During Gamescom 2025, Rebel Wolves gave press members a behind-closed-doors presentation of its upcoming narrative sandbox RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker. The presentation showed a few tweaks made based on user feedback, such as a new camera that's further away from the main character and an optional non-directional combat system, and demonstrated in greater depth the different ways of tackling the same quest depending on whether it is day or night. The day/night cycle changes not only the environment and the NPCs, but also Coen himself, who can only access vampiric abilities at nighttime.
Following the presentation, I sat down with Creative Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz (formerly Lead Quest Designer on The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and then Quest Director on Cyberpunk 2077 while at CD Projekt RED), brother of The Blood of Dawnwalker Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, to discuss this exciting new project scheduled to launch some time in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Why did you pick this kind of setting? For example, the vampires here choose to attack openly, which is the opposite of what they usually do.
Generally speaking, we wanted to tell a story about vampires that took over a part of human society, to explore how these interactions could work if vampires stepped out of the shadows, and we looked for a setting that could allow for that in a believable way. We chose the 14th century because that's when the Black Plague hit Europe, decimating the population and upending the established world order. Everyone was busy with this cataclysm that happened.
We also looked for an isolated place where no outside influences would risk their rule, and that's why it takes place in this valley named Vale Sangora, which is a fictional valley, but if you imagine a place like this, it could be a believable setting in the Carpathian Mountains. The idea is they chose this place because it's very secluded from the world has quite a human population. There are other reasons that we're exploring in the game. Usually, in the world of The Blood of Dawnwalker, the vampires also stick to the shadows and don't really expose themselves to humanity. But in this case, they saw an opportunity to step out and take over, because the Black Plague was doing what it was doing and they offered people salvation. Their vampiric blood has special properties; it allows humans to heal faster and fight back the Black Plague, right? So, they came out of the shadows and got rid of the previous ruthless lord that the local population hated, and they built this cult around themselves, inspired by Christianity, twisting its dogmas, posing as these saints or like these messianic figures that will now protect the local populace. That's how they bought loyalty.
But they aren't trying to replace Christianity outright, correct? In the presentation, I saw what looked like a Christian Church.
Yes, they are kind of twisting it. I would say it's more like a heresy, twisting the existing dogmas and trying to work themselves into it. There are, of course, priests and people who opposed this and believers who know it for what it is and they hate it. But vampires now also have the backing of the military, so those people keep their beliefs for themselves. A lot of the people who fought back were basically just slaughtered. But yeah, in those times, Christianity was deeply embedded in the community, and many people had very, very strong beliefs that dictated every part of human life. They couldn't just remove the religion, so they decided to rework it and reshape it in their own image, basically.
You also hinted that other creatures are stepping into the light in The Blood of Dawnwalker, following the rise of vampires. Did you take inspiration from Polish or Eastern European folklore?
We looked at different parts of European folklore from the time, and especially from the Carpathians, because this is where the game takes place. I would say it doesn't take inspiration from just one specific place, but from all over. Our team of writers did a lot of the worldbuilding work before we started working on this game, much more than we are actually exploring in the first game. The Blood of Dawnwalker is meant to be the first of a saga, and this one is focused on the vampires. However, there is much more to what we call the unseen world than just vampires. There is also the magic, the witchcraft, right? Which, of course, is frowned upon by the believers and the local population.
I know that some of the developers at Rebel Wolves worked on The Witcher 3 at CD Projekt RED...
Yes, I did it as well.
One of the things that people love about The Witcher IP is that monsters aren't always depicted as such. Often, they are just unfortunate people who got cursed or something like that. I have been wondering if there was an element to it as well, whether The Blood of Dawnwalker also explores the grey in monsters, or is it perhaps more straightforward in this regard?
I would say we absolutely explore the ambiguity around the other creatures. Even the vampires themselves are not just purely evil. They are complex characters with their own motivations and there are reasons why they're doing this. There are some monsters who are not really sentient, they're more like the wild animals that prey upon humans. But for example, Xanthe or the main antagonist Brancis have their own motivations and rationale, and they are ambiguous characters.
Of course, one of the game's big features is the duality between day and night. One of the things that some people may worry about— although some others may be excited about — is that they might miss content. Is that a worry for you?
Yeah, it is a thing in our game, so there's a consideration to be made. There are certain outcomes of quests that people might miss. I think this is partially what makes it fun, because it gives you these different stories you can exchange with your friends. Like, they saw it differently, you saw it differently. It gives you replayability as well. But at the same time, I would say when you played through the game, even in just one playthrough, you'll probably find around 80% of the content, so I wouldn't be too worried about it. It's not like you would miss a huge chunk of the game, but there are a lot of differences to make it fun to make these different choices as you go through the game, again, comparing notes with your friends and discussing it online. I think there will be many interesting elements for that type of conversation.
It was confirmed that Coen can only do spells while in human form. Is that a limitation for all vampires in your lore, or is it specific to Coen?
Most of the vampires cannot use human magic. Coen is an exception. However, there are some vampires who can do something close to magic. Like Xanthe, you'll have noticed that if you watched our previously released material, she found ways to use her powers to tap into magic. But most vampires don't use magic; they have their own different powers that come from their vampiric mutations. An interesting thing, actually, about this is that every vampire in our world has their own unique powers that you can obtain, actually, by draining them of their blood.
On that note, you previously mentioned that Coen can potentially lose control of the 'beast' and inadvertently kill someone... How does it work? Do you have to feed once a day?
The way it works is that you have your health bar, which is also your blood bar during nighttime, which means the health doesn't regenerate automatically after fights; you actually have to refill the blood by draining either humans or animals, or in other ways. There are some consumables that allow you to refill your blood. Each night, you wake up hungry, so you also start with a limited amount of the blood, and the way it works is if the level of blood is especially low - if you feed on people normally, for example, you would be able to decide if you want to drain some of their blood but leave them unconscious or drain them completely. If you're very hungry, Coen might just decide to drain them completely on his own.
Also, if you enter dialogue while he's very hungry, he might eat even important characters in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Sometimes, this cuts off quests, and sometimes, it creates different outcomes. If you don't want him to do this, keep him fed!
I noticed that you also have a combat feeding move. Does that help towards satisfying the vampire's bloodthirst?
It does. You can refill your blood in combat as well. It is less effective than feeding out of combat just to balance combat nicely, so that you are not too overpowered. But also, you have these charges and you use them up to activate different abilities. Feeding is one of those abilities, so you can't just spam it constantly. You have to decide when to use it.
When you do the bite, are you vulnerable to other enemies?
Yes, you can get interrupted.
How many active combat abilities do you have in the game?
There are three slots at first and you can get more slots as you improve your character with character development, but as far as abilities themselves, there are many. There's a lot of them to find in the world. For some of them, like the spells, you need to find ancient tomes. Some of them you learn from teachers, like the swordfighting techniques. And the vampire powers will be obtained by finding and draining other vampires. Then, you can choose which ones to assign to the equipped bar.
I noticed that one of the hexes is the corpse resurrection spell. Are there active hex abilities that can be used in combat, though?
Yeah, absolutely. There is one skill called Boiling Blood, which causes the enemies' blood to get really hot, dealing damage and making them weaker. There's a number of different curses that you can use in combat that help you significantly.
Let's say you want to lean more into Coen's vampiric side throughout your playthrough of The Blood of Dawnwalker. Would that affect the story, or perhaps how characters react to you, in any way?
Yeah, I would say so, but again, I can't go into the spoiler area. But indeed, giving in to your vampiric nature will have an impact on Coen. His personality changes a bit because he becomes more desensitized to violence, for example, and there's other things that I cannot discuss right now.
You also have a loot system. How essential is gear to achieve a powerful Coen?
Very important, because we have a number of different inventory slots. The clothing is divided into various gear pieces. You have weapons, of course, which are very important unless you want to specialize in claw fighting as a vampire. You have talismans that you can use to increase your power with magic or vampiric capabilities. There are all the different stats in there that you, as an RPG player, might want to enhance.
Also, it's not strictly linear. We have lighter armors and heavier armors, and you have to learn to use them efficiently. There are also different outfits for those interested in making Coen look cool.
Do you have a transmog-like system that changes a specific gear piece's appearance while maintaining its stats?
At this point we don't have a transmog-like system, but there are many features like that are nice to have features that we are considering and talking about currently. We'll see how many we can deliver on the release date.
You previously touted that there would be no difference between main and secondary quests in The Blood of Dawnwalker.
That is correct. There is one main objective, which is rescuing your family, and then the other quests, big ones, small ones, long storylines, short storylines... We try to make it feel like every story is actually important. It depends on which ones you want to follow.
I also know that you could try to rescue your family even earlier than the 30-day expiration, which would be generally harder. I was wondering, though: are there some cases where it might be better to tackle a certain enemy earlier rather than later?
We built it in a way that doing a lot of things that hamper their progress will make them weaker, so easier to defeat, so you can be rewarded for all the exploration, doing the quests, and putting the effort in. However, there are certain quest moments where certain choices can make them stronger. So you have to watch out for this.
You have explained that this game isn't quite as large as The Witcher III: Wild Hunt because you are a smaller studio than CD Projekt RED. How long is it going to be, in your current estimates?
Because the game is so non-linear and you can do things in a vastly different order, we can estimate that the average player will spend around 40 hours playing the game. However, there is more content in there, and I'm sure some players will spend more time in the valley if they want to explore it fully and find everything we offer.
Do you have horses in the game for transportation?
We don't have horses in this game, but we have different fast ways of transportation for Coen. You could have seen some of them already, like the shadowstep and the planeshift.
Is there a fast travel system?
Yes, there is.
The combat uses a directional system, but in the Gamescom presentation, it was revealed that players can also just avoid specifying directions and play it more like traditional action RPG combat. Was that change made because of user feedback?
Yes, we followed the feedback closely, and there are a number of people who are a bit daunted by the directional combat because they feel like it's maybe too complicated. So, we have introduced this feature, which we call omniblocks and omniattacks. It's basically seamless; you can just not choose directions on your blocks and attacks, and it will still work, it will block attacks. However, it will consume some of your stamina, so you need to keep track of that.
With omniattacks, Coen chooses the attack direction on his own. This, of course, means that fewer of your swings may actually hit. Actually, my brother likes to play it this way: he enjoys using directional blocks because he likes the feeling of stopping the enemy from hitting him, but then he prefers omniattacks because it just flows better for him that way. That is a totally valid way to play; you can mix and match however you want. And yes, it was based on feedback. We made other changes based on that, like the active abilities used to be shown in a more cinematic way, but now they feel much better and more seamlessly integrated into combat. Also, the radial menu no longer causes the time to stop, now it just slows down.
I believe you also introduced a new camera option.
Yes, that was another big point from the community about the camera being too close. So now we have a further camera and a closer camera, and you can customize it for combat and exploration separately.
The footage was labeled as pre-beta, but how close are you to reaching the beta milestone?
It means we are on the way to reach the beta milestone. The demo that we showed is already beta, but there is also content that is still waiting for the asset delivery, and maybe not all the dialogue is recorded. All content is built out already and playable. You can play The Blood of Dawnwalker from start to finish, but there are systems that are still being worked on. The combat itself is still being worked on, for example. That is what pre-beta means. It's playable. A lot of ideas are in, but not all of it is in.
It needs more Polish! *winks*
Absolutely. Absolutely. As you might have noticed, we are also still improving the graphics compared to our prior footage.
You're using Unreal Engine 5, right?
Yes.
Do you know which version?
Oh, I don't remember exactly, but it's not the latest, I think, because every switch to the newer version means the programmers have to consider carefully if it could break existing code, but we are looking into it. With every update, we are checking what benefits do we get out of it and how much additional work is it, so we have to make these decisions very carefully every time. But I know that the programmers are evaluating any new version that is released.
One of the main issues with Unreal Engine games on PC, especially open-world games, is stuttering. I hope you have found a solution for your game.
We are using out-of-the-box Unreal solutions, but we also have a lot of our own code that our programmers basically rolled on top of the Unreal code. This is exactly why integrating a newer version of Unreal that gets released is very tricky. We have these custom solutions that might not be compatible.
Do you know if The Blood of Dawnwalker will support features like ray traced effects?
I don't know. I'm sorry, but I'm not technical enough to answer.
Fair enough. Thank you for your time!
Closing Thoughts
Watching The Blood of Dawnwalker's pre-beta gameplay, it was hard not to get the impression that it was heavily inspired by The Witcher III. Even the focus mode seems to be very similar, based on the presentation. However, how could it not be the case? After all, Rebel Wolves has gathered a lot of CD Projekt RED veterans and it would have been foolish for them to discard such a great heritage. As far as I'm concerned, The Witcher III is easily among my favorite games of all time, and this sort of spiritual successor comes with enough twists to make it very, very exciting. The flip on vampire fiction, for example, with the bloodsuckers openly taking over instead of ruling from the shadows as they usually do; but also the incredible promise of the narrative sandbox featuring completely distinct approaches whether it is day or night, and that's not to mention the combat that offers directional swings and blocks, albeit optionally.
The game is undoubtedly one of my most anticipated games of 2026, and that's saying something in a year that has Grand Theft Auto VI and several other great titles already on the schedule.
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