Baldur's Gate 3 is about choices, but when the Dark Urge takes over you can only react

Larian Studios are nothing if not enablers of wild, unspoken desires. In Divinity: Original Sin II, they provided the impossible - making each companion character a playable protagonist, and weaving their unique plotlines into the tapestry of the main story. It was one of the RPG’s great innovations - handing you a killer backstory, a tangible motivation, and a set of prompts for how you might go about roleplaying your exiled lizard prince or demon-possessed musician. For those of us who struggle with the blank page of character creation, it was a godsend (quite literally, since the adventure concerned your ascension).

Choosing a set character came with an obvious drawback, however. It robbed you of the chance to make the most of Larian’s character creation tools, fiddling with freckles and tattoos and biceps until you had an alter ego entirely your own. With Baldur's Gate 3, Larian have threaded the needle, conceiving an origin character who looks, sounds and fights however you like, yet enters the game with a frankly frightening amount of personal history and suspiciously lumpy baggage - and as they announced during the final Panel from Hell last week, some of that baggage will be soaked in blood. Optionally available as one of seven starting personalities, the Dark Urge is a mass murderer. Their species, gender, class and eyebrow thickness are up to you, but what you can’t change is their deep and insatiable need to kill for pleasure.

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