Warlock Bets a D&D Open World Can Live Without Waypoints

Invoke Studios is building Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons for a 2027 launch with no quest waypoints. Players get an optional compass, a Mystery system, and spells that have to do the map’s job. The people saying this out loud spent years making heavier open worlds.

Dominic Guay, general manager at the Montreal studio, put the case at gamescom 2026. A lot of players, he said, will follow a marker until curiosity dies, so this D&D game is trying not to offer one.

No Waypoint, One Optional Compass

Warlock is a single-player, third-person action-adventure set in a dark open world inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast original third-person action-adventure for 2027 when it unveiled the project on December 11, 2025, with Invoke as the in-house studio and PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox as the platforms.

You play Kaatri, a veteran warrior who makes a pact with the witch Tasha and takes on warlock magic to find someone she has lost. Tricia Helfer, known for Battlestar Galactica and Lucifer, is doing the performance capture. Maggie Robertson, who played Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village, is Tasha. An imp named Skev walks with her and talks her through a land he already knows.

There is a compass at the top of the screen, and you can switch it off. There is no glowing trail from story beat to story beat. Guay said the team still gives you tools to push the plot, but it will not hold your hand down a dotted line. You are supposed to talk to people, look at the ground, and decide the next move yourself.

How Mysteries Replace Quest Markers

The replacement is called a Mystery. Invoke treats it like a side quest that starts when you do something, usually in a settlement, rather than when a marker tells you the quest has begun. Guay said those jobs are harder to build because they have more than one door.

HOW A MYSTERY STARTS

• Inside the town: You pick up the trouble by talking to NPCs and watching how the settlement behaves.
• A missed detail: In a gamescom hands-off demo, bloody drag marks behind an open door were easy to walk past on purpose until you got close enough to touch them.
• The long way in: Guay said you can chance on the same Mystery from a totally different place, then arrive already sure something is wrong.
• A different approach: That early find changes how you walk into the settlement, because you already know it is fishy.

Some Mysteries are fairly straight. Others, Guay said, need more digging. The design is the opposite of a checklist icon. If you never notice the blood, that thread may simply stay on the floor.

That is also the leak. A game can hide its doors and still be solved by a guide that lists every cellar. Invoke is betting players will look at Darkon first.

Dominic Guay Helped Build the Other Kind of Map

Guay is not a tabletop purist walking into AAA with a blank resume. Credits list him as senior producer on Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2, and as technical director on Far Cry 2. He was at Ubisoft Montreal from 2000 to 2021, then joined Wizards of the Coast in April 2021 as vice president and general manager of the studio that became Invoke.

We wanted them to engage with the world, to figure things out and feel that when they found things, it was based on their actions and not just blindly trusting a waypoint.

Dominic Guay, General Manager, Invoke Studios, at gamescom 2026

He told the gamescom roundtable the same thing in plainer production language. Warlock is an exploration-driven open world, he said, and you are not just going to follow a waypoint. The core team has already shipped the heavy-handed version. What happens, he said, is normal: people stop bothering to look, because the diamond already knows.

Jeff Hattem, Invoke’s founder and VP of creative, has been framing the other half of the wager. He has said D&D’s heart is player agency, and that the studio chose to put that agency in magic rather than in a branching morality play. The story still has written set pieces. The improvisation is supposed to live in how you cross a gap, crack a fight, or notice a door.

Black Tentacles Have a Second Job

If the map will not tug you, the spell list has to. On August 25, 2026, Wizards and Invoke put first gameplay at Opening Night Live in front of a packed gamescom hall. The reel ran about eight minutes and treated magic as a toolbox, not a colored key for a single lock.

Hattem walked through the kit: Eldritch Blast, Gust of Wind, Levitate, Black Tentacles, plus new work tied to Tasha, including Tasha’s Leash, ethereal tendrils that grab objects or monsters and can throw them. Fae Switch, an older spell from D&D’s 4th edition, is being rebuilt so Kaatri can swap places with a foe in real time. There are no dice. Guay was blunt about that. This is a real-time action game, not a tabletop simulator.

THE SPELLS THAT REPLACE THE MAP

Hattem’s favorite example is a barred gate. In most action games that gate means stop. Once Misty Step exists, he said, the same bars become an attractor. You start asking what the designers hid behind a door they can no longer lock. New spells are also optional finds, Guay said, so two players can leave Darkon with different loadouts because they walked different ground.

Raw Magic is the upgrade hook. Tasha teaches Kaatri to see it in the world and harvest it, including from large enemies. You spend it to grow and reshape spells instead of pouring points into a generic tree. Cantrips such as Eldritch Blast stay in the hand. Bigger spells spend a limited resource in a fight and come back when the fight is over. Kaatri is still a Pact of the Blade warlock, so she can summon weapons, including a hammer, and dance between a spell that makes an opening and a hit that spends it.

Rituals go further. Downpour, shown in the demo, turns a sunny approach into a storm so Witch Bolt can use rain and a metal pole as a circuit. Combat difficulty can be set apart from how much you wander, which is a quiet admission that not every player will enjoy being lost.

After the $56 Million Write-Down, Two Games Remain

This would be easier to shrug off as a design tweet if Hasbro had a fat bench of D&D games. It does not. On the second-quarter 2026 call, CEO Chris Cocks said the company had reviewed its digital slate, cancelled several games dated 2028 and beyond, and recorded a 56 million dollar non-cash write-down on related capitalized costs.

WHAT HASBRO IS STILL FINISHING

• The cut: Several unreleased games planned for 2028 and later are gone, and the charge landed in Q2 2026.
• The keepers: Cocks said Exodus and Warlock remain the next two significant owned games, both planned for 2027.
• The test: Hasbro later said both titles meet its bar for owned publishing, including big audience potential and a path beyond the first game.
• The clock: Cocks called 2026 the peak year for digital spend as those two games enter their finishing phases.

Hasbro has also told investors both games have been in development since 2019. Warlock is not a side experiment hanging off a huge video-game plan. It is one of two AAA bets the parent is willing to finish after it stopped paying for the rest of the later calendar.

John Hight, then president of Wizards of the Coast, said at the December 2025 unveil that warlock magic always comes at a cost. The corporate cost is simpler. If the no-waypoint pitch fails in 2027, there is not a row of sibling D&D action games queued behind it.

Inside Darkon, the Mists Still Eat the Map

The setting is not the Forgotten Realms. Hattem said the game takes place in Darkon, a Domain of Dread usually sealed by mist that people try to leave, not enter. Kaatri is trying to get in. A Domain of Dread normally has a Dark Lord. In this version the lord is rumored to have escaped, and the land is on the brink. The demo settlement shown to press, Grekshak, was already whispering about people disappearing into a cellar.

That geography does some of the waypoint’s old work. A dread realm with hungry mist does not need a diamond to feel dangerous. It still needs readable clues, or players will bounce. Skev is native to the place and exists, Hattem said, to help you explore it, which is guidance by another name. The bet is that an imp’s chatter and a blood trail beat a HUD arrow, not that the studio offers zero help.

THE ROAD TO A 2027 LAUNCH

1. 2012: Jeff Hattem founds Tuque Games in Montreal.
2. October 2019: Wizards of the Coast acquires the studio and puts it on D&D.
3. June 22, 2021: Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance ships as a co-op slasher.
4. October 2022: The studio rebrands as Invoke and starts selling itself as a AAA D&D house under Guay.
5. February 24, 2025: Dark Alliance servers go offline and the game leaves storefronts, with offline play left for owners.
6. December 11, 2025: Warlock is announced at The Game Awards with a 2027 window.
7. July 2026: Hasbro records the write-down and says Warlock is still on track.
8. August 25, 2026: The eight-minute gameplay reel debuts at gamescom Opening Night Live.

Dark Alliance is the scar under this wager. Invoke’s last D&D game was a different pitch, a different camera, and a weak run, and it was pulled from sale. The new one is single-player, Unreal Engine 5, and aimed at a denser map rather than a tourist continent. Steam already lists a planned 2027 release on Steam and a mature-content note for frequent violence or gore, strong language, and partial nudity. The store page is live. The waypoints are not.

The Search Bar Still Beats a Compass

Hand-holding is a live fight in 2026, which is why a D&D open world with no markers travels. Marvel’s Wolverine, a very different linear game, drew heat for Logan’s scent trail, the so-called fart gas some players want to switch off. Warlock is answering a broader fatigue: the feeling that an open world is a corridor with extra grass.

The objection that actually threatens Invoke is drier. Hide the diamond and a walkthrough puts it back, complete with screenshots of the cellar door. Curiosity dies just as surely if the second stop is a search bar. Guay’s own test still stands. If you never have to bother, you stop looking.

Hasbro has already decided this is a finishing-phase game for 2027. The compass can be switched off. The Mystery still has to fire when a player notices the blood, and not only when a guide says so.