Warlock: D&D Game Revealed at Gamescom, Goes Full Dark Fantasy

A New D&D Game That Isn’t Trying to Be BG3

For a lot of people, “Dungeons and Dragons video game” basically means Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s understandable. Larian Studios’ RPG is widely considered one of the best games of the decade, beloved for its companions, its branching storytelling, and the sheer number of wildly different 100-hour playthroughs it supports. It is a high bar that has quietly become a ceiling.

Invoke Studios seems to know this. Their upcoming title, Warlock: Dungeons and Dragons, had its first gameplay reveal at Gamescom, and according to reporting by Dexerto, the developers are explicitly trying to chart a different course. The last thing Invoke wants, as Dexerto puts it, is “Baldur’s Gate 4” expectations sitting on top of their game.

That instinct looks smart. The two games share a license and little else.

Into the Shadowfell

Warlock is a third-person, open-world action-adventure game. It is purely single-player. There is no character creation carousel, no party management, and no branching moral paths leading to wildly different endings. The story is pre-written, fixed, and apparently quite grim.

Players take on the role of Kaatri, a veteran warrior who gets pulled into Darkon, a Domain of Dread located in the Shadowfell. For the D&D-familiar: yes, that Shadowfell. The bleak, decaying, hopeless mirror of the material plane. Darkon fits right in.

Kaatri doesn’t go it alone. Her patron is Tasha, described by the developers as one of the most powerful archmages and villains in D&D canon. The two are tasked with uncovering raw magic while searching for someone Kaatri loves, a detail the developers kept deliberately vague in press conversations, as reported by Dexerto.

Along the way, players learn new powers and fight a genuinely nasty roster of enemies. Beholders show up. So do undead ogres. The region Kaatri moves through is described as dense but hopeless, a world that feels nothing like the sun-dappled Sword Coast of Baldur’s Gate 3.

Why This Direction Makes Sense

The structure here is interesting precisely because of what it gives up. No player agency in the narrative means Invoke Studios can craft something tighter, stranger, and more committed to its tone. You don’t build Kaatri. You inhabit her. That’s a fundamentally different emotional contract with the player.

D&D’s actual lore has always had dark corners that tabletop-to-video-game adaptations tend to sidestep. The Domains of Dread, originally from the Ravenloft sourcebooks, are horror settings by design. They trap powerful beings, warp the land around their despair, and offer no clean exits. Using that setting as the backbone of a video game built around a Warlock’s pact magic is a genuine swing.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is not going anywhere. It will continue to dominate conversations about D&D games for years. But that dominance is exactly why a smaller, weirder, darker take on the license has room to exist. Warlock does not need to compete with Larian’s achievement. It needs to be itself.

Based on the Gamescom footage, Invoke Studios appears to understand that clearly. Whether the final game delivers on the premise is a question for later. For now, the direction alone is worth paying attention to.