If there's one thing that Dead by Daylight has never shied away from, it's ideas that would seem outlandish to most. While the vast majority of horror-focused asymmetrical multiplayer games are grounded in gritty realism expected of the genre, Behaviour Interactive rarely plays it safe. So I was only a little surprised with Chapter 32 of Dead by Daylight: Dungeons and Dragons.
For an outsider, it'd be easy to consider the inclusion of a fantasy-based tabletop RPG outlandish. But thinking so would be forgetting that Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular tabletop RPG of the moment and that fantasy, like most other genres, plays a key part in horror.
Dark fantasy, in particular, is well portrayed in this chapter thanks to the foreboding arrival of the Killer, the Lich Vecna. Vecna has been terrorizing D&D players since time immemorial, and regardless of how many times he's put back into the ground, he always seems to find a way back to run amok. This fits in well with the Dead by Daylight universe, where Survivors and Killers are both doomed to keep on repeating this cycle of generators, escaping, killing, and so forth.
Vecna himself is a terrifying figure to behold. While not necessarily the strongest of Killers in the entirety of Dead by Daylight, I can't deny how bloody fun he is to both play and play against. During my first match as a Survivor, the scream that ripped past my lips at seeing him fly towards me was repeated many times throughout the rest of the night. Even playing as him was just as exhilarating. Being able to fly over pallets and through windows is certainly a game changer, and while skillful Survivors will know how to counter it, there's no denying that Vecna is one of the most unique and interactive Killers within the Dead by Daylight roster.
The best thing about Vecna, though? You never stop guessing. Alongside his ability to fly, Vecna has three other spells up his skeletal sleeve: Flight of the Damned, which sends out 5 purple phantoms that can injure and down Survivors if they are caught in the blast; Dispelling Sphere, an invisible AOE object that disables Survivor's magical items and reveals their auras, and Mage Hand, a spell that conjures up a gnarly hand to block and pick up pallets. On paper, that sounds like a lot to both remember and try and avoid, but the dev team clearly already thought of that and have added new, magical items that spawn alongside Vecna to help Survivors fight back against his malicious tricks.
These magical items can be found in chests. Most will help you see Vecna's aura as he flies or use one of his many abilities, but others will give you more of an edge, like The Hand or Eye of Vecna. The former lets Survivors teleport from locker to locker, while the latter grants Survivor invisibility and the Haste status effect for a short time after exiting a locker.
The inclusion of these items is, without a doubt, the best part of this chapter. After playing over 1000 hours of Dead by Daylight, I'll be the first to admit that gameplay can get a little stale when you're hit with the same perks, Killers, etc, over and over again. Behavior has tried to remedy this with modes like Chaos Shuffle and the upcoming 2v8 mode, but those looking for excitement in the main game mode are unfortunately left to their own devices to keep things from getting boring.
With these magical accessories, though? Now, Survivors have other things to do besides making generators. If they want to get ahead, they'll need to seek out and equip these items as soon as they can.
This brings me to the chapter's Survivors: bards Aestri Yazar, a female-presenting elf, and Baermar Uraz, a male-presenting human. While completely original -- unlike Vecna -- the two bring the world of Dungeon and Dragons into the fog in their own unique ways. For one thing, there are perks that D&D fans will recognize, like Bardic Inspiration, and the staples of the role-playing game, like their ever-present lute that embodies the spirit of the bard class. If Vecna is decay and destruction, Aestri and Baermar are joy and rejuvenation.
But what really sells this chapter as a Dungeon and Dragon's crossover is that by the nature of their cosmetics, Aestri and Baermar really are just D&D characters to the player. A lot like Legion, 4 Killers morphed into 1 for gameplay purposes, Aestri and Baermar come with cosmetics that can be mixed and matched to suit whatever the player is going for. In one game, I gave Baermar the hat that comes with Aestri's bard skin, and in the next, Aestri was rocking that mohawk from Baermar in a way that I didn't completely hate (but everyone else in my party did).
It goes without saying this is one of the biggest and best chapters for Dead by Daylight, and a real return to form. The chapter has everything from Matthew Mercer voicing the Killer to a map that is as beautiful as it is haunting, with so many twists and turns that it's easy to see that this whole project was nothing but a labor of love. It's nothing short of a success. So it is painful that so soon after its release it was met with layoffs for the team over at Behaviour Interactive. What should have been a chapter met with celebration over its success, has instead felt like someone just rolled Nat 1 three times in a row. The chapter is fantastic, no doubt about it, but to lose hard-working members of the development team so soon after? I won't pretend that it isn't a bitter pill to swallow, and I can only hope that future chapters will be met with the bang it deserves and not a whimper.
Dead by Daylight Chapter 32: Dungeons and Dragons is available now for all platforms.
