However, Starbreeze, the company planning to publish the game, is overly optimistic about the project…

A few months ago, Starbreeze, best known for Payday, announced that a co-op game based on the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) IP (on which Baldur’s Gate 3 is based) would be made, and as for the latest adaptation of the Wizards of the Coast franchise, Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren claimed that development was in full swing. Sjögren was lying a bit, as the Swedish company’s financial report has surfaced, and the status of the project is a bit different from what Sjögren used to say!

“In early December, we were finally able to announce that we had licensed Dungeons and Dragons for use in our next game title. It is a brand that has always been at the top of our list of potential licenses for an action-adventure game. The Baxter team is currently in full pre-production and on track for a 2026 release,” Sjögren said. So they’re still in pre-production before development. Do they want to develop the game in two years? That doesn’t sound very positive. A AAA game nowadays takes four or even five years to develop!

Likely, Starbreeze will also use pricing to show that it will not be a AAA title for D&D; this was also made clear with Payday 3. On this point, Sjögren admitted that sales and player activity are far below Starbreeze’s hopes. No wonder they suddenly had the idea to implement an offline mode. Are they surprised that the public would rather play Payday 2?

All we know about the new D&D game is that it will take place in Waterdeep and that it will be action-oriented. Creative Director Leif Westerholm revealed that it won’t just be hack’n’slash: “When you have a group of adventurers, a party of adventurers, working together, it mustn’t be a hack and slash game. It’s more than that. It’s trying to look at what makes D&D special. And for me, that’s not rolling the 20 miss/hit. It’s more than that. It’s the connection between the players, how they overcome enemies that seem beyond us.”

Source: WCCFTech, Starbreeze