HOW FORMER CD PROJEKT DEVS PLAN TO ReVOLUTIONIZE RPG’s

THE BLOOD OF DAWNWALKER

The Blood of Dawnwalker has just been officially announced with a cinematic trailer that is peppered with alpha gameplay at the end. Dawnwalker is the new, debut title from even newer studio Rebel Wolves. In The Blood of Dawnwalker, you play as Coen, a young man from the 14th Century, who is trying to survive during the Black Death plague. During this moment of weakness, Vampires have chosen to rise up against the royalty and in the madness, Coen has been turned into a daywalker or half breed or half vampire. Coen now has 30 days to save his family or exact revenge and destroy everyone. The biggest word is that sentence is OR and i’ll get into that shortly.

Not only does The Blood of Dawnwalker look very promising from just watching the trailer, but it sounds even better when reading the accompanying press release, so here are the top five reasons why I can’t wait to play The Blood of Dawnwalker.

VAMPIRE SHORTAGE

To begin with, vampires are still under utilized in gaming. There are many other tropes like Orcs, Demons and Zombies that have been pillaged, but when it comes to vampires, there is a definite void, especially when it comes to high quality and AAA.

If google “Best Vampire Games” you will get plenty of search results about Vampire Survivors and Castlevania, both games that aren’t actually about playing as a vampire. There is Legacy of Kain, but outside of the recent remaster, hasn’t had a new entry in decades. There is Vampyr and Bloodlines, but these tie back into the earlier point of not being overly high quality or a high level of production. There is a massive absence on the AAA level for high quality and high production and The Blood of the Dawnwalker seems poised to be the become one of the biggest vampire games ever.

STUDIO PEDIGREE

Furthermore, the pedigree of Rebel Wolves is something to get excited about. Rebel Wolves was founded in early 2022 by ex CD-Project devs including the director of The Witcher 3, along with many other talents that include directors, developers and writers who have worked on The Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077, and Thronebreaker just to name a few. In addition to the wealth of experience at the studio, Rebel Wolves was founded with a goal to revolutionize the RPG genre, which is a bold ambition, but in just a few minutes, I will explain how they might just accomplish this.

STUDIO VALUES

Staying on the foundation of the studio, the name Rebel Wolves comes from the pack mentality as wolves are stronger when they travel as one. On the site it states

“The team always comes first.Happy people make great games”

You can’t talk about studio values without mentioning that the co-founder of Rebel Wolves resigned from CD Projekt Red after accusations of bullying, which he had always denied. Although, when you combine the guiding principles of Rebel Wolves, along with seeing how many other developers from CD Projekt followed to Rebel Wolves, and that the investigation ruled not guilty, it points to the conclusion that these allegations might have been fabricated.

TIME MECHANIC

When Rebel Wolves mentioned how they wanted to revolutionize the RPG genre, there are two small execerpts from the press release that sound promising and indicate the studio might have a chance to do what they are setting out to accomplish. In The Blood of Dawnwalker, you play as a recently turned Daywalker and you only have 30 days. In this short period of time you wont be able to complete everything you want to and must make hard choices, as there isn’t a distinguishable line between main and side quests.

Will you save your family or will you seek revenge?

In the words of the Director “Time is a resource and with each quest progressing its passage, it’s impossible to complete all stories and arcs before the deadline, making each play through unique. We call it a narrative sandbox”

Rebel Wolves have taken inspiration from classic RPG’s, but want to make sure that the players feel the urgency in this open world. In most RPG’s, you have the luxury of time to complete quests at your leisure, which is often juxtaposed by the severity of the situation in most games. This is one way that Rebel Wolves might be able to revolutionize the genre.

DAYWALKER MECHANIC

The other way that Dawnwalker and Rebel Wolves might be extremely unique from the rest of the pack is in your skills as a daywalker. The 30 days that you have also includes 30 nights because as a daywalker, you walk a tightrope between human and vampire. This means that your skillset will change depending on the time of day. According to the studio “players will have different skills, abilities and storyline outcomes. Do you fight for humanity or do you embrace the cursed powers?”

THE BLOOD OF DAWNWALKER release date?

As excited as I am to become a dawnwalker, it’s worth tempering the expectations and trying to determine when THE BLOOD OF DAWNWALKER might release. To do this, I tried to find recent examples of new studios on a similar size and scope that started and how long it took for them to release their first title. Surprisingly, I was able to find to recent examples that check a lot of the same boxes.

The first example is Ascendant Studios, which was founded by Bret Robbins in the summer of 2018. Robbins had a strong background in AAA with experience at EA and Sledgehammer. Many of the people who became employed at the studio were from Telltale, who were unexpectedly shutdown around the same time. By the time Ascendant Studios shipped their first game, Immortals of Aveum in August 2023, the studio was around 100 people. The approximate time from founding to release was close to five years on the dot.

The other example is Striking Distance, which was founded by Glen Schofield of Dead Space and Call of Duty fame. Striking Distance was founded in June 2019 and ballooned up to about 100 people as well by the time the studio shipped their debut title “The Callisto Protocol” in December 2022. Striking Distance were able to imagine, develop and release their debut within a little over three years.

If you take the average time from these two studios, you are looking at around four years, but anywhere from 3-5 is realistic, especially when you consider that both of these studios had to navigate the COVID pandemic and how that likely stunted development in some ways.

If Rebel Wolves were founded at the very beginning of 2022, then we have a range with a possibility by the end of 2025, but more likely sometime in 2026. We can graft these dates onto Rebel Wolves due to the similar size and scope shared between these three studios.

While they might share some commonalities with these other studios, the big hope is that Rebel Wolves are bringing enough innovation to the RPG genre with The Blood of Dawnwalker that they will have a different destiny. This is the hope because the final takeaway from the press release was that The Blood of Dawnwalker is the first chapter of the Rebel Wolves original dark fantasy saga