I never had the time to play the game but I think those type of rpg speedruns are extremely cool if you know the game and understand the tricks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JL2zbXdJDg
http://speeddemosarchive.com/TempleOfElementalEvil.html

I've never seen anything so pointless (not to mention boring) in all my days. <sigh!>

I spend longer than that on character creation ... then again, I also enjoy playing the game.

I guess this kind of speed run thing is done for the challenge but from reading that walkthrough it sounds like every other speed run I've heard of - using game exploits rather than playing it.
I saw a Baldur's Gate 2 run on youtube - it claimed that no mods or cheats were used but in the first 2 minutes he clearly uses a portal that's not available in the vanilla game (I think it exists but the door to it is locked/sealed and unopenable). So he got outside with Imoen and didn't have to do Spellhold at all - so in what way did he complete the game? Just getting to the end doesn't mean completing it to me, if you avoid playing most of the game to get there.

Ended pretty abruptly.
Still, only one cheat on character generation, otherwise legit shortest path.

Like someone mentioned above: unbelievably pointless...;) Defeats the entire purpose of the game.

I am amused by speed runs because it reminds me of the Olympics. Eek out every fraction of a second you can. Ah but even one cheat is one cheat too many, for any kind of legit run. This cheat was enormous.

Exactly

I find it interesting to see how people can do speed runs - legitimately. This one uses a gigantic exploit, so IMO it doesn't count. As noted by others though, I wouldn't do a speed run myself as I don't see the fun in it. But it's interesting to see how fast it can be done.