The Blood of Dawnwalker is by far one of my favorite games released this year. I gave it a whopping 9.5 out of 10, which in my eyes is as good as a 10, since there is no such thing as the perfect game. And one of the main reasons the game got that high of a grade from me is its time-passing mechanic, a simple addition that turns the game’s atmosphere and pressure up to 11.
And it puts it way above every other RPG I’ve played recently. Games with a heavy sense of urgency, like Cyberpunk 2077, tend to easily break your immersion when you all of a sudden start spending months of in-game time chasing down every single question mark and quest, all the while forcing yourself to believe that your protagonist has, maybe, weeks to live.
That dilutes RPGs as a genre a lot, and I was more than happy to see a western RPG finally sink its teeth (pun intended) into a mechanic that, well, fixes that whole problem.
But over on Nexus Mods, the most popular mod for The Blood of Dawnwalker does exactly the opposite: it removes the 30-day in-game timer completely by increasing the days to 90 and stripping level-ups of their time requirements. That basically means that players who install this mod will be able to do every single thing the game has to offer in just one playthrough, defeating the whole purpose of its primary design philosophy.
The story thus plays out in exactly the same way as every other RPG with such a narrative thread (again, Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example). Nothing about it will stand out to the player, and they will feel no pressure or urgency to complete the quest within the allotted time.
Not to mention, a lot of important quests and characters can exhaust many of your time slots, forcing you into roleplaying as a different kind of Coen each time – one who has different priorities and ideas in mind about how to deal with Brencis.
In short, you are robbing yourself of a great experience and heavy replayability, which The Blood of Dawnwalker has plenty of. Well, that is if you do not just straight up delete a primary mechanic in the game. It’s like removing heroes from Dota 2. Or taking guns out of Call of Duty. It may work to some extent, yes, but it’s not the way the developers made the game, and since every secondary and tertiary design revolves around this one core concept, you’re ultimately playing a very different game.
It really does beg the question: why even bother purchasing this game at all? If you don’t want to play a game, why buy it? I understand folk who buy games and don’t play them; that’s life getting in the way, mixed with the irresistible magnetism of live services, but I really cannot for the life of me fathom why someone would spend $70 on The Blood of Dawnwalker and proceed to butcher the game’s core.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.destructoid.com/blood-of-dawnwalker-time-mod/
