Behaviour Interactive creative director Dave Richard and head of partnerships Mathieu Cote sat down with IGN at the Game Developers Conference recently, and the conversation went somewhere nobody expected: a Dead by Daylight soulslike.
Richard did not bury the lead. "I want a DBD Souls game," he said flatly. “That's all I want. I want like Elden Ring in the world of DBD. That would be cool.”
Идея, которая постоянно возвращается
What makes this more than a throwaway comment is that Richard brought it up twice in the same interview. When asked where he sees Dead by Daylight in ten years, he circled back to the soulslike concept unprompted, framing it as one of the "other experiences" that could pull new audiences into the DBD universe alongside the core asymmetrical multiplayer game.
He also dropped a number that puts the ambition in context. Dead by Daylight currently sits at 70 million players. Richard's stated target? "A billion eventually. Bare minimum."
That is not a modest goal for a horror game that launched in 2016, but the official Dead by Daylight news page shows a team that has never stopped expanding its reach.
Вселенная, которая уже простирается далеко
The soulslike pitch makes more sense when you look at how far Behaviour has already pushed the DBD brand beyond its original format. The studio has produced a dating sim spinoff (Hooked on You), a choice-driven narrative game, comics, a board game, and a film adaptation in partnership with Blumhouse and Atomic Monster that Cote mentioned is still in progress.
Cote's take on the spinoff pipeline was genuine enthusiasm rather than corporate talking points: "Even just as a huge nerd to see talented people who are very good at the medium you don't know, show you what you've inspired them to do, and that's pretty cool."
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The Dead by Daylight movie with Blumhouse and Atomic Monster has been announced but has no confirmed release date. Cote noted he has no reference point for how long a film typically takes to produce.Почему soulslike на самом деле подходит
The idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. The Souls series and Dead by Daylight share more tonal DNA than most people realize: oppressive atmosphere, death as a constant mechanic, and lore that lives in environmental details rather than cutscenes. Translating the Entity, the Fog, and DBD's roster of killers into a third-person action RPG framework is a genuine creative possibility, not just a fever dream.
The key here is that DBD already has a deep enough lore foundation to support a single-player narrative experience. The Entity's realm, the survivors' backstories, the killer origins, there is material there that the asymmetrical multiplayer format barely scratches.
Whether Behaviour builds it themselves or partners with an external studio the way they have for other spinoffs remains an open question. Richard framed it as a personal wish rather than an announced project, so you'll want to temper expectations accordingly. For the latest on what Behaviour is actually shipping, make sure to check out more:
