Baldur’s Gate 3 player finds out exactly how immersive a Dark Urge playthrough can get

Many Baldur’s Gate 3 players have completed their first playthrough of the immersive role-play game, and in the interest of spicing things up, it’s become a popular decision among gamers to do a campaign as the mysterious Dark Urge character.

The premise behind the Dark Urge is a little bit complicated. As the name entails, players choosing the Dark Urge will occasionally feel inclined to do nefarious and awful things—like kill innocent people, for instance. However, as the Dark Urge, you start out unaware of who you truly are. So these urges are quite alarming for those that don’t necessarily intend on doing an “evil” playthrough.

One player recently found out just how well put-together Larian’s Dark Urge story is with an incident that they claimed “ruined” their life. As a heads up, the rest of this piece is going to include a few spoilers from the Dark Urge campaign. So here’s one final spoiler alert for anyone worried.

In a post to Reddit, one player walked through a difficult decision that they had to make when presented with the news that they would be forced to kill the person they love in the game (in their case, it was Lae’zel).

As the person struggled with how to handle the news that they might kill their partner, they decided to try to sleep off their urges instead of address them. This led to the person losing control in their sleep and killing Lae’zel. Confronted by his companions, the player was struck with guilt but ended up needing to slaughter all of their companions, leaving them alone for the rest of their journey.

“I am completely broken, and feel loss and guilt I never thought possible from a video game,” they said. “Fate has sent me helpless upon this hollow journey, where I, Brandon the Slayer, a broken man, will complete all of my fallen companions’ wishes as a homage, before giving my life to defeat the Absolute, ridding the world of two of the greatest evils to ever walk it.”

While Dark Urge campaigns have become increasingly popular among the player base, this level of deep immersion for a player that is going through the game for the second time is surely something to behold. And the player was quick to note that though this sequence of events messed with their psyche, it ultimately made them appreciate just how well Larian Studios put together BG3 even more.