D&D Warlock Video Game Seems to be Set in Ravenloft

 Baldur's Gate 3 did an amazing job of translating about as directly as possible the gameplay mechanics of 5E D&D into a computer game. Sure, there are a few little changes here and there, like special attacks for different kinds of weapons that are kind of an alternate-universe version of 5.5's weapon masteries, and an in-depth crafting system through alchemy that I must confess I almost never used. But the way it handled combat, and how its spells and other class features worked were really quite close to how it works at the table.

My favorite part of the game (admittedly I fell off in Act Three from a combination of decision paralysis and my computer starting to struggle with a whole city's worth of stuff going on) is Act Two's Shadow-Cursed Lands, where things get very spooky.

I found myself really wishing we could get a BG3-style game set in Ravenloft, which might be my favorite canon D&D setting (I think Planescape could rival it, but at least in terms of 5E sourcebooks, Ravenloft has given me more to sink my teeth into).

Well, the upcoming game, Warlock, does not play at all like 5E - it's an over-the-shoulder 3rd person action game. But it does seem, at least partially, to be set within Ravenloft. This is purely from the gameplay trailer, so I don't know if this is confirmed in interviews or previews or whatever, but in the scene we get, the player character (as far as I know she's only referred to as "Warlock," even by her patron, who is Tasha, but she's played by Tricia Helfer, so we can call her Trish) enters a town on the outskirts of some massive towered keep, with NPCs saying things about "who the mists dragged in," which, to any D&D nerd, is a pretty clear indicator. The Mists are so central to Ravenloft that any use of that word is going to mean those capital-M Mists that the various Domains of Ravenloft float within. Later in the video, Trish remarks to her imp familiar (I assume familiar. Maybe it's Skeever, Azalin Rex's familiar) that the Mists are eating at the base of the tower she descends.

In the current Ravenloft lore, the domain of Darkon is slowly dissolving after the escape of Azalin Rex, its Darklord, and the Mists themselves are basically advancing through the domain, eating away at its reality (the locals calling it the Shroud).

I have no idea if this game will actually be any good. The gameplay preview certainly looks cool, but naturally it remains to be seen how much of that translates into satisfying gameplay. Trish, or apparently Kaatri now that I've actually looked up the character's name, seems to have a lot of different abilities, but I wonder if this is all context-based or if we can pick and choose how they're customized.

Anyway, I get that a place like the Forgotten Realms is closer to the core fantasy of what D&D goes for, genre-wise, but I'm always happy to see them lean into spooky stuff, and a visit to Ravenloft could be a lot of fun.