Last year saw the release of Montreal developer Tuque Games’ Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, yet another game based on the eternally popular tabletop RPG. An action RPG only loosely related to the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance duology, the game earned a mixed to negative reception from critics, with common points of criticism levied toward its combat, AI, and bugs. This did not demotivate the developers from beginning work on a brand-new AAA game based on the Dungeons & Dragons license, as announced by D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. Tuque Games even went through a rebrand in the process, with the developer now adopting the name Invoke Studios.
According to a press release by Wizards of the Coast, this new game will take advantage of the enhanced power of Unreal Engine 5. Dominic Guay, an industry veteran who had previously spent 20 years working at Ubisoft, has stepped up to lead the studio throughout the game’s development. Before joining Tuque Games last year, he served as the senior producer on the first Watch Dogs and its sequel.
A sign of big things to come
Wizards of the Coast also stated that it plans on expanding Invoke’s staff from 80 to over 200 employees by the time 2025 rolls around. Wizards of the Coast has set this goal so that Invoke can reach its full potential, which suggests that the publisher is planning something big for its subsidiary to tackle moving forward. Development remains in its early stages, so we do not have much concrete information regarding what this new Dungeons & Dragons game will look like.
Having said that, an article by Polygon has made note of the numerous open-world RPGs made by Guay and others within the Montreal developer community. This means that the new Dungeons & Dragons game could come in the form of an open-world RPG, although we will obviously have to wait and see. Hopefully, Invoke Studios’ next game will end up resonating better with audiences than Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance did.
