Dragonlance WotC Teases Possible Dragonlance Video Game

WotC CEO Chris Cocks may have just teased a Dragonlance video game, amongst others. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, he made reference to the over 100 D&D video games of the past, and indicated that 6 new D&D video games will be coming out in the next 5 years -- Dark Alliance and Baldur's Gate 3 being the first two.

Previous Dragonlance video games​

Dark Alliance centers around Drizzt Do-Urden. BG3 is set around the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. But he goes on to talk about others:

"In one game you might run a thieves guild and traverse the Thieves Highway of Waterdeep, in another you might marshal dragon hosts in the war-torn world of Krynn. In still another, you might explore the very origins of the D&D universe in real-time combat. The brand's richness is an enabler of tons of amazing game experiences so rather than a challenge, we see it as an amazing opportunity."

There have been several Dragonlance video games before. Cocks says that video games are "core to our brand blueprint and how we plan to expand our audience", pointing out that the video game market is an order of magnitude larger than the tabletop gaming market.

Read more at the link below.

Video games are "core to the future of Dungeons & Dragons"

The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons is unlikely to be news to members of the games industry. Aside from the fact that …

www.gamesindustry.biz

 

[Iry]

A special place in my heart burns with eternal hatred for Dark Queen of Krynn.
Don't get me wrong. It's a very good game from a story perspective.
But the sheer amount of Save or Die spells made the experience miserable.
I liked all the other Gold Box Games, though!

 

[SkidAce]

So here I was excited to checkout The Dark Queen of Krynn and this was the game play view. What a let down!
Did people actually play this?

View attachment 138327

Yes.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I doubt a republishing of those old titles. Today they are bad even for a mobiles. If they are going to launch a Dragonlance videogame, they are going to start from zero, and maybe adding some little retro or vintage touch.

My doubts are if the future DR videogame will be an action-RPG as Icewind Dale: Dark Alliance or a CRPG as Baldurs' Gate III. My theory is it will be something to play offline, maybe something like Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

And the true goal is going to be to promote Dragonlance as franchise, and the characters to recover the lost fame. If after this fandom start to buy toys, comics and novels then the goal will be accomplished.

My suggestion is something like the "Dark Pack" seal by Onyx Path/White Wolf, allowing non-canon fan-art/amateur fiction written by the fandom, even webcomics. We can invent the excuse they happen in a parallel world or in a "akasha realm", something like the "travel to the past" in the novel "Tanis: the shadow years".

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

So here I was excited to checkout The Dark Queen of Krynn and this was the game play view. What a let down!
Did people actually play this?

There was a time when that was absolutely revolutionary and bonkers for us Dungeons & Dragons fans. I spent countless hours playing through the SSI "gold box" games like Pool of Radiance. I think that series of games helped hook me on D&D.

 

[Dire Bare]

It doesn't follow the rules system all to closely and also, because of Larians Origin system the party is a bit more wacky and illustrious than a typical D&D group.
A daywalking vampire spawn, a shar cleric with memory loss, a magic item draining chosen of Mystra in danger of exploding, a Githyanki soldier, a warlock and (optionally) you.
And there is lots of Larian style combat meaning everyone is jumping around the place, etc.

Heh, there's more than a few tabletop play groups with party make-ups weirder than this!

Then there's one of the best D&D games of all time, Planescape: Torment! BG3's party make-up doesn't hold a candle to the crew you collected in Torment!

 

[imagineGod]

And the gold/silver box games were among the most accurate translations of the actual rules that have ever been done. In this case it was AD&D. The only other one that compares for accuracy is Temple of Elemental Evil (3.5). They are more accurate than Neverwinter Nights 1/2 (3.0/3.5), which were reasonably accurate themselves.

I played Interplay/Bioware 1998 Infinity Engine powered Baldur's Gate.

Just six years post 1992 of those SSi games.

Baldur's Gate had way better graphics and game play, with its faux 3D isometric world map and AD&D2e rules, that its legacy still lives on today in enhanced graphics editions and even in newer games like Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I, for one, would love an exploration game such as Uncharted, Tomb Raider (new gen) or even Far Cry where you would play Drizzt, doing ranger stuff and finding relics in the realms.

Maybe an Assassin Creed take on Artemis in Waterdeep or, even better, a game of stealth and assassination where you play as Jarlaxle? Imagine Assassin Creed, but in Luskan (1st game), Menzo (2nd game) and Waterdeep + Neverwinter against Neverember (3rd game. Having to manage your disguise to avoid a drow panic, much like in VtM:Bloodline, would be pretty funny.

I think these would all be pretty great, but there's a reason why you very rarely see games like that which use IPs other than those owned by the developers/publishers themselves, which is because they're AAA games which are particularly expensive to develop (meaning they often get cancelled), and good to franchise (so that you can reuse code/assets/animations), and thus you don't really want to be losing any costs to licensing, or risking that the licensor might decide to drastically up your costs for a sequel.

Even with Star Wars, which is about the biggest licence around, way more action-adventure games have died whilst being developed than have actually been made - the recent Fallen Order game is one of the few to ever make it (which is an odd hybrid of like Uncharted and Dark Souls).

So I suspect the odds of a D&D-based licence being use for them are pretty low, unless, say, the alleged Drizzt TV series both gets made and goes big or something.

(It is pretty funny/sad that after all these years, Drizzt more or less remains the only seemingly-mass-marketable D&D character out there. It was true when I as 14, though maybe back then Raistlin gave him some competition, and it's true now. I suspect it won't be true in the future - I bet we see Exandria characters going pretty big - but they're not owned by WotC.)

 

[Parmandur]

I think these would all be pretty great, but there's a reason why you very rarely see games like that which use IPs other than those owned by the developers/publishers themselves, which is because they're AAA games which are particularly expensive to develop (meaning they often get cancelled), and good to franchise (so that you can reuse code/assets/animations), and thus you don't really want to be losing any costs to licensing, or risking that the licensor might decide to drastically up your costs for a sequel.

Even with Star Wars, which is about the biggest licence around, way more action-adventure games have died whilst being developed than have actually been made - the recent Fallen Order game is one of the few to ever make it (which is an odd hybrid of like Uncharted and Dark Souls).

So I suspect the odds of a D&D-based licence being use for them are pretty low, unless, say, the alleged Drizzt TV series both gets made and goes big or something.

(It is pretty funny/sad that after all these years, Drizzt more or less remains the only seemingly-mass-marketable D&D character out there. It was true when I as 14, though maybe back then Raistlin gave him some competition, and it's true now. I suspect it won't be true in the future - I bet we see Exandria characters going pretty big - but they're not owned by WotC.)

Absolutely right: worth noting that QotC is building their own studios because of this. Dark Alliance is developed by WotC (or AR least WotC bought the studio lock, stock, and barrel), and they are building a studio in Austin to work on games.

 

[Argyle King]

I doubt it will ever happen, but I think it would be cool to have an X-Comm (or Mutant Year Zero) style D&D game.

 

[Azzy]

I played Interplay/Bioware 1998 Infinity Engine powered Baldur's Gate.

Just six years post 1992 of those SSi games.

Baldur's Gate had way better graphics and game play, with its faux 3D isometric world map and AD&D2e rules, that its legacy still lives on today in enhanced graphics editions and even in newer games like Pillars of Eternity.

View attachment 138350

The evoltion of computers, operating systems, graphics cards, and monitors from 88 to 98 is staggering. "Just six years" after the second to last game with the Gold Box engine saw dramatic changes. In terms of PC OSs, that's a leap from MS-DOS v4 to Win98.