Keira Cutscene Skip
Keira Cutscene Skip is a pause buffer cutscene skip used in speedruns of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. It allows the player to skip the cutscene with Keira after activating the warp gate at the end of Lava Tube.
It is performed by pause buffering, activating the warp gate and dying in the nearby lava before the pause buffer ends.
Tutorial
Technical
When performing a pause buffer, Jak is able to move freely for a short period of time while the game is in a paused state. If a cutscene is triggered while the game is in this paused state, the cutscene will not play since cutscenes are not allowed to play when this state is active. Instead, the cutscene will be queued up to play. Once the pause menu appears and is closed, the game exits the paused state and the cutscene will play as normal. If Jak triggers a cutscene while in a paused state and dies before the paused state ends, the cutscene will attempt to play but will fail to do so since Jak is dead. Jak will then respawn with the cutscene flag being marked as already watched, skipping the cutscene entirely. This is what occurs during the Keira Cutscene Skip.
Discovery
In May 2015, Kuitar found that by standing next to the warp gate at the end of Lava Tube, and pausing at the same time as hitting the button to activate it, upon unpausing the game there was a 1 frame window in which it was possible to press circle to open the portal menu and be able to use it during the cutscene. By mashing circle after unpausing, he was able to warp to Geyser Rock during the cutscene, and then warp back to the end of Lava Tube, skipping it. However, due to loading times, this version of the skip was actually slower than simply watching the cutscene. However, it was known that the portal menu opening puts Jak into a grounded state, and that closing it restores movement. Using this information, blahpy theorized that it would be possible to time opening the portal menu instead of mashing, and then just exit out of the portal menu to gain the ability to walk around in the cutscene and die to skip it. This was soon confirmed when Piggleberry successfully performed this version of the skip.
The first version of this skip was never used in a run, because while trying to find a way to lengthen the 1 frame window to open the menu, blahpy accidentally discovered the pause buffer and the current version of the skip was created.
Other Notes
Keira Cutscene Skip is also occasionally used as an alternative name for Boulder Skip for the No Major Skips category. It is sometimes considered a different skip to Boulder Skip in the context that the 45 power cell requirement is met before performing the skip.