Behold(er): Dungeons & Dragons invades horror video game sensation Dead By Daylight
Keep your eye on this Killer.
The next chapter for popular asymmetrical horror video game Dead By Daylight will include some Dungeons & Dragons flavour. Developer Behaviour Interactive and D&D’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, teased a crossover containing at least one very angry Beholder.
Posted to social media on May 9th, the short video shows the iconic monster locked in a dungeon cell and obviously pissed about it. After smashing against the bars of its cage and casting a massive, glowering eye around the room, the Beholder fades to black, and the video prompts players to wait until May 14th to learn more information.
Not coincidentally, that’s the date of Dead By Daylight’s 8th anniversary stream where the developer plans to both celebrate and lay out a roadmap for future updates. Killers and Survivors (the two player roles) normally release as discrete chapters, adding more playable heroes and villains to the competitive video game. Teams of four survivors work to restart generators and complete other objectives that will open an escape route, all while being hunted by a player-controlled Killer whose powers let them track down their less powerful prey, impale them on meat hooks and otherwise muck up their plans.
The Beholder makes sense as a villain - the inherently evil monstrosity is both an immediately recognisable facet of D&D’s modern brand while also brandishing a wide array of deadly abilities that could be translated into Dead By Daylight’s suite. In fact, Developer Behaviour could draw on any of several Beholder variants, such as the revenant Death tyrant or ghostly Doomsphere. Bog standard Beholders are plenty lethal on their own, packing various ray attacks from their eye stalks and a magic-negating field centred on their colossal central orb.
Fans of both franchises will likely spend the weekend theorising over the possibility of Baldur’s Gate 3 characters being thrown into the bloody arena. Larian Studios might not be involved with the project, but Hasbro owns the intellectual property rights to Karlach, Astarion, Minthara and everyone else from the wildly popular RPG video game. They’ve already expressed a keen interest in pivoting the beloved cast towards making more money for the struggling toy giant, and Hasbro’s business model hinges heavily on licensing out existing properties such as Monopoly and D&D.
Behaviour Interactive has cultivated Dead By Daylight’s player base through a combination of consistent updates to the video game alongside an open policy for crossover characters. Both the Xenomorph and Ripley from the Alien franchise are playable, as is Ash Williams from Evil Dead and possessed doll Chucky, whose long running horror series is a staple of the genre. D&D will be the first dip into fantasy (not counting Stranger Things) - and Wizards’ mega-popular tabletop RPG isn’t exactly known for its horror elements - but it’s a timely enough creative handshake. A non-zero number of people will love skewering Gale on those rusted hooks, I just know it.