Dungeons & Dragons: Warlock Landed 379,000 Steam Wishlists at Gamescom, From the Studio Behind a 53-Metacritic Dark Alliance

Can a Dungeons and Dragons game with no dice, no character sheets, and nobody else sat around the table with you still actually count as D&D? I have been playing D&D for a long time, and I am currently running a Hexblade Warlock at the table, which turns out to be exactly the class this brand new game is built around. That is really what this is about: what Warlock actually is, whether any of it holds up as real D&D lore, and whether it is a good way to pique your interest if you have never played.

Invoke Studios Made Dark Alliance, Which Scored Just 53 on Metacritic

One slightly awkward thing to get out of the way first is that Warlock is being made by Invoke Studios, formerly known as Tuque Games, who made Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance. I have not personally played it, but it sits on a 53 on Metacritic, so there is that.

Warlock looks like a very different game: single player, third person, real time action. You play a warrior who ends up making a pact with a patron called Tasha, voiced by Maggie Robertson. Importantly, we are not back on the Sword Coast. This is one of Ravenloft's Domains of Dread. Yes, that Ravenloft. Still proper D&D, just somewhere considerably more miserable, which I appreciate. I play Warhammer, apparently I need all of my fictional universes to be awful places to live.

Warlock Picked Up 379,000 Steam Wishlists During Gamescom, Second Only to a Witcher 3 DLC

Warlock picked up 379,000 new Steam wishlists during Gamescom week, making it the second biggest game there for wishlists. The thing that beat it was a Witcher 3 DLC, so if we are talking actual new games, this might have been the biggest one of the whole show. That is quite something considering the basic premise is: would you like to make a questionable arrangement with an incredibly powerful magical being and see what happens? As somebody who currently plays a Hexblade Warlock, yeah, obviously. I have already made this exact poor decision once before.

The Reaction Has Split the Community Into Two Camps

The reaction to Warlock so far is pretty evenly split. Camp one thinks this looks brilliant. Camp two thinks this is not Dungeons and Dragons. There are people who are completely sold already: the magic looks good, the voice cast is strong, the setting is properly interesting, and quite a few people seem relieved they are not trying to make Baldur's Gate 4. I agree with that bit. We have got Baldur's Gate 3 and it is brilliant, I do not particularly need someone making Baldur's Gate 3 but slightly worse just because wizards noticed people liked the last one.

The other side is fair too. People have watched the warrior protagonist throwing enemies around, bending the environment, casting spells every few seconds, and have gone: is she actually a D&D warlock? GameSpot's headline basically said that Warlock does not seem all that bothered about the Dungeons and Dragons part of its own title, and I get why. There is nowhere near the same emphasis on dialogue choices or roleplaying that you would expect from a tabletop game. It looks more like an action adventure game with RPG elements set inside D&D. I think I am okay with that.

If you forced me to pick a side, I am probably cautiously optimistic, but I am trying not to do what I always do when something hits exactly the right part of my brain. I am doing it with Fable at the moment, where a few familiar touches and British humor have my critical thinking handed over entirely. I am trying to be more sensible with Warlock, because between the Ravenloft setting and the questionable magic pact, it is basically been designed in a laboratory to get me interested. I have not played it, so I am not going to pretend a few minutes of very carefully selected footage tells me whether the actual game is any good. What has been shown is enough to make me interested, and that is as far as I am willing to go right now.

This Could Be How New Players Get Pulled Into D&D Without a Table

The thing that interests me about Warlock is not really that it is about warlocks, it is that this could end up being how a huge number of people get pulled into the world of Dungeons and Dragons in the first place. Not the tabletop mechanics, obviously, a single player RPG was never going to give you that. But the world itself, because there is no group to find, no dungeon master required, and no trying to organize five adults through a group chat. You do not need to buy a Player's Handbook to work out what seventeen different dice are for, build a character, and then panic because somebody has asked you to roleplay them.

This is where opinion is divided again, because in one camp that is the actual essence of D&D. Why are you complaining about those things, that is the point, goes the argument. But with Warlock, you can just play it. I have always found these kinds of games are quite often my way into something. Knights of the Old Republic was one of those for me. You get absorbed into the world first, start caring about the characters and the lore, and suddenly you are reading a wiki at half eleven at night about something you did not even know existed three hours earlier.

Seeing Gameplay Built Around My Own Warlock Class Hit Differently

Seeing gameplay for the first time gave me a slightly stranger reaction, because they have made a game about my D&D class. Seeing that patron relationship, the forbidden magic, the whole idea of using your powers in inventive ways, that got me immediately, though I appreciate other warlock players will be uniquely receptive to this. If you are a hardcore bard, barbarian, or paladin player, I would like to know if being limited to one class is annoying, because I honestly cannot relate. I do play a half-elf paladin, but only for oneshots because I love to smite as a tank. Playing one for a full campaign is going to send me to sleep, I am sorry I said it, but it might.

That is the bit of the warlock fantasy I enjoy. You are not just wizard number four firing different colored spells at things like some unnamed NPC mage you walk past in Skyrim. Your powers come from somewhere, there is a relationship behind them, possibly a terrible contractual decision, potential consequences, fantasy finance.

My Real Worry Is Replayability, Not Whether It Counts as D&D

The type of game they are making suits my play style regardless of the D&D question. Give me exploration, a decent story, things to fight, abilities to unlock, and a world I can disappear into for a few evenings, and I am happy. My actual bigger concern is replayability, because Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely ruined me for that. You finish it and immediately start thinking about doing it all again as a different character, different class, different companions, different decisions, whole bits of the game you did not see the first time.

With Warlock, we are the warrior, Tasha is our patron, and presumably the broad shape of that story is not going to change dramatically every time you press new game. So the question I have got is not whether this is D&D enough, I do not massively care about that. The Witcher does not ask me to roll a d20 every time Geralt wants to open a cupboard, and somehow I have survived. My real question is once you have finished the story, what makes you want to come back. If the answer is different spell builds, different ways of approaching a fight, different consequences for how you play, then great, I am in. If it is a good twenty five hour action game you finish once and never touch again, that is fine too, but it is a very different proposition to something like Baldur's Gate 3.

"Do not expect tabletop D&D turned into a video game from... kind of everything they've shown, this looks like a video game set in D&D." I am fine with that, it just needs to be good, the same way I do not need every Star Wars thing to nail the politics of the Old Republic. Sometimes I just want a laser sword and a decent story.