Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke says hold my beer and also this unassuming tadpole, here's an "even more amazing" mind-controlled run of BG3 that laps Neuralink Telepathy run of Divinity: Original Sin 2

Baldur's Gate 3 prophesied the day that our ocean's shockingly intelligent octopuses finally have enough of our human BS and decide to start building some infrastructure. It also cautioned against the dangers of putting things in your brain, especially things offered by octopuses – do not listen to them – or worse, Elon Musk. Boss Swen Vincke of BG3 developer Larian is continuing that public safety campaign by championing implant-free alternatives to mind-controlled, Ilithid-grade gaming.

Let me explain, in the second paragraph, what the hell I'm talking about. A few weeks ago, a clip of the sixth recipient of Neuralink's Telepathy chip, one of the more on-the-nose brands of budding human-computer interfaces, had a bite of virality.

The proud chip owner, Rob Greiner, was shown playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 with only the power of his mind. It's a great game, and a good game for this kind of showcase – not to be confused with the brain image training used in other mind-controlled gaming like PerriKaryal's Elden Ring runs.

At least in terms of timing and reflexes, and at least compared to freakin' Elden Ring, CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Divinity are generally pretty laid-back barring the occasional stealth, parkour, or trap section. You have time to evaluate, select, and enact a plan – which, I imagine, is extra comfy when you're doing all that through a chip in your brain rather than a mouse and keyboard like the gamer gods intended.

Vincke was also impressed. "This is amazing," he said in a tweet. Now here comes the other shoe: "But there is an even more amazing version of this. The team at [MindSpeaker] demonstrated our game being played with the power of the mind, but without an implant. Super impressive stuff."

Vincke was referring to an unlisted, barely watched YouTube video (below) showing a MindSpeaker user with one of the company's MindClick devices – the human race simply cannot be trusted with free will when naming sci-fi-sounding doohickeys – worn over their ear and neck rather than embedded in their brain. They were playing through the opening hours of Baldur's Gate 3; again, with their only their mind(click), they poke around the starting shores, stumble upon an Ilithid squad, and promptly dive into combat because that is how you should respond to octopuses peddling mind control implants.

Playing Baldur's Gate with MindSpeaker+MindClick - YouTube

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First of all, if you did happen to play Baldur's Gate 3 using something implanted in your brain, you should get a permanent debuff to all stats and rolls because clearly you didn't heed the game's message. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Secondly, is this MindSpeaker clip "more amazing" because it features Baldur's Gate 3, which Vincke helmed and which is now funding the work towards his dream mega RPG, wink wink? Perhaps, in part. But seriously, there is something to be said for minimalist interfaces like this.

Obviously, this sort of technology isn't meant or ready for widespread adoption – at least not until The Device is complete – but if you put "pry your skull open" on the scale opposite "don't pry your skull open" on the bargaining table of human-computer interfaces, I know where it would lean for me. Now, if you put Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 on the scales, that's a harder question to answer.

Baldur's Gate 3 dev secretly wrote the D&D RPG's release date on a whiskey bottle in a bar 5 years ago, but somehow "nobody found it" and it "never leaked."