Following the largely positive critical reception for The Blood of Dawnwalker ahead of its September 3rd release date, developer Rebel Wolves has expressed relief about how its open-world RPG was going to be received. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz took to social media to talk about how nerve-racking it has been for the development team to wait for reviews to come out.
“Waiting for the reviews to come in has been nerve wrecking to say the least, but they’re finally (mostly) here! Great relief, can’t wait to see you all play the game and to hear your thoughts! It’s a privilege to work with such a talented team at Rebel Wolves.”
Tomaszkiewicz’s post came in response to another one by Shinobi602 listing off the review scores garnered by The Blood of Dawnwalker, which range from 6 to 10, depending on the publication. This has culminated in a Metacritic rating that, at the time of publishing, sits at 83 based on 59 critic reviews. In our own review, we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to its implementation of a time limit, compelling player choices, and fun gameplay. Our only complaints were the fact that the character animations are a bit rough, and that the progression system is a bit slow.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is an open-world RPG that revolves around protagonist Coen, who, while getting turned into a vampire, is still able to walk around during the day. Interestingly, along with the story, this also plays into the narrative decisions behind the game. Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz had said last month that it helped the studio with ensuring that Coen would be “quite easy to kill” during the day.
“He has some powers, but he is quite easy to kill. That was important for us, because we didn’t want to create this overpowered protagonist – that makes it hard to tell stories. We wanted someone who can be hurt, can die, because those stakes are really important.”
Back in July, narrative director and main writer Jakub Szamalek had also spoken about how The Blood of Dawnwalker would push players to “step out of their comfort zone” thanks to gameplay aspects like the ever-present time limit.
“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.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more, check out the launch trailer it got just last week in preparation for its release.
