While Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is bound to feature many narrative choices for players to make, general manager of developer Invoke, Dominique Guay, has said that players shouldn’t expect the main narrative of the game to change. In an interview with Eurogamer about avoiding comparisons with Baldur’s Gate 3, Guay said that the core main story of Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons has been “written down”, and that players shouldn’t expect massive changes depending on their choices.
“We’re being very clear on that. Kaatri is a written character, so it’s not like you can play evil or good Kaatri. Nothing like that. The main narrative moments you’re going to go through are written down, and you’re going to go through the same moment as someone else.”
Another way Invoke hopes to set its RPG apart from Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 is with its focus on a single character rather than an ensemble crew. Guay explained that, while there are “definitely allies you’ll make along the way, kind of [Kaatri’s] found family,” the core focus will remain on Kaatri and her imp – Skev. Further discussing the imp, Guay said that he is “his own character with his own motivation”, and there will even be “an ongoing story there of how their relationship grows.”
When it comes to gameplay, Guay reiterated that Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons won’t feature in-game waypoints. Rather, the onus will be on the player to explore the world in the ways they see fit.
“We wanted to really make the game, first and foremost, about exploring a world instead of just following a waypoint around. We want the player to truly go out there, visit places, be curious, uncover secrets.” And while the in-game world of Darkon is “pretty large”, it won’t be as big as other open-world games like Crimson Desert.
“We don’t want you to have to travel for 15 minutes to find a new location. We want you to be always within like a minute, a minute and a half, of another cool place.”
Guay had previously spoken about this design ethos of letting the player go on their own adventure rather than guiding them with waypoints. “We wanted them to engage with the world, to figure things out and feel that when they found things, it was based on their actions and not just blindly trusting a waypoint.” The fact that the development team has prior experience in making more guided experiences in open-world games also helped, since the team wanted to focus on player agency in Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons.
“The core team on this game have worked on other open-world games before, and we’ve done the, let’s say, the heavy-handed guiding approach before. What ends up happening at some point — and it’s normal — a lot of players will just follow blindly the waypoint, and then you lose that agency, you lose that feeling of curiosity because you’re like, well, why even bother? And so, we didn’t want to go there. We wanted the player to explore.”
Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S in 2027.
