Interestingly, director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz revealed that the scene is actually in the post-credits for its upcoming title. Furthermore, he (alongside Bandai Namco) confirmed to Eurogamer that progress will carry over into any future sequels.

“From the beginning, when we talked about The Blood of Dawnwalker, we talked about the whole cycle, because we planned a few games and we wanted to tell the particular story we thought about. When you know what you want to say in the next games and where they lead, it’s easier to plan the story for [the first] game and to put some events and story elements in which will be the hooks for the next things which will happen,” said Tomaszkiewicz.

“If you are not thinking about it, then later you have a problem because you start the next game, you have some ideas for the story, and you start to think, ‘Okay, I will move the saves for the players and what kind of decisions I should predict, and how should it be connected? And how to make it smooth and organic?’ And so on. We prefer to do it this way.”

Which is pretty good foresight, especially if Rebel Wolves will be invested in the franchise long-term. But while that post-credits scene for The Blood of Dawnwalker is set in the modern day, it doesn’t mean that the sequel will follow suit, says Tomaszkiewicz.

“This is really important for many reasons. There’s more fun in telling different stories from many places on Earth, because we need to learn those cultures, we need to learn those legends, we need to think how to fit into these historical events, which are in that particular place.

“This will be a refreshment for us in every next part of the game, because we have this challenge in front of us, of doing something really fresh, something really cool. And at the same time, we know that we are doing a consistent story and we know where it’s leading.”

It certainly creates some intrigue, making you wonder how Coen eventually ends up in the present day. Before that, we’ll need to see if he can resolve the crisis that Brencis (who isn’t your traditional villain) has imposed on Vale Sangora, and save his family in time. Or not – after all, players can do whatever they want in the 30-day time limit, though as with everything else, there will be consequences.

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Rebel Wolves also recently confirmed other fantasy beings like Pixies, Kobolds, and more alongside the possibility of other Dawnwalkers. There won’t be any mini-games, which is a bummer for fans of Gwent, but at least it won’t feature Denuvo.

And while that might sound like a bummer, it promised “hidden treasures, monster nests, ancient ruins, bandit camps…and more” to discover. It didn’t outright confirm or deny any secret quests, but they wouldn’t be much of a secret otherwise. Perhaps the other exciting prospect is that it doesn’t have Denuvo, which may not make the PC requirements feel any lighter, but at least you don’t have to worry about DRM potentially affecting performance.

Also, aside from the other confirmed folklore creatures like Pixies, Uriashi, Kobolds, and whatnot, Rebel Wolves was asked about werewolves. Its response? “Maybe.” Read into that however you want, but if there isn’t some Underworld-style confrontation between a vampire and a werewolf, then we’ll be a little disappointed.

The Blood of Dawnwalker recently went gold and is launching on September 3rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. A day-one patch is coming, and while recommended, you might still be able to play without it if you buy physically (since it includes the entire game on a disc). The development team hasn’t provided any more details on post-launch plans, but it is considering free add-ons.

These include the presence of other fantasy creatures and monsters. Long story short, you can expect “Uriashi, Kobolds, Psoglavs, Pixies, Murohni, Gargoyles, Tatzelwurm, and more!” “Uriashi” likely refers to Uriaș, the Romanian term for giants, while the Psoglav originates from Balkan folklore and is a demon with the head of a dog. Considering these and other folklore were inspirations, it will be fascinating to see how they fit into the world of Vale Sangora.

Interestingly, when asked whether Dawnwalkers are rare or if Coen is the first and only, the studio responded, “Great question, maybe you’ll learn more about this in the game.” Perhaps it’s linked to that tomb explored in the early going? Time will certainly tell.

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Rebel Wolves recently confirmed that the physical version will ship with a disc containing the full game, but it’s recommended to download the day-one patch. Whether the latter is mandatory to play remains unknown. In the meantime, you can learn more about how the team tries to prevent fail states for players (short answer: It doesn’t).

“I’m allergic to antagonists who are bad for the sake of being bad, and then they make illogical decisions just to deepen their badness. I wanted Brencis to feel like a very rational actor who has a particular goal. He does want to take over, and he does want to become a feudal Lord in this little valley, but he doesn’t have some ‘mwahaha’ supervillain plan to kill everyone or destroy the world.”

Instead, he wants to establish a “vampiric feudalism” where denizens essentially “swear allegiance to your vampire Lord” through “taxes and blood.” The Vampire Court is on hand to help him, but the team was keen to flesh them out as actual characters, each with their own quirks.

Interestingly, Szamalek also revealed the process by which the vampires create new spawn: By embedding one of their teeth into the intended target. This is inspired by Cadmus, who “when facing danger, would throw dragon’s teeth into the earth and these fully fledged, fully armed warriors would spring up to life and defend him.”

And while that does limit the number of spawn that can be created, he noted that, “The older they get, the more teeth they have. They grow extra rows and, at some point, these teeth start bursting through their skin in weird, unexpected places. Some of the oldest ones are bristling with teeth sticking out of all sorts of weird places, and it turns into body horror.” So now you know what game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz meant by the game’s vampires being “different” from other, more traditional depictions.

Launching on September 3rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, The Blood of Dawnwalker promises a roughly 50-hour-long adventure. Though Coen could burst into Brencis’s castle and face him at the start (potentially losing because of the difficulty), he can spend his time growing stronger and dismantling the Vampire Court’s various machinations. You can learn more about the infamy system here, but if you’re keen on doing your own thing, even killing innocent NPCs, nothing is stopping you.

As illustrated by the latest Halo remake, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean much if you reportedly need to download an update. For The Blood of Dawnwalker, Bandai Namco further clarified, “The full game data is on disc with a day-one patch recommended.” So it sounds like you can play even without downloading the patch, and the disc isn’t just a glorified coaster.

Launching on September 3rd, Rebel Wolves’ debut role-playing game may look familiar to fans of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is understandable given that Tomaszkiewicz directed the same. The difference is how you spend your time – controlling Coen, players must save his family, and ideally the entire region, from Brencis and his cadre of vampires.

However, he only has 30 days. While you’re free to explore the countryside, engaging in open-world activities and taking on Brencis’s troops, certain missions and side quests will cause time to advance. There’s also Coen’s newly gained vampirism, allowing for different approaches during nighttime, with the added downside of potentially going out of control and feeding on an unsuspecting NPC.

The Blood of Dawnwalker recently went gold, but there’s still a lot we don’t know (and the latest gameplay didn’t provide too much beyond lore). Stay tuned for updates and other details, including the potential post-launch roadmap, in the meantime.

On paper, Echoes of Aincrad commits to this premise whole-heartedly. There are countless opportunities to personalise your adventure through custom avatars, build profiles, weapons, and more, but rarely do your choices meaningfully shape the journey. Instead, alas, Echoes of Aincrad is summarised as an opportunity not taken.

"Immediately apparent is the setting’s bathing gloom of light."

The game contextualises its beginning as Sword Art Online’s beta phase; you’re inserted into a subterranean mix of buildings and caverns – sometimes ornate, other times crumbling – and you’ll rush to unite with your party. Along the way, the game slowly trickles input controls, mechanics, and instructions to you, both on-screen and later through companion Iori.

Immediately apparent is the setting’s bathing gloom of light. It hangs in the air like illuminated mist, reflecting off pools and brick surfaces, inviting you deeper into the dungeon. The affable lighting extends later to the outside, with sun flares, fuchsia and golden-hour tones blending with lullaby-like piano to create an altogether welcoming atmosphere.

There is one major drawback, however, that no amount of pleasantness can mask: the game’s sluggish pacing. And, sadly, issues with pace permeate through almost every activity you’ll undertake inside the colossal floating castle. See, each quest can be broken down into, say, one-minute loops whereby you’ll run through a corridor, encounter some enemies, slay said enemies, nab their loot, and run on to the next encounter. Occasionally you’ll encounter a boss, or an environmental detail shadowed by a lore-revealing icon, but the pattern remains the same.

"Immediately apparent is the setting’s bathing gloom of light."

The lingering pace interrupts cutscene dialogue with jarring silence too. Echoes of Aincrad’s characters comprise your typical anime archetype: whimsical and quirky, their childlike naivety balancing superhero bravery that fans of the show or anime writ large will recognise, but strange pauses throughout every conversation undo a lot of the animation’s charm. Your avatar, a mute protagonist whom you’ll mould to your own vision after the prologue’s conclusion, only exacerbates things; nodding along, shaking their head, or waving hello in eerie silence.

And the game’s pacing isn’t a result of the developers not understanding the source material. The story – ten thousand players engaged in a VRMMORPG, where death on the inside means death in the real world – is set up appropriately. There’s even early intrigue as companions made during the beta don’t appear once the campaign begins. But mechanical and narrative pacing is the most significant indication that the game largely fails to execute its premise.

Another example is found in the characters themselves, who seem strangely relaxed after discovering the peril they’re in. Together with NPCs and non-player avatars blurring together, the danger in Aincrad never feels tangible.

And while danger does exist outside the sanctuary of Aincrad’s settlements, combat, for all its good ideas, is laced with yet more friction. Hit detection feels loose, enemies can strike you from outside your field of view, while the lock-on camera struggles to visualise particularly large bosses if you get too close.

Before entering the fray, you’ll team up with a partner, starting with basic light and heavy attacks. But your moveset, unlike the pace of a quest itself, expands quickly: Sword Skills are weapon-specific special moves which unlock as you gain weapon proficiency; Combination Skills see you and your companion execute flashy attacks on an opponent together, while Support Skills are traits unique to each partner – healing circles, weak point detection, treasure chest location, that sort of thing, all paid for by an SP meter which recharges with every landing blow. Combined with cooldowns for special moves, and an extensive suite of powerups, projectiles, healing, and utility items accessible via the D-pad, your arsenal for attack and defense grows sizeably, and must be used strategically.

The question the game doesn’t answer, though, is how influential your choice of partner is to mission success. You can direct them to attack the creature you’re locked on to, or tell them to swing their blade at whatever is in front of them, but the effect is the same whoever you have by your side. And actually, there’s a deeper question here: does a partner’s individual abilities even synergise with your own? If they do, the feeling is negligible. Whilst, again, Echoes of Aincrad’s partner system is a good idea, its execution is disappointing.

"The question the game doesn’t answer, though, is how influential your choice of partner is to mission success."

That said, as alluded to earlier, Echoes of Aincrad is banking on its biggest draw being your avatar itself, and once your creation is made and thrust into the mainframe, the promise of build variety reveals itself. See, as you endure quests you’ll earn growth points which you can spend skewing your character toward a tank-like archetype, an agile specialist, or something in-between. Investing in strength, however, didn’t feel rewarding at first, with enemy difficulty scaling in tandem with your leveling seeming to erase any sense of growing stronger.

Similarly, weapon distinctions felt largely cosmetic. But persevere and you’ll land on recognisable builds eventually, where build-appropriate weapons establish rhythms rather than simply different damage values. Take the sledgehammer-swinging power build, characterised by heavy commitment and slow recovery, while the nimbler rapier build has faster attacks and better mobility at a cost of damage dealt. The differences do exist, and chasing your preferred playstyle is possible, but it’s subtler than expected.

Really, the biggest enemies to the game’s design are the aforementioned pacing, and yet the more quests you undertake the more repetition seeps in, in objectives and locations alike. You’ll chart the same forest, spelunk the same cave, tackle the electric wolf boss more than once. Straying from the beaten path doesn’t always prove worthwhile either, where defeating optional bosses opens closed-off areas where a gold chest usually sits; its rewards identical to any freely discoverable chest throughout the world. In fact, the greatest benefit to detouring is in revealing shortcuts – a fallen bridge, for example, can be rebuilt once you’ve trekked to the other side of the chasm (a saving grace when you have to chart the same stretch of valley in a later quest).

The overarching problem is this: Echoes of Aincrad continually asks you to revisit familiar spaces, but it rarely evolves what you do in them.

All of these drawbacks make the act of playing in Death Game Mode, a permadeath mode accessible to special edition owners and completionists that deletes your save file on defeat, seem like a punishment rather than a reward. The mode fits the tension of Sword Art Online’s fiction, sure, but it also amplifies the sluggish pacing, exorbitant running, and repetition. It is hard to see many players opting to give this mode a go.

All in all, Echoes of Aincrad does succeed in portraying the expansive VR world away from Kirito and Asuna, but only just. It gives enough options to forge your own creation, although the immersion in your avatar’s journey would be better served if they talked to their companions. Sadly, the game’s biggest struggles – its pacing, mechanical friction, and repetition – far outweigh the positives that can be gleaned out of buildcrafting and atmosphere design. For those reasons, Echoes of Aincrad is a tough sell, even if you’ve the patience of a veteran.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Regardless, it’s been a long journey since its announcement in December 2024, especially since the title reached two million wishlists. Set in a medieval fantasy region known as Vale Sangora, the story spotlights Coen, a young farmer who finds his life turned upside down when vampires take over. After being turned into a vampire, Coen finds that he can still venture out during the daytime, thus becoming the titular Dawnwalker.

While his goal is to save his family within 30 days, players are relatively free to explore and shape their journey as they please. Failing to stop Brencis’s plan is absolutely possible; heck, you can go absolutely feral and kill any NPC, even if that locks off important side quests later on. The choice is completely yours, and Rebel Wolves wants to challenge you to make the best of a bad situation.

The Blood of Dawnwalker will be available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC at launch. There’s still a lot we don’t know, from the console frame rates and resolutions to the plan for free post-launch DLC, so stay tuned for updates.

The setting was created by the late Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama and features plenty of characters, both new and old, that will help tell the story of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3.

The earlier parts of the trailer largely focus on the default preset for the player’s own avatar – J. Age the Saiyan – and the main online hub where players will be able to take on new missions and co-operate with other players to complete objectives. We then get a look at a mission in action, where players have to team up to take down Frieza Force soldiers, among other things.

We also get an in-action demonstration of how player characters can all be vastly different. While the custom-made Saiyan character is equipped with Vegeta’s moveset for their standard melee combos, the earthling character has Goku’s moves. Some of the super and ultimate attacks are then showcased. While the former can work alongside combos for serious damage, the latter are more cinematic in nature and tend to dish out massive amounts of damage.

Super attacks can also have other effects, like draining opponents’ ki to stagger them. These can be used in conjunction with light and heavy melee attacks to quickly open up numerous opponents to more devastating moves that can then end the fight.

The mission culminates with a boss fight against the Dragon Ball Super version of Broly. Since the character’s power level can be overwhelming for players, the trailer recommends that you should make use of the environment to your full advantage. This can range from throwing Broly into walls to pin him down to hiding behind large rocks to avoid some of his massive attacks.

Players can also call in a Soul Assist to aid them in battle. In the trailer, the protagonist, equipped with the default Saiyan move set, is able to call in Trunks to land some extra hits on Broly. The default Earthling moveset, on the other hand, calls in Vegeta. There is also a Potential meter, which allows players to switch to a Dragon Ball character of their choice. The trailer showcases how the player can switch to Future Trunks, giving them access to the iconic half-Saiyan’s entire moveset for a limited time.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 was unveiled back in April with a trailer that showcased West City. The reveal trailer gave us a quick glimpse of some of the characters that will be showing up in the upcoming title. Just last month, another trailer was released that went into more detail about West City, as well as the game’s core story, which will give players plenty of opportunities to make choices and, in the process, potentially even change the outcome of the story.

It is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and is slated for release in 2027.

But it also makes you wonder: How long has it been in development? After all, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown launched in 2019. In a new video interview, brand director Kazutoki Kono, who’s also the director on the title, said it took “six, maybe seven years to develop.” Don’t say it. We already know.

“We kept you waiting for a while,” continued Kono. “But with that extra time, we were able to polish the game and really raise the bar in terms of quality.” There’s still time before launch, but he promised that there’s “a lot to look forward to when you take to the skies.”

Before this, Kono spoke about the influence of other Ace Combat titles on Wings of Theve. “We looked back at what the franchise has done and revisited the past games during our development, and what we found was there were a lot of different mechanics and systems that were good, but somehow were lost or sort of disappeared throughout the history of Ace Combat. But they were still important elements that lay dormant, so to speak.”

So the team essentially “excavated” and “packed” them into the sequel, and as a result, Kono considers Ace Combat 8 to be a “culmination of our 30-year history.” Which is pretty noteworthy, especially with how he considers it a strong entry point for new players.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve launches on October 2nd for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Those who pre-order will receive access to Ace Combat Zero: The Belkin War, while Deluxe Edition owners get three days of early access. If you’re keen on some more extensive gameplay, head here. It offers a look at the Superweapons that players will take on and how to defeat them.

A major reason behind developer Rebel Wolves going with a time limit for its main story is the fact that open-world RPGs often tend to lack a sense of urgency to drive players forward. Szamalek said that the studio wanted to bring back this feeling of urgency and even confirmed that players likely won’t get to complete all of the side content The Blood of Dawnwalker has to offer in a single playthrough.

“When you open up the main part of the game, you have thirty days and thirty nights to rescue your family. That should let you complete most of the quests, but not all of them,” he explained. “The reason for introducing the time limit was that open-world RPGs lack a sense of urgency. You’re often entrusted with a very important mission, but then everything [can be put] on pause, and you can explore the world for as long as you like. So, you stop believing in the urgency of your quest. We wanted to bring that feeling and increase the investment of players in the main story.”

When asked about whether this time limit would set players who prefer to complete all side content before continuing the main story up to fail, Szamalek acknowledged that the game might force some players out of their comfort zones, but expressed hope that they would still try it out since “growth and new experiences happen when you do step out of your comfort zone.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s that it sets you up to fail, but I would encourage players, even completionists, to consider playing the game twice to really experience everything,” he said. “I understand that for some people who are used to playing a certain way, it might be asking them to step out of their comfort zones. But I feel that growth and new experiences happen when you do step out of your comfort zone.”

“We really wanted to create a game that feels fresh and takes risks, and we believe those risks paid off. This game is unique; it has a particular flavor, and it’s different from the games you’ve played before. So, I would say, be open to these new mechanics we’re introducing, because we’re doing this for a reason.”

Interestingly, director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz had recently confirmed that The Blood of Dawnwalker won’t be afraid to let players fail. While many RPGs tend to avoid presenting players with failure states, Tomaszkiewicz said that actions that result in failure are “really interesting”, since they bring in interesting changes to a player’s experience.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and will be out on September 3rd.