The newest D&D game added to publisher Wizards of the Coast’s roster is being led by former God of War and Star Wars Jedi director Stig Asmussen, and while its “action-adventure” focus is a significant departure from Baldur’s Gate 3, still the talk of D&D games among many, Wizards says it isn’t done with the crunchy CRPG space.
Speaking with Polygon at Summer Game Fest, Wizards president and former World of Warcraft veteran John Hight, clearly cognizant of the hunger for more Baldur’s Gate, says a D&D game could be many different things, but “Don’t get me wrong, we are going to do CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3.”
With its partnership with developer Giant Skull, led by Asmussen after he left Respawn following Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Wizards hopes to see a “manifestation” of D&D channeling some of the action greats.
After “50 years of [Dungeon Masters] coming together” to flesh out the world of D&D, creating “the things that form the dreams and the nightmares of people, from gelatinous cubes to owl bears,” Hight says “it’s really important that any manifestation of them in a game be as good as what’s in our own minds.”
“That’s a tall order. And I think about what Stig and Patrick Murphy did on God of War 3, taking that pantheon of both gods and the crazy monsters from mythology and bringing them to life. It’s like, wow, what if we could unleash them on D&D?”
In an announcement statement, Asmussen previously said Giant Skull’s D&D game hopes to “craft a rich new DUNGEONS & DRAGONS universe filled with immersive storytelling, heroic combat and exhilarating traversal that players will fully embrace.”
He revisits those pillars – storytelling, combat, traversal – here. “We’re experts at melee combat, so that’s something that John got to see and it translates very well [to D&D],” he tells Polygon.
Asmussen is looking to build on what Star Wars Jedi established and demonstrated, acknowledging that “there’s probably still legacy debt that’s in the Jedi games from bad decisions that we made early on. Some of those bad decisions were based on momentum because we don’t get stuck. We just want to keep on moving forward.”
With this new start at a new studio, and working with a storied IP, there’s space to move on from those missteps and make something better, he suggests, hinting at “a motion model that’s so much faster now, so much more fluid.” It sure sounds like we’re still dealing with third-person character action, Asmussen’s specialty, but through the lens of D&D weapons and warriors, there’s huge potential for a range of experiences there.
