Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Tav and Dark Urge

So i have just watched the latest Fextralife video and he mentions the Dark Urge seems to be just added content for Tav without loosing anything (however in the video he kills the squirrel in the grove, but i have no idea if you can click anything before hand). Is there any word from the developers that there is content that is exclusive to Tav, that you wouldn't get while playing the Dark Urge?

It doesn't seem like you can click anything and it just happens, if you read the dialogue options after it happens it seems like the dark urge origin forces that to happen instead of being an option wich is how it works in ''tav origin''.

I'm pretty sure the dev's haven't said anything about ''tav origin'' having exclusive content, more like the opposite.

There probably is none besides the "Baldurian" tag from what I heard, but even then, what does that give? You are from Baldur's Gate... great, that's like probably 90% of characters here. Not even the Dream Waifu or "guardian" is exclusive to you now, from what I saw TDU gets them too.

Yeah... This is DOS2 all over again. If you choose TAV you are gimping yourself. Plain and simple.

But I don’t want to kick the squirrel.

Don't approach it. That's it. Also the guy who did this apparently cut off Gale's hand too so it could be getting more and more automatic the more horrid shit you do.

It alsmot feels like both Larian and several "content creators" are being a bit misleading about TDU.
They keep talking about it as if it was something that just adds a bit of spice leaving you full freedom to make every choice, but that's apparently just not true. It's definitely FORCING the player in some potentially unpleasant situations and behaviors.
Which is fine, if that's what a player wants, but they should be clear about what the choice entails.

I do feel like this may actually work like this:
At first you get choices about doing something horrible and if you indulge it the next things will become automatic. That would make sense. Stuff like a corpse taken in your sleep I don't think counts towards that since you were asleep, this is probably a random corpse and you do not see anything being done. With squirrel though it does feel like it is an effect of indulging those fantasies.

Wondering how the urge works with oath of devotion

Honestly how does Urge even remember making an Oath?

I think so too, and probably down the line you'll get a few options to turn yourself around and try to stop the urges from being automatic or continue being a psycopath.

Just woke up and decided to protect the weak I guess.

You were gimping yourself in DOS2 because the party was locked after first chapter. So you could only see 3 origin character stories played out instead of 4. If we can keep all companions throughout the game, I don’t see any downside in having your own custom character and we get all companions’voice acting.

Yeah, to me Durge is pretty much a typical origin story for a RPG with a very very strong pull in a direction. And honestly (depending on the writing in detail) could be an excellent origin - if you are up for dealing with the ramifications of the murderhobbo inside you that breaks out from time to time. Without sarcasm this could be a proper experience worth a playthrough.

My issue though are the other origins - Tav being a blank pointless story to showcase the Larians. And the Larians being so extremely defined - they are not Shepards they are Geralts without the writing/charisma/IP-value to actually make them main characters. And they are all 'I have a dark secret' storylines. Shadowheart even repeats the 'I have godly power background AND I can't remember what I had for breakfast'. They feel repetitive (and their stories have far too much background happening before you even touch them - yeah my background is my character talked with a goddess and now is level 1).

This is the big question for me OP. I remember Tav having some interactions in EA, specifically with daisy that seemed very 'urge like' and there was speculation that Tav's story was going to be bhaal/bhaalspawn related. If that story evolved into the Dark Urge, then what does that leave Tav with? IDK if one can necessarily call DU as it is 'Tav +' since it's obviously designed for a very different playthrough, and IIRC someone (larian even?) said it was intended for subsequent playthroughs. Apparently The Urge is someone you can run into later in the game if you aren't playing them as an adversary, so there's the similar issue to the Origins in that it isn't a character that will ever really be 'yours' since there's already a canon Dark Urge.

I thought we weren't going to get DOS2 custom characters again Larian? Say it isn't so!

Not really. You can still become a hero with the Dark Urge. Swen confirmed that during the Panel from Hell. It will be more difficult, though.

But it can be expected there will be situation that spiral out of control. To spice up the things.

The Dark Urge seems not to be everybody's cup of tea, though. It does not simply add new content, that content is disturbing, dark and twisted. I can not imagine playing Dark Urge as a normal paladin without becoming an oathbreaker.

I think the best way to describe it is like this. As a Dark Urge you can automatically kick a squirrel. As a Tav you DO NOT get to automatically pet a squirrel. That is the issue. You do not get ANYTHING with Tav, nothing, zero, null. That's a problem. At least every Origin in Dragon Age Origins had their own thing, there was no blank slate that had no content.

Well, there will be some collateral damage. It is to be expected :shrugs:

I thought you could talk to the squirrel if you had speak with animals?

There is at least one non 'Baldurian' background: Outlander is for sure one, I used for a ranger in EA at one point, and he made a point of it a couple times. At least once with Astarian and I think with the Wannabe wizard Tiefling. If they reinstate hermit, I'm sure that will be non-baldurian as well.

I just realized that wasn't really your point.

To me it seems like the flag: 'Not a murderous monster' is a nice tag to have for most playthroughs.

What kinds of things would you be hoping for from Tav, given that they are by design a completely flexible character whose story we can shape, unlike the Dark Urge whose future we can influence but has a past we need to discover and, it sounds, isn't entirely under our control?

Personally, I don't want to give up Tav's flexibility so for me anything Larian provided would need to be optional. I can definitely think of ways to do this, and think I've mentioned that on these forums before, but I'd be interested in what you would suggest?