Baldur’s Gate 3 is a hugely complex game, but the humble narrator helps players get through it. Whether I’m in a grubby goblin village or peering into a pool of tadpoles, I know the narrator will unemotionally explain the finer details to me. It helps that the voice actress does such a great job of being cool, clear, and a little bit mysterious. The mystique is only slightly broken by an incredible series of TikToks posted by narrator-actress Amelia Tyler over the past few months.
“Who made this word with four apostrophes in it?” says Tyler in a TikTok, stunned. “That’s fantasy nonsense.” She also comments on how wild it is to read a script where “dancing eye spiders” is one of the most run-of-the-mill lines you could encounter. She also makes a series of silly mouth noises after clumsily making some particularly ridiculous lines.
Tyler’s jokes make me appreciate her performance Baldur’s Gate 3 the more. For example, she jokingly calls her co-workers “mo-cap bastards,” noting that her role as a narrator means she has to be pigeonholed and act alone, rather than doing a motion capture. She also says that if you love Astarion, you should probably go to therapy. This is true, but it’s also an absolute attack on me personally, and I don’t support it.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is not only full of fantasy words and lines to be handed with gravitas, but also some truly silly moments. The game lets you break into news channels and run your own propaganda, play a companion’s magic flute, and throw gnomes off windmills into the distance.
Fans have left admiring comments on the TikToks outtake, with some even asking for a version of the campaign where we include Amelia Tyler’s bloopers in the narration. It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of the narrator, whose entire role is to be unseen yet omniscient.