Image: Critical Role, Airship Syndicate
Crtical Role's CEO Travis Willingham says they hope to share "something exciting" toward the end of the year, or in early 2025.
Critical Role, the company behind the popular Dungeons & Dragons YouTube series of the same name, has confirmed that it is in "active" pursuit of creating a video game. The company confirmed this through a Rolling Stone interview held with its cast of voice actors, including Matthew Mercer, Laura Bailey, and CEO Travis Willingham.
When asked if the company has been thinking about creating their own video games, Bailey was the first to chime in. "We've been talking about creating a video game since we first started playing together," she shared.
Willingham expanded on this, saying, "I would say it's active pursuit on our end." He explained that the group has been having "necessary conversations" to find out how they can pursue this endeavour "smartly."
"It's an entire enterprise that's separate from what we do on Beacon, Twitch, or YouTube; it's separate from the animated series, and it comes with its [own] understanding that has to be undertaken," Willingham added.
Although this seemed to be a pretty vague answer at first, Willingham further elaborated that Critical Role is "starting to come to the end of a long road" that the company has taken in the last couple of years.
Collabs played a ‘critical role’ in dipping toes in the gaming industry
Recent collaborations with Critical Role have played an essential role in the pursuit of making video games, by the sound of it. Some of these collaborations include a Baldur's Gate collab 5 years ago with Laura Bailey and Liam O'Brien, an Among Us crossover that featured cosmetic items featuring Critical Role's characters, and most recently, a Wayfinder collab featuring the Critical Role Support Pack, released in October of this year.
"Those collaborations we've had with various partners have been little toe dips in the pool just to see how it feels," Travis shared. "There's a lot of upheaval in the interactive space right now. And we've seen studios sort of bear and weather those strains. It's trying to become smarter about it and find out how we might fit into that larger ecosystem."
"Hopefully, we'll have something really exciting to share, maybe around the end of the year, maybe at the beginning of 2025, just in time for our 10-year anniversary. But it's something we've definitely had our minds on," he said.
Critical Role first aired in March 2015 as a video series on Geek & Sundry, and became independent in 2019. The show chronicles the cast's own Dungeons and Dragons campaign adventures. Now in their third campaign, Critical Role has produced numerous spinoffs and special episodes throughout the years.
The Critical Role franchise has expanded into various projects, including the creation of its own Tabletop RPG (TTRPG) Daggerheart, and the production of the animated series Legend of Vox Machina in partnership with Amazon Prime Video. Another animated series based on its second campaign is also in production for Prime Video, titled Mighty Nein.
Although the company focuses mostly on Dungeons & Dragons, Tabletop RPGs, immersive storytelling, and roleplaying, video games are also closely linked to its brand, especially since its core audience and the talents within its team are heavily involved or invested in them.
The entire cast of actors don't just comprise talents for the web series, but are also known for their extensive work as talented voice actors in the gaming industry. Matthew Mercer, for one, is known for many roles like Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil 6, and most recently Vicent Valentine for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Goro Majima in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Minsc in Baldur's Gate 3, and many other roles in popular games like Persona 5, Starfield, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Laura Bailey is most known for her role as Abby in The Last of Us Part II, Wei in Dota 2, and Miss Fortune in the Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, and has received nominations and awards for a few roles she played, including Abby. Other members of the cast include Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Travis Willingham (Marvel's Avengers), Liam O'Brien (Injustice 2), Taliesin Jaffe (Horizon Forbidden West), Marisha Ray (The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III) and Sam Riegel (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice).
D&D has inspired multiple video games and video game adaptations, the most popular of which in recent times has been Baldur's Gate 3.
