A Baldur’s Gate 3 mishap made it rain men, hallelujah

As far as I’m concerned, Baldur’s Gate 3 is my game of the year. It’s the experience finally rekindling my love for games as lengthier affairs without feeling like a drag. I can’t get enough of the cast, the environments are enchanting, and the dialogue is spot-on. I’ve played it a little every day since launch with no signs of slowing down.

And looking at the rest of 2023, I don’t see anything dethroning the RPG, not even a messy glitch here or there, but oh god, did I ever break BG3 last night. Something’s definitely gone horribly wrong with my install, or right, as a glass-half-full kind of gal.

You see, I really enjoy modding — check the Scion tattoo — but if a game can be broken, I’m breaking it. And out of my friend group, I seem to have the most bizarre tech problems, leading us down complex rabbit holes for fixes or clumsy workarounds. A few of us enjoy playing dolls with fan-made tweaks, which leads to the occasional headless Tav surprise or a floating set of eyes, but we’ve seen it all.

Except I thought we’d seen it all. Last night, I broke Baldur’s Gate in a way I’d never broken it before. After work, I loaded up the game and played normally for an hour or so. Then I took a break, installed some new mods, tried to start a new game, and bam — genital jumpscare.

Warning: This is NSFW for nudity. It’s all things you can see in the character creator, though. This tweet shows everything, but here’s the artistic censored version.

Yes, that’s the default Dark Urge model. And yes, that’s eight naked dudes.

I couldn’t tell y’all what on earth broke BG3 to do this, but instead of pulling up the character creator… this is the scene I was greeted with. I feel like I’ve walked in on something I wasn’t supposed to see, but I still stood there. Staring. Out of shock or delight, I don’t know, but I laughed so hard I started that gasping-crying number.

That’s it, too. That’s all I did. I installed some hair mods, clicked new game, and instead of the character creator, Baldur’s Gate 3 whisked me off to an ethereal plane where everyone’s naked and ruled by a dragon. There’s so much going on that makes this perfectly hilarious. They all look like the man-standing emoji, and the four portraits on the side kill me. Also, where am I? Why is the Dark Urge here? Is he some sort of poetic metaphor for whatever is going on?

Anyway, I mean, if you’re here to laugh at me, valid. But also, if you’re here because you’ve somehow managed to break BG3 in a way that you’re surrounded by eight naked guys and a dragon person, I’ve got your back. Somehow, I managed to fix it.

Simply uninstalling my mods didn’t work; every time I tried starting a new game, BG3 greeted me with the Dark Urge and their nudey band again. Instead, I uninstalled my mods and loaded an older save file — not the most recent, that didn’t work either for whatever reason — then exited the game. Afterward, I could start a new game and go back to “normal” BG3 character creator activities, like making girlfriends for Shadowheart.

Now, I’m back to playing Barbies with Larian’s incredible workshop like I didn’t just cause the weirdest BG3 glitch ever. I’m still trying to finish my first run, so I hope we never meet again, but I’ll remember the Dark Urge and their eight-man streaking party fondly.