Deadlight (PS4) - glitches and observations
3I played through Deadlight: Director's Cut not too long ago. Here are some glitches and oddities that I found while at it.
Note: played on the unpatched PS4-version.
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0:00 - technique: ground actions in a crawlspace.
It's possible to do normal ground actions in a crawlspace from crouch aiming.
0:17 - in some areas this allows you to do running jumps inside a crawlspace, which is a type of speed tactic. Here's a small example from the start of the hospital, where you can get through a ventilation shaft before it collapses thanks to the increased speed.
(Note: the speedrun record avoids falling down as well with a well-timed roll inside the shaft. So the small skip is doable even without jumping. Jumping should make it faster, though.)
0:31 - technique: wrong direction ledge hanging (and more).
The following glitches are difficult to explain because some of their effects are inconsistent and I don't understand the glitch mechanism very well. But to sum it up: it seems like doing a strong melee attack while in air and grabbing a ledge afterwards can cause some strange things to happen.
First of all, to do a strong attack in air, you have to crouch-aim backwards over a ledge. Your wide hitbox allows you to step partway over nothingness. If you then do the strong attack, the main character will automatically fall down afterwards.
So, to do wrong direction ledge hanging. Back over the ledge with crouch-aiming. Do the strong attack. During the attack reverse the directions with L- and R-stick (i.e. if you pointed left with L-stick, now point right). After falling down, you're hanging backwards.
This only works 100% reliably with a certain type of ledge, though. Some other types can also be glitched by reversing directions very late into the attack instead (or with some other timing), but it seems very inconsistent.
(Not on the video: displaced hanging can cause you to slide under the ceiling occasionally. A pretty rare effect, utility unknown.)
0:50 - related to the above. In one of the later levels in the game, if you do a strong attack into hanging and then drop into deep water and then crouch after respawning, the clothing of the hero glitches up and fills the entire screen. But only for a moment, and the effect vanishes if you try to do anything else. Seems harmless but very bizarre.
1:11 - another odd side effect. After messing around, the hero vanished after grabbing a ledge and the lighting conditions changed drastically too. Dropping from ledge fixed things.
1:51 - it's possible to get stuck hanging. Only way off the ledge now is to retry. This is another effect that happens occasionally, and I have no idea how to reproduce it.
2:11 - entering ground state after displaced hanging and climbing up happens pretty often if you try to jump soon after entering the displaced hanging. But only at certain type of ledges?
2:24 - sometimes hanging and aiming actions can combine. I have no idea how to do it consistently.
2:49 - it looks like I managed to do a displaced ledge hang after messing with the above ideas, causing the hero to fall under the map during a routine jump & ledge grab.
In case you're curious what happens when falling off the map: you fall for quite a long time while two scream sounds play on a loop. Then you get a game over.
So yeah, these axe & ledge related glitches could still have potential. But it would take more work to figure out all the subtle effects that exist and how to control them better (or at all).
3:43 - possibly unrelated, but after hanging out in this area testing glitches, the adjacent maps were unloaded (?) and the graphics were obscured by darkness, possibly by some foreground graphics that normally shouldn't be there.
4:42 - something similar happened to me at the entrance to the Hospital as well. Maybe the levels just might have problems loading / drawing if you backtrack too much and / or progress too slow.
5:29 - a strange invisible wall that I could land on once (and only once) in one of the earlier areas.