When was the last time you heard a Scouser in a video game? I remember exactly when. It was 14 months ago, after I wrote a long feature about the lack of Scouse representation in games. I was only able to name Conker’s Bad Fur Day and some grunts in Worms at this time, before I came across Jason Isaacs’ portrayal of faulty robot Skew in The Last Worker. The game was ultimately disappointing, but I appreciated Isaacs’ accent nonetheless.
A friend then turned me onto Eternal Threads, a time travelling mystery featuring a Jennifer Varda-voiced Raquel. Scouse voice actors playing Scouse characters, you simply love to see it. Since then, I searched the entirety of The Lands Between for a Scouser, only to stumble across Welsh and Irish accented monstrosities. I was pleased to hear gruff Yorkshire tones in my demo of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, but the devs couldn’t confirm whether anyone from Merseyside made the cut. And all this time we could have had a Scouse Captain Price, too.
The past year has been barren in terms of Scouse representation. While I didn’t expect anything from the likes of Pikmin 4 or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I held out hope that sprawling RPGs like Final Fantasy 16 would sort me out. Alas, no dice.
You can imagine my joy, then, when I heard those familiar, dulcet tones coming from behind a locked door in the opening hours of Baldur’s Gate 3. A bloke named Andorn was guarding the entrance to a chapel, and he was panicking after I’d slaughtered his friends outside. As I readied my virtual D20 for a Deception check, his voice lines were running through my head over and over. I couldn’t believe it. A Scouser. Or, technically, a Faerûnian with a Scouse accent. But it was all the same to me.
Poor Andorn only had two or three sentences before I barged down the door and sent a crossbow bolt into his chest. They weren’t particularly interesting lines, nor particularly memorable to most. They had no impact on the plot, and were likely only included to teach you how to launch surprise attacks on opponents. For all intents and purposes, he’s a tutorial NPC. But he’s more than that. He’s a Scouse tutorial NPC. And I love him for what he represents.
I’ve only spent half a dozen hours in the Western Heartlands so far, but to encounter a Scouser in the first half of that time is incredibly heartening, even more so seeing as I spent at least a quarter of that creating my character, only to ruin her vibe with a silly hat. Andorn is the only Merseyside native I’ve met in that time, but his mere presence gives me the strength to push on, to find more of our kind, and to listen to every word they have to say.
Here’s hoping that Andorn is just the start of a long lineage of Scouse characters in Baldur’s Gate 3. I hope some are more than tutorial NPCs too (no offence, mate). I’m not going to kid myself and hope for a Scouse companion, as glorious as that would be, but some quest-giving NPCs or semi-major characters would be perfect. Just don’t make me promise not to kill them. Not even their Merseyside heritage can be sure to spare them from my wrath.