Oh, I think I finally get it. Sven doesn't recommend Dark Urge as a first playthrough because he assumes most people will want to play it because of the insane murderous psychopath route. I guess if you kill most of your companions, you're really missing out on a big part of the story, so it makes perfect sense. But if you don't plan on giving in to darkness, then Urge is definitely a better option than Tav, especially because of the extra content.
Literally in that same interview he says he just finished an Evil Dark Urge playthrough with Lae'zel, Shadowheart, and Minthara as companions so not missing that much...that's a full party of origin or special story characters. He even added that he wend full dark, as evil as he could, and became ruler of the forgotten realms. Sooo yeah...you can be as evil as you like and still have a full party.
