Baldur’s Gate 3 player turns Shadowheart’s artifact into a working controller

The artifact that Shaowheart carries with her throughout the game is a large part of the story, not just for her lore but also for the journey itself. This artifact inspired one player to turn it into something more useful: An actual, fully-functional controller.

Rudeism, a content creator known for his unique and innovative custom controllers, took on the challenge of transforming Shadowheart’s artifact into a controller following his successful creation of a fifth version of a frying pan controller.

The creation process behind the controller was documented on TikTok and later spread to Rudeism’s other social media platforms. In the video, Rudeism explains his process to 3D print the shell and individual buttons for the controller.

Each side of the artifact has a button that corresponds to an input in Baldur’s Gate. For added effect, Rudeism also added the different rune symbols found on the artifact and put them on the buttons.

“I turned the Artifact from Baldur’s Gate 3 into a controller,” announced Rudeism on X. “It’s a fully functional wireless Xbox controller – 20 buttons & a motion sensor for simulating thumbsticks.”

In a response to his own post, Rudeism alluded to the fact that this project took him months, with the original hope of finishing it before the game awards in December. While Baldur’s Gate did win Game of the Year, it was only after the fact that Rudeism could put his creation into effect.

Swen Vincke, one of the minds behind Baldur’s Gate, saw the post and commented in response to it.

“And to say it used to be a box 🙂 So good!”

Rudeism will be doing a full playthrough with the Shadowheart artifact controller on Twitch, which will showcase the buttons that he created specifically for the game so that he can play it without issue.