Player Completed Baldur's Gate 3 in 10 Minutes, Irritated the Narrator
Baldur's Gate 3 is a huge title, offering many hours of fun. Its open-ended structure is also a breeding ground for speedrunners, who have already started coming up with ways to finish Larian Studios' game as quickly as possible. Spoiler alert!
WARNING: The following post contains major plot spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3. If you do not want to learn certain details of the story, please do not read beyond this point.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a huge, multi-threaded title, which for the average player is an adventure for dozens, if not hundreds of hours. The very character creator, offering a multitude of options and configurations, can make you dizzy and paralyzed by available choices.
However, the speedrunner community is a specific audience that is not afraid of long and demanding games. An ambitious daredevil know as Mae presented a record playthrough of Larian Studios' latest game. Impressively, it took her just over 10 minutes to beat the massive RPG.
Clever tricks
Finishing a giant game like Baldur's Gate 3 in such an absurdly short time, of course, required the speedrunner to take a number of measures that helped her "breeze through" the game's stages in no time. Among the most important techniques worth mentioning are:
- clever use of a spell that increases the jump distance, which enabled the player to cover large distances instantly;
- strategic omission of unnecessary plot exposition and fights;
- appropriate selection of offensive spells, which helped in mandatory battles.
Interestingly, Mae benefited from a surprisingly small number of bugs during her record-breaking attempt. In one of the comments under the video she mentions two techniques used:
"Only two bugs are really used: first, I break the artificial intelligence of the goblin guard by jumping behind him before I enter further into the goblin camp, which makes them not hostile towards me. Second, I jump into the last area of Act 2 in Oubliette using the Step Through the Mist at 9:48".
A premature, but nonetheless ending
Importantly, the Any% formula chosen by the speedrunner enabled her to choose an alternate ending to the game, which allows for the end credits to be seen as early as Act II of the story.
To accomplish this, it was crucial to choose one of the predefined plot characters - the wizard Gale. The sympathetic spellcaster from Waterdeep has the opportunity to prematurely end the game's plot if he sacrifices his life in a powerful explosion at the end of the second chapter.
Although this conclusion is not the default form of Baldur's Gate 3's finale (which is even mentioned by the annoyed narrator), it does enable us to see the end credits. So from a technical point of view, the game is considered finished.
Community reaction
Mae's impressive "run" was met with an enthusiastic response from players, who made no secret of their admiration for the speedrunner's skills:
"You beat me by about 100 hours," wrote user-il9ze9py8c.
"She finished the entire game before I finished choosing which class I would play," point out ascended8174.
Many commenters also pointed out the comical behavior of the speedrunner's character:
"Watching Gale hop around like a rabbit for hours of gameplay and detonate like a nuclear bomb is one of the funniest speedruns I've ever seen," notes izzycrap402.
Considering that Mae has managed to "shave off" more than 30 seconds from her route over the past 24 hours, it is safe to assume that the future will be filled with fierce competition for the title of the fastest player on the Coast of Swords.
