Baldur's Gate 3 Speedrunner Beats Game In Just 10 Minutes Using An Explosive Trick
Before we talk about the how, let's talk about how impressive this is. Have you been playing Baldur's Gate 3? If you have, it's likely that you've already got tens of hours into the game, or perhaps even more than 100 hours. Despite that, you may not have finished it yet. Your author has around a hundred hours in the game, with one save file up to about sixty, and yet he's only recently made it to the title's final act.
Anyone familiar with speedrunning will no doubt have already guessed this, but the category for this new world record is "any%". In speedrunner terms, that means get to the end credits as fast as possible by basically any means necessary, with no obligation to complete any content besides that which gets you to those end credits. There's no "trick" here; Mae really did finish the main story of the game in ten minutes and three seconds.
Mae chooses the human wizard Gale as their player character, and not only do his wizard powers serve him well in the few instances that he has to use them, but it is a specific characteristic of Gale that allows him to "defeat" the final enemy in the game, earning him the ending. We won't spell it out for folks who are playing or want to play (because it's a big spoiler), but suffice to say that avoiding exactly this ending is a major part of Gale's quest when you have him in your party as an NPC.
Still, an ending it is, and the realm is saved by the utter destruction of "The Absolute," the deific entity that serves as the game's main antagonist, all in less time than it would take you to listen to the average Dream Theater song. Check out the video above if you're eager to see it happen, but keep in mind that even though the speedrunner naturally skips all cutscenes, it still has some pretty major spoilers for the end of the game.
