Baldur’s Gate 3’s success is hard for anyone to match, but it isn’t going to stop Hasbro from trying to get a slice of the action. Looking to conjure up the same level of success, Hasbro and Invoke Studios are working on a brand-new Dungeons & Dragons game, as it looks to create a BG3-level banger all of its own making.
In a recent interview with Games Industry, Dan Ayoub – head of digital product development at Wizards of the Coast, which Hasbro owns – details plans for new PS5 games and new Xbox games on the horizon. With Baldur’s Gate 3 bringing in absolute bank for Hasbro on the licensing front, Ayoub explains that “one of the great things we took from the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 is that people really, really like a great, well-executed DnD game, so we’ve got something like that.” The forthcoming RPG game from Invoke Studios has been in development since 2022, and is currently being built with Unreal Engine 5.
For Ayoub, looking to BG3 developer Larian Studios remains an important influence. “For the company and for myself, that was a fantastic example of execution of the brand in an authentic way,” says Ayoub. It wasn’t just lucrative for Hasbro as a business, though. Baldur’s Gate 3 has picked up a multitude of rewards in the last year, beating out stiff competition from some of the best games of 2023, like Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2. Ayoub tells Games Industry that Baldur’s Gate 3 players “loved it and are asking for more.”
Could Invoke’s DnD title fulfil that request? Larian Studios has confirmed it’s stepping away from the Baldur’s Gate franchise and won’t be developing Baldur’s Gate 4, as it focuses on delivering multiple new projects instead. That leaves a considerable gap in the market to fill, but that’s a tall task for any studio. Invoke’s team features former Ubisoft veteran Dominic Guay, who contributed to the Far Cry and Splinter Cell series and the creation of the open world game franchise, Watch Dogs.
In a statement about the project in October 2022, Guay says Invoke has “the largest and most popular brand of fantasy role-playing games in Dungeons & Dragons.” The franchise’s legacy is important to Invoke, too, as Guay adds that “such a brand, with 50 years of history behind it, inspires developers and gives us enormous creative freedom.”
Invoke has already released one Dungeons and Dragons game already, Dark Alliance, back in 2021, when it was previously known as Tuque Games. With Hasbro confident that its next DnD project can match up to the standards set by Baldur’s Gate 3, we’re more than keen to get a first glimpse of it.
In related RPG news, Starfield’s first DLC finally has a launch window, and Bethesda wants to bring Fallout 5 to you quicker as it aims to increase the studio’s output.