The World of Speedrunners in Video Games

When it comes to the world of video games, we can all agree that speedrunners are a subset of their unique species. They are extremely outstanding and always discover new techniques and exploits to finish a game as quickly as possible, often reducing an entire campaign to only seconds. The information that one Baldur’s Gate 3 player could finish the game in just ten minutes recently made its way into the public consciousness.

The Extraordinary Achievement

There are many catches and qualifications attached to this. However, the story was completed by user Mae,’ who then uploaded the entire run on YouTube, taking all 10 minutes and 23 seconds of it. Because Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most voluminous role-playing video games (RPGs) to be released in recent years, and because it is estimated that a completionist playthrough of the game will take up to one hundred hours to do, this accomplishment is truly extraordinary.

Even though it’s quite likely that someone will run faster than Mae’s time of 10 minutes and 23 seconds (which you can see in the video below), the fact that this is the first time the record has been set means that it cannot be broken. A word of advice, though: if you want to avoid having your YouTube account banned, don’t publish the video while claiming that it’s a Guinness World Record.

The Achievement Explained

I’m not a big fan of Baldur’s Gate by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t have the foggiest idea what Dungeons & Dragons is all about, but I’ll do my best to summarize what Mae did to complete this achievement a) without giving anything away about the game, and b) without coming off as a complete idiot.

Everything kicks off when Mae uses Gale as an “origin character,” merging that character with a “hyperspeed jump ability” and then utilizing that power to launch them headfirst into a dialogue that shouldn’t take place for a good while. During this scenario, players can make a “specific choice,” which could result in the premature demise of their party and count as one of the game’s 17,000 possible endings.

It is currently run that holds the record for the quickest time reaching ‘an ending’ in Baldur’s Gate 3.