the cutscene plays. Currently there is no known way to be able to interact with things during this, but at the very least the player can start moving towards nearby objectives such as Heaven Stones or the first quest target in the case of quests like Molag Bal. This is the most promising lead we have so far in finding a way to reliably skip these cutscenes.

Languages

Oblivion has five languages that can be chosen:

• English
• Spanish
• French
• German
• Italian

Due to the way some cutscenes work, different languages take different amounts of time for each cutscene, which means technically time can be saved by simply playing on another language. We will be compiling the time it takes for all cutscenes to play out for each language in order to determine the ideal language option for the run.

If you are playing on the Steam version of the game, languages are selected via Language tab under the the Properties option for the game within Steam.

Spanish and Italian use English audio files with appropriate subtitles.

Cutscene List

This list is not fully cataloged yet.

Here is a list of the cutscenes in the game, along with any skips and language data we have compiled:

Skip	Type	Quest	Cutscene	Current Strat	English	Spanish	French	German	Italian
✘	Disable Controls	The Ultimate Heist	The Stranger meets the Countess	Quicksave/Quickload to advance dialog.
✘	Free Movement	Defense of Bruma	Martin's Bruma Speech	None
✘	Free Movement	Where Spirits Have Lease	Skeleton's first speech	None
✘	Free Movement	Where Spirits Have Lease	Skeleton's second speech	None
✘	Free Movement	Vampire Cure	Count's wife dies	None
✔	Disable Controls	Corruption and Conscience	Aldos' argument with the guard	Cast Frenzy on Aldos and have any NPC kill him to advance the quest past the cutscene stage.
✘	Disable Controls	Honor Thy Mother	Night Mother gets attacked	None (Quicksave/Quickload takes longer sometimes)
✘	Disable Controls	Infiltration	Recruitment speech	Quicksave/Quickload to advance dialog.
✘	Disable Controls	May the Best Thief Win	Opening Instructions	Quicksave/Quickload to advance dialog.
✘	Free Movement	The Killing Field	Goblin Fight Prep	None
✘	Disable Controls	Sheogorath	Prophecy	None
✔	Free Movement	Weynon Priory	Martin's Cloud Ruler Temple Speech	Fast traveling away and back skips the cutscene.
✘	Disable Controls	Light the Dragonfires	Martin's final fight	None
✔	Full Motion Video	Light the Dragonfires	Full Motion Video ending	Alt+Tab out/into the game.
✘	Disable Controls	Caught in the Hunt	Kurdan kills Aleron	None
✘	Disable Controls	Azura	Shrine start	None	45s	45s	45s	45s	45s
✘	Disable Controls	Azura	Shrine end	None	22s	22s	21s	20s	22s
✘	Disable Controls	Boethia	Shrine start	None	36s	36s	31s	31s	36s
✘	Disable Controls	Boethia	Shrine end	None	17s	17s	15s	16s	17s
✔	Disable Controls	Clavicus Vile	Shrine start	Acquiring Umbra before starting the quest and talking to the butt of the dog statue skips this cutscene.	32s	32s	39s	42s	32s
✔	Disable Controls	Clavicus Vile	Shrine end	Acquiring Umbra before starting the quest and talking to the butt of the dog statue skips this cutscene.	26s	26s	31s	32s	26s
✘	Disable Controls	Hermaeus Mora	Shrine start	None	51s	51s	33s	37s	51s
✘	Disable Controls	Hermaeus Mora	Shrine end	None	32s	32s	19s	20s	32s
✘	Disable Controls	Hircine	Shrine start	None	31s	31s	38s	32s	31s
✘	Disable Controls	Hircine	Shrine end	None	25s	25s	26s	25s	25s
✔	Disable Controls	Malacath	Shrine start	Sequence break past the first cutscene via freeing the Ogres in Bleak Mine.	44s	44s	44s	43s	44s
✘	Disable Controls	Malacath	Shrine end	None	28s	28s	30s	24s	28s
✘	Disable Controls	Mephala	Shrine start	None	34s	34s	44s	49s	34s
✘	Disable Controls	Mephala	Shrine end	None	10s	10s	16s	15s	10s
✘	Disable Controls	Meridia	Shrine start	None	51s	51s	55s	57s	51s
✘	Disable Controls	Meridia	Shrine end	None	14s	14s	13s	16s	14s
✘	Disable Controls	Molag Bal	Shrine start	None	45s	45s	36s	43s	45s
✘	Disable Controls	Molag Bal	Shrine end	None	24s	24s	22s	24s	24s
✘	Disable Controls	Namira	Shrine start	None	51s	51s	37s	47s	51s
✘	Disable Controls	Namira	Shrine end	None	17s	17s	13s	15s	17s
✘	Disable Controls	Nocturnal	Shrine start	None	64s	64s	41s	42s	64s
✘	Disable Controls	Nocturnal	Shrine end	None	28s	28s	18s	18s	28s
✘	Disable Controls	Peryite	Shrine start	None	63s	63s	46s	54s	63s
✘	Disable Controls	Peryite	Shrine end	None	22s	22s	18s	22s	22s
✘	Disable Controls	Sanguine	Shrine start	None	60s	60s	51s	55s	60s
✘	Disable Controls	Sanguine	Shrine end	None	25s	25s	24s	21s	25s
✘	Disable Controls	Sheogorath	Shrine start	None	58s	58s	0s	0s	58s
✘	Disable Controls	Sheogorath	Shrine end	None	13s	13s	0s	0s	13s
✘	Disable Controls	Vaermina	Shrine start	None	69s	69s	55s	58s	69s
✘	Disable Controls	Vaermina	Shrine end	None	24s	24s	16s	19s	24s
✘	Free Movement	Tutorial	Birthsign "he must help us" part	None
✔	Disable Controls	Tutorial	Emperor assassination	Clipping out of bounds to kill the Mythic Dawn agent early skips this.
✔	Disable Controls	Tutorial	"Stand back prisoner" sequence	Clipping out of bounds to get out of your cell skips this.
✔	Free Movement	Tutorial	Valen Dreth banter and approaching guards.	Clipping out of bounds to get out of your cell skips this.

Daedric Shrine Cutscene Totals

	English	Spanish	French	German	Italian
Without Skips	1061s	1061s	877s	922s	1061s
With Skips	959s	959s	763s	805s	959s

• Sheogorath's Shivering Isles updated voice lines for his quest are not present in French and German.
• The length of the Sheogorath prophecy cutscene seems to vary depending on the weather when the cutscene begins.