A new trailer for the upcoming D&D game Warlock has just dropped at GamesCom’s Opening Night Live, promising a more action packed take on the world’s first roleplaying game. Practically all of the best DnD games ever made have been RPGs of one class or another, but Warlock is a third person action adventure – and the new trailer reveals it will focus on systems-driven combat that puts me in mind of both Baldur’s Gate 3 and, weirdly, Control.
Player character Kaatri is a blademaster who has sealed a pact with the archfey Tasha, agreeing to serve the powerful witch in exchange for a portion of her magical power. The spells she learns from her pact get used inside and out of combat. A telekinetic Mage Hand allows Kaatri to clear obstacles from her path, yeet them at her enemies, or pull them down onto their heads; Misty Step acts as both a combat dodge and a way to pass through grates; and entangling magical vines can both hold platforms for traversal puzzles and tie an enemy in place.
It’s always elegant when a game makes the same abilities usable in and out of combat, good for immersion and for muscle memory alike. In combat there seem to be limited charges for each magical power, but outside combat their use looks unlimited. The fact that most powers have a traversal use as well as a combat use also means there’s scope for Metroidvania style progression gating, though that hasn’t been advertised so far.
There’s also an elemental effects system. Close to the start of the trailer, Kaatri clears the vines obstructing a gate by hurling a lantern at it to light it on fire, then dousing it with a bucket of water. Near the end of the trailer Kaatri enacts a short ritual and summons a rainstorm, dousing several bonfires and seemingly rendering a group of zombies more susceptible to a lightning strike attack.
I could pull out any number of comparison points for this kind of gameplay. CRPG gamers will be most familiar with it from Baldur’s Gate 3, there are similar ideas in the two most recent Zelda games, and we could point to Bioshock for an example of these attacks showing up in an action game context. Kaatri even uses telekinesis to knock an enemy into a hole at one point, which is basically a kick – if she can stack boxes to break out of the critical path we might be able to call this an immersive sim!
But why does the third person action make me think of Control? Partly it’s the aesthetics, like the particle effects that accompany main character Kaatri’s dodge, or the way different environments connect together with slightly dreamlike transitions. Partly it’s the way her spells mean she and her enemies are only loosely associated with the ground. Mainly, it’s the way that Kaatri’s nonlethal spells interact with the element system so that the levels themselves become a key resource for harming enemies – or at least, that’s what the trailer is trying to sell.
I like what I’m seeing here, but this trailer is a very carefully stage-managed version of the game. The HUD is extremely restrained: there’s no targeting reticle, no markers to indicate when you’ve highlighted an interactable object to use your Mage Hand on. I don’t doubt that this trailer came from recording a build of the game, but I don’t expect that the actual game to look like this. Nor do I expect that an actual player – without a script of when to show off each ability- to put so much emphasis onto looking cool unless it’s also the most efficient way to kill every enemy on screen. A real player might use mage hand to pull a pillar onto a cultist’s head once to see what happens, but 99% of players won’t do it more than once unless it can trigger really goofy ragdolls.
While the trailer is staged, that doesn’t mean the finished game won’t contain all these elements; I just don’t expect the reality of playing with them to be so slick. And the sales pitch is a strong one: who doesn’t want to swing a sword and sling spells? Particularly with Lady Dimitrescu’s voice actor Maggie Robertson giving you instructions.
What do you think? Is this promising, or are you sceptical of just how slick it looks? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
