Like many PC gamers, I've seen my fair share of speedruns of Larian's masterpiece, Baldur's Gate 3, but nothing compares to this brand-new Honour Mode speedrun by speedrunner wizard Mae.
Yes, like me you will have seen some of these Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunning tips and tricks before, but I'm quite confident that you won't have seen quite so many in such a short period of time, or executed with such mastery. As can be seen in the video, this leads to the entire game, one that is supposed to take the average PC gamer about 70 hours to complete, actually being completed by Mae in a mind-bogglingly quick 21 minutes and 17 seconds.
I've got to be honest, I just completely lost the plot in places watching this speedrun. Mae chains so many tricks and, well, exploits together at times that it's hard to keep track of what's happening, but for someone unversed in the arts of Baldur's Gate 3 speedruns, there's still plenty of magic on display here.
Some of my favourite bits include (video spoilers naturally follow):
- Mae transforming into a giant invisible bear and then, while combat is engaged for certain characters, staying outside of combat (and therefore any sort of retribution) and repeatedly orbital striking Ketheric and the Avatar of Myrkle to death with drop-based crushing damage.
- Mae manipulating a flailing Gortash out of his throne room, his arms and legs wiggling wildly in the air, all the while his guards and mechanical constructs just look on passively, then throwing his still gyrating body off a city drawbridge into a chasm to one-shot kill him.
- Mae using setting up an elaborate exploit to use the wizard ability Benign Conjuration to trade places with baddie Orin, who is placed at that moment outside of the game world into a holding zone where her netherstone is located, allowing Mae to just pick it up and skip Orin's entire fight.
- Jacking up Magic Missile with a buff infinite duration glitch that means it can deliver over 100 damage per missile, literally obliterating the strongest boss in the game in a bombastically brutal one-hit kill.
There's loads more utter madness on display, too, which I won't spoil here, but needless to say PC gamers have been left pretty speechless after watching this. In the comments to Mae's new world record video reactions range from: "Hot DAMN this is amazing!" to "10/10 best speedrun ever!" and onto "I laughed so hard when I saw Gortash flailing around while being carried to his doom."
From my point of view, this really is amazing. I think it's often easy to dismiss feats like this when they are based on things that have come before and have been seen before. But when you actually stop and go, OK, let's replicate that feat, that's when the true artistry is revealed. I mean, I'd be happy if I pulled off just a couple of these tricks. Mae though pulls them all off flawlessly one after the other and absolutely destroys the previous world record in the process.
It's a legitimate piece of speedrunning artistry and I feel anyone who has played (and completed) Baldur's Gate 3 will be left in awe of the achievement. Chapeau to Mae!
