Warning: Some mostly mild, early-to-mid-game spoilers below.
Okay, so “beaten” is a bit of a stretch given that they’re racing to a failed ending for the game, long before the actual conclusion, but someone’s already close to cracked the 10-minute mark for an unmodified playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3.
The ridiculous, world record achievement comes from Speedrunner, Mae, who posted the attempt to YouTube and offered some clarity on how this was made possible.
In a follow-up comment under the video of the run, Mae explains that there’s an “ending” that can be achieved in Act 2 of the game after a sequence of choices and events involving the companion character, Gale. Without saying too much, Gale’s unique attributes can result in a very permanent choice made that pretty much spells the end of the game.
This event is still a fair way into the game, potentially taking a “standard” player a few dozen hours to reach, but Mae uses some known tricks in combination with frantic dialogue skipping and some new time-shaving tactics to make Gale quite literally leap toward his unfortunate and world-changing demise.
You can watch the very impressive full run below, it’ll only take 10 minutes of your time, after all:
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now on PC and releases on September 6th for PlayStation 5.
