Since then, we’ve heard about Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance and Baldur’s Gate 3. This leaves us with at least six D&D games still currently waiting to be revealed, or five after this tweet from Hidden Path Entertainment.
— Hidden Path Ent (@HiddenPathEnt) March 2, 2021
A AAA, Third-Person, Open-World D&D Game
Hidden Path Entertainment is no stranger to working on big games. After being founded in 2006, the Washington-based video game development company released Defense Grid: The Awakening in 2009. The game went on to sell over half a million units. From there, they’ve collaborated with Valve on numerous projects. This includes Left 4 Dead 2, as well as Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Hidden Path Entertainment also worked on Age of Empires II: HD Edition back in 2013. Their work updated the graphics of the classic 1999 real-time strategy title. Not only that, but they also improved on its multiplayer component. This later resulted in Age of Empires II getting three expansions in subsequent years: The Forgotten, The African Kingdoms, and Rise of the Rajas. If anything else, this big-budget Dungeon & Dragons game is in good hands with Hidden Path Entertainment at the helm. Plus, as if that was not enough, Whitney “Strix” Beltràn is also on the board. He confirmed via this tweet that he will serve as the narrative director of the entire project. He is well-known for his award-winning tabletop horror RPG game Bluebeard’s Bride. He’s also written for games such as State of Decay 2 and Beyond Blue. With that said, neither one of the tweets released so far really confirms what kind of RPG this upcoming D&D title is going to be. However, if we were to hazard a guess, it’d probably play like a tabletop RPG but in a video game form. Further proof of this is that the writer position requires the applicant to have “voiced dialogue writing skills”, “narrative branching skills”, and “strong ensemble casts”. Furthermore, Unreal Engine 4 was also mentioned in the job listing. Although it’s surprising that they didn’t opt to use Unreal Engine 5 considering that the D&D title wouldn’t release until at least 2022 or 2023.
It’s a D&D World We Are Living In
The Dungeons & Dragons franchise is seeing more and more video games take place within its expansive universe that’s been more than four decades in the making. As we’ve already mentioned earlier, as many as eight are currently in development. This includes the aforementioned unnamed title from Hidden Path Entertainment. In addition to this, Larian Studios’ Baldure’s Gate 3 is also set in the Dungeons & Dragons world as well as Tuque Games’ Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance that puts R.A. Salvatore’s famous drow, Drizzt Do’Urden.
