Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons Is Built Around Exploration, Not Waypoints

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is taking a deliberately restrained approach to navigation and quest guidance. Rather than continually directing players to their next story objective with traditional waypoints, Invoke Studios is designing its open-world single-player action-adventure around investigation, observation, conversations, and the satisfaction of arriving at discoveries through personal initiative.

The game will still include a compass at the top of the screen, although players can disable it. What it will not do is place the usual chain of objective markers between one quest beat and the next. That decision is central to the studio's broader goal: making the world feel like a place players actively engage with instead of a landscape crossed while following an icon.

Dominic Guay, general manager at Invoke Studios, discussed the philosophy at gamescom 2026. His explanation was straightforward: the team wants discoveries to feel earned. Players are expected to explore, speak with non-player characters, absorb clues, and consider their next move rather than simply trusting a marker to solve the navigational side of an adventure for them.

A world meant to be read, not just followed

Waypoint systems have become a familiar part of major open-world games because they provide clarity. They can help players stay focused, avoid getting stuck, and fit progression into shorter play sessions. But their convenience can also shape how players look at a game world. When the route is always visible, a settlement, forest, ruin, or road may become less of a space to investigate and more of an obstacle between the player and a destination.

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Invoke's team is intentionally pushing against that tendency with Warlock. Guay said the developers wanted players to engage with the setting and work things out for themselves. In that model, finding something matters because it follows from the player's actions, attention, and choices--not because the interface drew a direct line to it.

That approach puts more responsibility on world design, dialogue, and environmental communication. If a game does not provide a marker for every task, it needs to give players meaningful ways to understand where opportunities might be found. NPC conversations need to be useful. Settlements need to suggest that something is happening beneath the surface. Information discovered in one place needs to make players curious about another. The player's own memory and interpretation become part of progression.

For a Dungeons & Dragons game, that structure has an obvious thematic appeal. Tabletop campaigns are often driven by questions, rumors, local characters, incomplete knowledge, and unexpected detours. A group may hear that something is wrong in a village, see a suspicious detail before arriving there, or stumble into a problem from an angle no one anticipated. Warlock appears to be seeking a similar feeling in a single-player format, while retaining the scale and systems of an open-world action-adventure.

The Mystery system offers more than one path in

The most concrete example of this design philosophy is Warlock's Mystery system. Mysteries can be triggered by player actions, commonly around settlements, and are intended to be uncovered through exploration and information gathering. Instead of arriving at a location because an interface prompt has announced the beginning of a quest, players may first notice signs of an unusual situation, hear about it from an NPC, or encounter something related elsewhere.

Guay described Mysteries as having multiple entry points. That means the same underlying situation may be encountered from different directions, with the route into it changing the player's knowledge and possibly their initial response. Someone could discover a clue away from a settlement and enter it already suspicious that something is wrong. Another player might arrive without that context, talk to residents, and gradually realize there is more happening than it first appears.

This is a significant distinction from a more linear quest structure. In a conventional sequence, the player receives the quest, follows a designated path, completes the stated steps, and reaches an outcome. Warlock's structure aims to make the discovery process itself part of the adventure. The question is not solely whether the player can finish a Mystery, but how they came to understand that it existed and what they knew when they chose to engage with it.

The studio has indicated that the complexity of these Mysteries will vary. Some will be comparatively direct, while others will demand deeper engagement and more thorough exploration. That range could be important for keeping the system approachable. Not every activity needs to become an elaborate investigation, but the presence of more involved Mysteries gives players room to pursue a greater level of curiosity when they want it.

Creating multiple entry points is more difficult for developers than building a quest around one prescribed starting moment. Each possible avenue has to provide enough context to be compelling, while the eventual Mystery still needs to hold together regardless of the order in which the player finds information. Invoke has embraced that challenge, suggesting that the studio sees variable discovery as a key part of what will define Warlock rather than a minor feature layered onto a standard quest log.

Experience with guided open worlds informed the decision

The decision is especially notable because members of the core Warlock team have prior experience with open-world games that use more explicit guidance. Guay pointed to the team's work on Ubisoft's Watch Dogs series, where navigation aids and waypoint-driven objectives are part of a more traditional open-world framework.

That background appears to have informed, rather than prevented, the change in direction. The developers understand the value of heavy guidance, but they also recognize the trade-off it can create. Guay's view is that many players naturally begin following a waypoint without thinking once that option is consistently available. The game may remain functional and accessible, but the feeling of agency and curiosity can diminish. If the marker is always correct and always present, there can be less reason to ask why a location matters or to explore what lies beyond the prescribed route.

Warlock is therefore not simply removing a convenience feature for the sake of nostalgia or difficulty. The absence of traditional quest markers is tied to the intended emotional rhythm of the game. Invoke wants players to notice details, make connections, and feel responsible for their own discoveries. In a game built around magic, open-world exploration, and emergent gameplay, the studio evidently sees that uncertainty as a feature.

Compass options leave room for player preference

Importantly, Warlock will not abandon all navigational support. The on-screen compass offers a degree of orientation, and the option to turn it off gives players a choice over how much interface information they want. That is a more flexible position than treating minimal guidance as a requirement for everyone.

Players who want a little help maintaining direction can leave the compass active, while those looking for a more immersive or less cluttered experience can remove it. The key difference is that the compass is not being presented as a system that automatically leads players through every story beat. It can support exploration without replacing it.

This balance may matter for an open-world game that asks players to pay attention to clues. A fully unsupported design can become frustrating if players lack ways to orient themselves, especially in a large setting. Conversely, a dense layer of markers can undermine the very exploration the game is trying to encourage. Invoke's stated plan suggests it is looking for a middle ground: enough information for players to navigate the world, but not so much that the interface performs the act of discovery on their behalf.

A timely contrast in the hand-holding debate

The question of how much guidance games should provide remains a prominent design debate. It has recently been highlighted by discussion around PlayStation 5 exclusive Marvel's Wolverine, particularly its scent-tracking visual effect. The depiction of Logan's trail, sometimes referred to by players as "fart gas," has drawn criticism from people who would prefer the feature to be optional or removed.

Warlock and Marvel's Wolverine are fundamentally different games, so the comparison should not be overstated. Wolverine is a linear action-adventure whose combat unfolds in more constrained spaces, while Warlock is an open-world action-adventure centered on exploration and a distinctive magic system. The two games have different demands, pacing, and reasons for presenting information to players.

Still, the conversation illustrates why Invoke's choice is drawing attention. Guidance systems are not merely interface details; they influence how players interpret a world and how much ownership they feel over their progress. A trail, marker, or highlighted route can make a game more immediately readable. It can also make the intended solution feel preselected.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is choosing to put greater emphasis on the player's own curiosity. Its Mysteries, settlements, conversations, and multiple paths into an event are all being designed to support that goal. Whether that balance works will depend on how clearly the world communicates without overtly directing players, but Invoke's ambitions are clear. The studio wants players to feel that they discovered an adventure because they paid attention--not because a waypoint told them where to stand.