“Like Having A Very Creative Mental Breakdown” – Baldur’s Gate 3’s Amelia Tyler Interview

Baldur’s Gate 3 is undoubtedly one of the biggest hits of 2023, receiving endless critical praise and an ever-growing player base since its release this summer. The long-anticipated sequel by Larian Studios has captivated fans by giving them the ability to do just about anything in a fantasy world, allowing them to explore the entire spectrum of morality alongside a brilliant cast of characters. The title has received eight nominations this year at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year.

Regardless of what players choose to do in Baldur’s Gate 3, their trajectory will be narrated by Amelia Tyler, who serves as the game’s dungeon master. Tyler has voiced many other roles over the years, from Malady in previous Larian Studios title Divinity: Original Sin 2 to main antagonist Belial in The Dark Pictures Anthology: Switchback VR. The amount of dialogue recorded by Tyler is extremely robust, with the actress voicing the game in 17 distinct styles depending upon the kind of Baldur’s Gate 3 character fans have created, with each batch of dialogue having to account for even the most absurd player choices.

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Screen Rant interviewed Amelia Tyler to talk about the process behind creating such a detailed narration, finding identity through fantasy, and the game’s thriving – and thirsty – community.

Amelia Tyler On Narrating Baldur’s Gate 3

Screen Rant: First, I would love to hear a little bit about what the recording process was like as the narrator, because there are so many possibilities – how did that process even work? I have to imagine it took a very long time.

Amelia Tyler: It did, yeah. We were recording on and off for three and a half years, nearly four years. So it was quite the adventure. I think a lot of people imagine that you just get the full script and you work your way through it, and that isn’t at all, certainly, how it worked this time. It doesn’t tend to work like that for a lot of games these days.

So we started off with a large-ish portion of Act 1. We recorded that in our original style, and it went into early access, and people gave their feedback on it, and we kind of got settled in the feel of That. And the original style, I was given the brief of Scar from the Lion King, that very smirky, leaning back, like going, “Aha, okay.” And just really enjoying watching people f*** up.

But we came to the conclusion that would be a bit much for the entire duration of that game, because it feels like an outside force from somebody who’s not in your head. It’s just somebody smirking at you and watching you fail, and we wanted to go with something much more like this is your dungeon master, however you choose to play the game.

Whether you’re the goodest good-boy Paladin or the most horrendous blood-thirsty Dark Urge, we want this to feel like you found your perfect dungeon master and they’re right behind you. We’ve kind of imagined it like my chin on your shoulder, whispering in your ear and just gently turning your head to where you need to notice things, but all the way through there it would feel like yours, someone supportive of your play style.

The process of the actual record went through a lot of different developments, and we ended up with 17 different narration styles depending on who you are playing as and the choices you have within your character. So there’s a lot of variety there. And we didn’t record in sequence either, so some scenes I would record Shadowheart’s version, Astarian’s version, then Will’s version. We’d usually worked our way towards Dark Urge, because you can’t really start with Dark Urge.

No.

Amelia Tyler: There’s nowhere to go from there. A lot of the time, it just felt like having a very creative mental breakdown. There was no through line of a character to pinpoint, I was just hopping about. It was an amazing exercise in emotional versatility. It was good fun, though.

And I saw you mention in a video that you’ve been friends with Neil Newbon who plays Astarion for a long time, and that there are a lot of outtakes of you making fun of Astarion’s character as well.

Amelia Tyler: Yeah. I mean, that was more like me having issues with a Astarion full stop, I think. Yeah, I knew Neil before. I’ve known Samantha Béart for a very long time. I’ve never worked with them before, I don’t think, but we’ve known each other for a very long time. So when they came up I got super excited when they played me the Karlach sample. I’ve known Jennifer English for quite a few years. We played mother and daughter a few years back in a VR game, and we actually got to record in the booth together, which is really cool, but we hadn’t seen each other since.

But I think that’s it. I think all of the rest of the cast I met for the first time either at the D&D game or at a convention, so it’s been a really weird – by the time we met, we sort of felt like we’d been friends for years.

Was most of the recording on your end solo or were you ever in the booth with anyone else?

Amelia Tyler: No, no, nobody was ever in the booth with anybody else. Everybody recorded solo, whether it was performance capture or just vocal. But I was the only person – as far as I’m aware – who recorded solo all the way through and from home. So everybody else was getting dolled up and doing their full performance capture, and I was at home in my booth slowly losing my mind, wondering what human faces looked like.

It was very useful, especially during lockdown. But yeah, I do miss the social side of that. Because even though they weren’t acting together, you get that interaction passing in the corridor or occasionally bumping into each other and having a chat. Aside from the people that I’d worked with before, I never got the opportunity to share this until the NDAs were up, so it’s been an adventure.

Are there any recording memories that especially stand out to you as a scene that was especially funny or difficult to record?

Amelia Tyler: I’ve lost track, honestly. There were a few times when I’d walk out of the recording session and my other half would be like, “All right, how did it go?” And I’d just be like, “Wall tentacles,” and give him no context. That’s it. Just I’ve lost track of the number of bizarre things I’ve had to record for this. And honestly, none of it bothered me. Even the stuff that people seem to find uncomfortable, maybe, some of the more body horrorish kind of things, we actually really enjoyed and kind of went to town on that.

It depends what you mean by memorable honestly, because there’s some very fun stuff you can do in a brothel that is incredibly memorable, but it’s not the sexy stuff you’re imagining. I like it when it flips things on its head and you get something unexpected, but it just changed from day to day. There was such an enormous amount of variety in the stuff I had to describe, and some of it was just like, “Oh, you’ve used that word.”

It’s beautiful writing though, especially when it gets to some of the more Dark Urgey side of stuff, choosing the moments to make something sound sensual. We almost never chose the sexy stuff. It was always something that kind of fed the animal part of your brain, whether that’s blood lust or confusion or manipulation, but the sexy stuff kind of sells itself so you don’t have to push so hard. I like the comedy ones and any scene with animals, because I got to just be really fun. This narrator apparently, no matter what her opinion on anything else, loves animals and thinks they’re great.

And there’s been such an outpouring of fan reactions to this game since it came out, largely in the form of thirst posting, but also just in general a lot of varied reactions to everything that you can do in this game. Do you have any favorite reactions that you’ve seen so far?

Amelia Tyler: Honestly, the fan art has been amazing, but also the community realizing that the actors have seen the fan art, because I don’t know what they thought was going to happen. It’s like kids in school just sharing books and things that they’ve written or drawn. It’s just like, “Don’t show the actors.”

But I remember somebody sent me a link to a Reddit post where an artist was losing their mind because they’d seen me reacting to their saucy image of Halsin dripping honey down himself, like we wouldn’t see that and we wouldn’t think that that was awesome.

Yeah.

Amelia Tyler: I love how open and into all that side of things we’ve been able to be, and just be cheering all the artists and the cosplays on from the sidelines. You don’t have to hide. This game is a thirst trap. That’s kind of part of the point of it. That’s part of the appeal. Lean into it, it’s okay. But, yeah, the Halsin honey image will stay in my mind; it’s an excellent piece of art.

Yeah, I’m going to have to find that one after this interview is over.

Amelia Tyler: It’s very pretty. There are some insanely talented people out there, and I love that about this game. The same kind of thing happened with Larian’s last game, Divinity: Original Sin II. You get this outpouring of creativity in different ways from people, and a lot of people saying, “Oh, I was feeling so creatively stuck before this. Now, this has opened me up, and I’ve done all these characters,” or, “I’ve made this cosplay.”

That makes me so happy, because it stops just being about the game. And it’s opening up a part of people’s minds that they find very healing and very helpful for the rest of their lives. I love that.

Yeah, it’s very communal I feel like, creatively communal.

Amelia Tyler: Yeah. Honestly, I’ve never seen a community and a cast come together in this way before, because we’ve been heavily leaning into the meming. We meme hard, and we meme unashamedly, and we’re all loving it. You so rarely get that freedom to just play and to let the community know directly how much we’re enjoying everything that they’re doing and like, “Carry on, tell us how you’re playing. Tell us.” People stopping by our streams to help us. There’s a lot of people that haven’t even played on a console before.

It’s been amazing seeing people come together, and it sort of dissolves some of the boundary between actor and player. I don’t like calling it fans, that feels very us and them. It’s definitely helped people see us as human again, whereas I don’t think that’s happened a lot in the past. There’s always this barrier between the players and the actors; it’s been really lovely to forge more of those human connections.

Are there any characters that you were particularly surprised to see players having a really strong connection with or thirsting after? Any that everyone seems to be connecting with this character and you’re like, “What’s going on?”

Amelia Tyler: I mean, honestly, there’s something for everyone, right? I come from a psychology background, so I’m the last person to kink shame anyone or be surprised. Of course, people are going to want to sleep with the emperor. Of course, people are going to be lusting after him. That’s kind of the point of a game like this, that there’s something for everyone. And just when you think you’ve tapped the well of infinite horrors, somebody will go, “What about that?”

No, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with how many people have been – especially more recently – open to characters like Minthara, because it’s very easy to paint that as like, “That’s a baddie,” end of conversation. Whereas a lot of people are finding that depth in her and recognizing that there’s something interesting going on there. I always enjoy that kind of thing.

And also Halsin. I’m going to say it again, I’m a big Halsin and Karlach fan girl, because they’re emotionally healthy for the most part – comparatively, anyway. They’re the most emotionally healthy people in the game romance-wise, and I will always cheer on people making emotionally healthy choices. There are a lot of sociopaths and narcissists in the world, and I think we should stop sleeping with them. Just a personal opinion.

Just one girl’s opinion.

Amelia Tyler: Just a thought. [Laughs]

Yeah, I don’t know if Baldur’s Gate is really the place to make healthy choices for the most part.

Amelia Tyler: I mean, that’s what I love about it more than anything. It is a place to explore whatever you want to explore as far as that’s concerned, with no judgment, even as far as how you want to portray yourself. I’ve had messages from so many people who are trying to figure themselves out, whether that’s in terms of sexual preferences or gender identity or whatever.

Because it’s in a fantasy world and because you can play single player, it opens up a lot of options for people to just play with no fear or no judgment, and then they can slowly decide whether that’s something that they want to play with in real life as well or if it’s just something for just occasionally.

I think there’s something hugely valuable socially in that, because those choices, if you make them for the first time in the real world, they’re huge. They have impact, and it can be really scary. So I love that this lets people play around with stuff, see if it fits.

Yeah, definitely.

Amelia Tyler: Just have different sides of themselves, because that’s what role-playing is, really. You take an aspect of yourself, and you turn it up to 11 and see how much fun it is.

And you recently also worked on The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR.

Amelia Tyler: Yeah.

What was it like playing the main antagonist in that?

Amelia Tyler: That was so much fun. There are very few opportunities that you get to completely gnaw on the scenery. I tend to play characters that initially you meet them and you’re like, “That’s a bad guy,” and then you slowly realize there’s more depth to them. There are secrets going on, maybe they’ve got a point. No, in this case, this was like full-on bad guy; just be evil and enjoy it. You so rarely get a chance to play like that, and I loved every minute of it.

Do you have a favorite moment of recording that sticks out to you from that game?

Amelia Tyler: Oh, god, there are so many from that. More than anything, when we got a line that we knew was right, when it was just that level of twist-the-knife cruelty, I would stop. We’d get to the end of the line, I would stop, and then one of us would start laughing in this really uncomfortable like, “Oh, my god.” And somebody – probably me – would call me a b****.

It’s that instant lightening of the mood after you’ve gone somewhere so dark and unpleasant, and the entire room was on board with that, which I really loved. It could have been very intimidating to go that nasty and then have everybody be a bit like, “Okay, yeah, we’ll move on to the next line.” Like, “Oh, okay.” Having everybody find that fun was amazing.

And the Supermassive guys, they adore what they do, and you can tell from how they write things to how they are in the room. It’s just been really lovely to be welcomed into that, because it could be super intimidating, right? It’s a VR title for a very big existing franchise. They’re like, “Oh, yeah. You are just playing the lead antagonist.” Like, “Oh, okay. Okay, fine.” That could have been terrifying, but they made it very comfortable and a lot of fun. A lot of fun.