Baldur’s Gate 3 proved that the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, with some tweaks, make a brilliant framework for a videogame RPG. And yet Wizards of the Coast seems intent on making games that don’t use that framework. Last year the publisher announced Invoke, one of its internal videogame studios, was making Warlock, a third-person action adventure that seems like an attempt at making their own God of War.
Warlock may well turn out to be a decent game, it’s just odd that while I’m sure Wizards of the Coast will find a studio it trusts to make Baldur’s Gate 4 eventually, it’s not interested in making another game like it only without the words “Baldur’s Gate” in the name in the meantime.
We still don’t know much about Warlock, but WotC did use its D&D keynote at Gen Con to reveal that Maggie Robertson, who portrayed Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village and Orin the Red in Baldur’s Gate 3, will be playing the protagonist’s patron. Like every warlock, you’ll get your powers from a pact with a supernatural benefactor, in this case the witch Tasha of Tasha’s Hideous Laughter fame. When she’s not cooking up level-1 control spells she’s an archfey with her own domain, which I guess is what gives her the ability to hand out eldritch blasts.
Warlock also features Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica, who was the voice of EDI in the Mass Effect series, Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat X, and Sarah Kerrigan in StarCraft 2, as its protagonist. And that’s basically all we know about Warlock so far. Its first actual gameplay footage will debut at Gamescom, which runs from August 26–30 in Cologne.