Larian Studios has developed a reputation as one of the finest game developing companies when it comes to making role-playing games. Divinity: Original Sin II has been a critical and commercial success, with many calling it one of the greatest role-playing games ever made, and the highly-anticipated Baldur’s Gate III is currently in early access, drawing in more than 70,000 concurrent players at one point.
Role-playing games are known for their dozens upon dozens of hours of content; the main quest of Baldur’s Gate II took upwards of 60 hours to complete. Divinity: Original Sin II is in that same ballpark.
This raises the question: what are speedruns like for slower paced games filled with content such as RPGs? The answer is: nothing you could possibly imagine.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 Any% World Record
The current world record holder for the Any% category in Divinity: Original Sin II is Worldlyy, who set the record on September 29th with a time of 23 minutes and 13 seconds.
How do you beat a game in under 24 minutes when the main story is supposed to take around 50-60 hours? Well, in true speedrunning fashion, it’s about pushing the game’s mechanics to its limits and beyond to find any and all shortcuts.
Locked doors and cutscenes can make up a substantial portion of the game, and Worldlyy makes good use of his moves and items (particularly barrels) to skip through many a locked door, as well as a large chunk of cutscenes in the game. The use of Deathfog barrels also makes for a crucial item in some of the run’s must-fight battles.
Of course, as with any game, RNG can play a factor. As a result, quicksaves are essential at several points throughout the run; a lot can go wrong if a trick doesn’t work, an enemy goes on the wrong path, or if a particular attack misses.
The use of teleport pyramids play a substantial role in skipping large points of game; because of this, everything up until the start of Act 2 takes almost 13 minutes to complete. The rest of the game (Act 2, Act 3 and the Final Act) take up the rest of the run.
If you’re a fan of Divinity: Original Sin II, or just enjoy RPG games in general, you’ll want to see it get picked apart here:
Worldlyy used the video of this run as his submission for Games Done Quick, which got accepted on October 31st, so be sure to check out his run of the game there.