After a long break, I've decided to start working on the All Tokens TAS again. The third level, Alpine Escape, has seen a lot of development lately with a new strategy that saves more than 4 seconds over the current world record. By shooting a specific enemy at the right time, you can use their destroyed snowmobile to boost you into a cutscene and place you farther ahead after the cutscene is finished.
While the gameplay in this level is mostly on-rails, there are some strategies we can use to save time. The most important thing to know is that on-rails missions in this game can be sped up by shooting enemies at the right time. At certain points in the level, Zoe (the woman driving the snowmobile) will slow down to give Bond time to shoot the enemies. If you shoot them too early, Zoe will slow down and take forever to speed up again. If you shoot them too late, Zoe will only speed up when the enemy is killed, which loses time. Because of this, you want to shoot the enemies at just the right time so Zoe speeds up as early as possible without getting stuck at the slow speed.
At the beginning of the video, I'm unable to progress until the snowmobile starts moving. This gives me plenty of time to play around with the enemies and draw on the ground with bullet holes. Once we start moving, I have to shoot a certain set of guards at just the right time so I keep moving at full speed. Then I switch to the rocket launcher and destroy the tower just ahead. This kills the next set of guards earlier than you normally could, which just happens to save some time. Thankfully, Zoe doesn't slow down even though I killed those guards really early.
After the cutscene with the truck, three enemies will start following me. I can't kill them right now since I need one to do the snowmobile boost. For some reason, one of the enemies will slow down after a while then speed up again to catch up. Just when he gets over the hill, I blow up his snowmobile so it comes crashing toward me. This knocks over my snowmobile and sends me tumbling into the cutscene trigger just ahead, which starts the cutscene about half a second sooner than normal. On top of that, the snowmobile continues tumbling during the cutscene and gets placed much farther ahead, saving even more time. Then I shoot the enemy with the machine gun instead of the rocket launcher so he dies a little sooner. This is because the machine gun is a hitscan weapon, while the rocket launcher fires a projectile. The rocket takes time to reach the enemy, which normal bullets instantly deal damage to whatever you're pointing at. This saves another 10 frames or so. Overall, a little over 4 seconds was saved here over the world record speedrun.
The last time-sensitive moment in this stage is the big gate. Much like the enemy after the snowmobile boost, it's faster to open the gate with the machine gun than the rocket launcher because the rocket is a projectile that takes time to reach the target. Shooting the gate switch with the machine gun is about half a second faster than shooting it with the rocket launcher. Aside from that, the rest of the level goes for pure entertainment since there aren't any other time-sensitive moments for the rest of the stage.
