While this may be the first game to open with the Rebel Wolves logo, it is far from the first game from the people behind the new studio.
Even if you didn’t know that Rebel Wolves is made up of scores of former CD Projekt Red developers – including its director, who previously helmed The Witcher 3 – you’d feel it.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is an RPG about choice, corruption, and the player’s power fantasy. By pitching an RPG that’s full of intrigue and intricate storytelling, but setting it in a small (by today’s standards) open world, it shines as an example of the genre that doesn’t go big for the sake of it. This is the story of a tiny slice of Europe dealing with an existential threat, and it’s an incredibly strong ‘debut’ from the team.
The player controls Coen, who is turned into a Dawnwalker early in the game. Part-human, part-vampire, Dawnwalkers can live freely in the day, unlike the true vampires of this realm. Coen pursues his family, who are captured by a coterie of vampiric villains led by the evil Brencis.
Coen must dispatch Brencis’ generals and then the big bad himself before 30 in-game days elapse, lest Brencis reign as the leader of this land forever. What Coen fits into those 30 days is up to the player.
In The Blood of Dawnwalker, most tasks will come with a time cost. It may take four in-game hours to wait for a companion to arrive, or a potion may take an entire day to brew. The Blood of Dawnwalker sets time up as an expendable tool, something that the player should worry about when it comes to what they’re going to spend their month doing.
In reality, it’s far from strict. Aside from a few time-based quests, which heavily warn the player of their imminent expiration, the ticking clock element of The Blood of Dawnwalker didn’t massively impact my experience.
Perhaps if more missions featured more punishing time penalties, then that pressure would be more keenly felt, but in practice, when I finished the game and had done virtually everything I was interested in doing (which was most of it), I still had around ten days left before the coronation.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/review/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review/
