Rebel Wolves’ The Blood of Dawnwalker – an upcoming RPG from developers that worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – will be an open world title. However, creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz has revealed that it will be smaller than the industry norm. In an interview with GamesRadar, he said that this decision was made because the studio wants players to get to know the world.
Tomaszkiewicz spoke about how his favourite open-world games often featured smaller worlds rather than expansive ones. It allows players to explore the world at their own more relaxed pace rather than making them think they have to rush through the world to find interesting bits.
“It was an open world, but it was much smaller, and it kind of made me experience it differently compared to these behemoths where it’s just impossible to really know every nook and cranny because it’s so big, so you kind of rush through it,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “But when the world is a bit smaller, and you explore it more calmly and more relaxed, you kind of get to memorize these places, and it feels more like you actually know the place. It makes you feel like you’re more inhabited.”
The relaxed pace that Tomaszkiewicz spoke about is interesting since director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has previously revealed that The Blood of Dawnwalker will also feature a time limit of 30 in-game days for its story. The plot will revolve around protagonist Coen trying to rescue his family from doom.
As for whether The Blood of Dawnwalker would feature optional mini-games like Gwent from The Witcher 3, Tomaszkiewicz said players must figure out how to deal with side content while not ignoring the main quest.
“This is the most important thing for me,” said Tomaszkiewicz. “Because when you put it together, it makes something really unique – this feeling of urgency in the games can be upgraded. For example, when you’re playing The Witcher 3, and you know that Ciri needs help, but you decide to play Gwent […], you feel that it’s a game, and it’s a really good game. But it’s a game.”
Rebel Wolves has leaned in on the idea of presenting a narrative sandbox for players quite hard. This means that, along with having plenty of choices in the story itself, players will also have freedom in gameplay, even allowing players to kill off important NPCs. Mateusz spoke about this in an interview earlier this month, emphasizing the narrative sandbox aspect of The Blood of Dawnwalker.
“It’s a sandbox, meaning we’re trying to maximize the options of your choice in the game,” Mateus said “But it isn’t purely focused on gameplay. We were trying to play to our strengths, because our past projects were very focused on narrative, on good storytelling, interesting characters and a lot of lore to find.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The open-world RPG doesn’t yet have a release date.
