The IGN portal noticed that Canadian speedrunner Mae (aka maeeeeee) set a new speed record for completing the fantasy role-playing game Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios.
Image source: Steam (Peter Kushing)
Let's remember that when Baldur's Gate 3 came out of early access, speedrunners were chasing the best time to reach the alternative ending of the game (after the first two acts), but in recent months they switched to a full playthrough.
The day before, Mae managed to complete all three acts of Baldur's Gate 3 in a record 19 minutes and 20 seconds (excluding downloads). Now the streamer holds the lead in all three main categories of speedruns in the game.
To achieve the record, Mae used both well-known tricks such as enhanced jumps (including through walls) or Shadowboxing (pushing Shadowheart's corpse into a burning box), as well as new ones. There will be spoilers ahead.
The boss of the second act, the paladin Ketheric Torm and his second phase, for example, Mae defeats by turning into a bear, increasing his size, turning him invisible and further diving at the enemy from a great height.
Mae does something even funnier with the antagonists of the third act:
The speedrunner kidnaps Enver Gortash from the inauguration ceremony (for some reason this doesn’t make him hostile) and simply throws him off the nearest bridge into the abyss; the streamer forces the villainess Orin to teleport to the development room (with the necessary plot item) and, thanks to one trick, is sent after, and then in the same way the couple is transferred to the underground temple, from where the final boss is just a stone's throw away.
The release version of Baldur's Gate 3 is not even six months old yet, so speedrunners probably still have a lot of room for improvement. Who knows what other time-saving tricks they'll discover in the future?