Baldur’s Gate 3 gets a lot of things right, but perhaps its greatest asset is narrator Amelia Tyler, who serves as your guide and a sort of pseudo dungeon master, explaining your every thought, emotion, and action as you trudge through Faerûn. But now Tyler is bringing a more sinister energy to the Larian Studios RPG, by streaming her very own Dark Urge run alongside her partner and fellow voice actor Jay Britton, who previously provided voices for Larian’s Divinity Original Sin 2.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 Dark Urge origin playthrough is perhaps the most distinctive opening commitment you can make in the expansive RPG game. Upon selecting it, you commit to your character having a set of unique dialogue and action options based on a sinister set of urges – and, while you can often choose whether or not to listen to the voices, in some cases Baldur’s Gate 3 simply has your character do something unspeakably horrid, and you’re simply left to handle the fallout.
Tyler’s adventure begins as she creates her character, Violet Alabaster, who’s joined by Britton as brother Lucius, or “Lulu.” Reminding us that she’s just like the rest of us, Tyler immediately plunges a full hour and a half into character creation to craft the perfect Half-Elf Ranger for her journey.
“Violet is a character that I roleplayed with Jay on a roleplay server a couple of years ago,” Tyler explains, “we played brother and sister and they are awful – just the worst human beings.” Britton details the character’s original origins: “They are good, honest, hard-working people just looking to make their way in the world and help those around them… or maybe they’re dreadful elitist socialites from Victorian London.”
“Lucius is more knowingly mean,” Tyler relates, “whereas Violet strikes me as one of those people who doesn’t understand that some of the things she’s saying are dreadful, because she’s just grown up like that.” As such, Violet isn’t immediately prone to listening to the dark thoughts in her head – so Tyler turns to the most Dungeons and Dragons solution, the trusty d20.
Every time a Dark Urge decision presents itself, Tyler’s in-game narration tempting with delightfully devilish desires, she rolls a twenty-sided dice in real life – a ten or higher, and she’s unable to resist the voice telling her to do the bad thing. It doesn’t take too long for this to dramatically impact proceedings, much to the detriment of potential companion Gale, whose cry for a helping hand is taken a little too literally by dear Violet.
Tyler and Britton have a fantastic dynamic together, ad-libbing plenty of dialogue together to help sell the events as they play out. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better storytelling base in 2023 than Baldur’s Gate 3, and the pair certainly do a great job of having fun with its bizarre, macabre, serious, and silly encounters in turn. There’s even a little sauciness in camp at the end, because it wouldn’t be a BG3 stream without some Baldur’s Gate 3 romance.
If you’re after more such adventures with Baldur’s Gate 3’s leading voices, you can find Astarion actor Neil Newbon journeying through the game as Half-Elf Druid Bow’ee, or Lae’zel actor Devora Wilde taking on her own adventure for the first time as a rather different Githyanki Fighter of her own making, the curiously named Dev’zel.
You might also have spotted the full Baldur’s Gate 3 cast of origin characters taking on a rather unique adventure, joining forces with DnD show High Rollers to take part in a Baldur’s Gate 3 DnD game together as their respective in-game avatars. If you’ve yet to see that one, it’s definitely a must-watch – if only to find out what happens to Shadowheart’s beloved new pet Bing-Bong.
We’ve picked out our favorite Baldur’s Gate 3 builds if you’re trying to decide how to level up your character, and dug into how Baldur’s Gate 3 crafting works – it’s easily skipped, but a very powerful tool once you get to grips with it, so don’t be afraid to experiment.