The Blood of Dawnwalker Hands-On Preview: Rebel Wolves' new action RPG with a Witcher and vampire feel

What was once the quintessential video game genre, namely the single-player third-person action adventure, is now almost relegated to a niche. The reasons are manifold. On one hand, the player base has expanded, as have the genres and characters that players themselves find more appealing; on the other hand, the spread of fast connections has made multiplayer experiences much more popular and easier to try. Games of this type are therefore a bit less frequent than they once were, but in return, they have become much larger and much more cinematic. One of the most illuminating examples of this evolution is The Witcher, whose massive third chapter is still for many the benchmark of the genre (but we also think of the recent Crimson Desert). And it is precisely from a "rib" of The Witcher 3 that a new exponent of third-person action arrives, one that seems to have (and with good reason) quite a few ambitions: The Blood of Dawnwalker. 

Rebel Wolves is indeed the new studio opened by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, former CD Projekt with a resume including the role of director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and head of production of Cyberpunk 2077. The team, founded in 2022, was born from Tomaszkiewicz's own desire to return to working on smaller projects, which do not involve hundreds of staff members. Although Rebel Wolves has stabilized around a hundred-plus

elements, their first game The Blood of Dawnwalker does not seem to show signs of this “downsizing”. 

• The Plot of The Blood of Dawnwalker
• The First Hours of The Blood of Dawnwalker
• The Action of The Blood of Dawnwalker

The Plot of The Blood of Dawnwalker

In recent days, we were able to play more or less freely the first hours of The Blood of Dawnwalker on PC and found ourselves facing one of the most interesting initial phases of a video game in recent years. In the animated sequence that opens the adventure, we meet Coen, the protagonist, and his little sister Lunka. The latter is sick: we are in Eastern Europe in 1347, a year of contagions, plague, and brutality. Faced with such a lethal plague, there is no time for pity, and what the King's men are about to do to Lunka would be understandable given the risk of a devastating epidemic, were it not for the sneer on their faces that betrays a sadism beyond the simple acceptance of their duties. 

When Lunka's fate seems sealed, the court of Brencis, a vrakhiri according to the local definition of vampire, appears on the scene with his company of abominations ready to claim his dominion over these lands, taking them as cleanly as the sovereign's severed leg. For Coen, little changes, whether he has to implore the old aristocrat or the new vrakhiri, he only cares about saving his sister. His requests, however, find an ear this time: a drop of Brencis's blood is all it takes for Lunka to survive. 

The First Hours of The Blood of Dawnwalker

Once in direct control of Coen, we found ourselves in the same village as the intro, but a little later in time. The oppression of the King and his subordinates has been replaced by vrakhiri domination, which brought with it a cure for the plague, but left unresolved resentments simmering. The mundane quests to face in this phase mirror the conflicts that run through Coen's household as well as those of other families. A neighbor, for example, had a tapestry she was making at the vrakhiri's request for the upcoming ceremony stolen. A quick investigation through the village leads us to the culprit, who, however, has more than understandable reasons for not wanting the decoration, which he sees as impious, to be displayed in the church: what to do? Convince him to return it or risk the vrakhiri's wrath? Similarly, a little later we had to commit to finding herbs for Coen's mother, who was also ill: the doses and water temperature, however, affect the remedy's effectiveness, and a lack of attention during dialogues can cause the woman to fall ill in the midst of the important ceremony. 

What immediately emerges from these first hours is the care Rebel Wolves has poured into the writing of their game. Supported by a respectable technical sector that manages to emphasize and convey emotions with faces and realism with material rendering, The Blood of Dawnwalker stages multifaceted, rough characters, immersed in desperate events that also weigh on family relationships. The quests among the villagers are small, easy-to-solve situations, but they allow us to align our Coen in the ongoing conflict and delineate his personality through choices. And if there are choices, there are also consequences, small variations in how one arrives at the plot's turning point that differentiate each playthrough. 

And there's no lack of courage either. The culminating scene of this first part, the aforementioned vrakhiri ceremony in the village church, is tragic and bloody, as well as making a decisive and not insignificant reliance on the strong symbolism of replacing Christian rites with vrakhiri ones, where all previously addressed narrative threads come to a head. All this narration, however, is not only at the service of those attentive enough to follow the cutscenes and listen to the dialogues, but is closely linked to the game mechanics: at the end of these initial events, Coen has 30 hours left to save his mother, and every action, every choice, and every future response will be crucial. 

The Action of The Blood of Dawnwalker

Adventures, however, are not made of words alone: Coen's eloquence will not be enough to save his mother in time. By day, he will have to rely on melee weapons, learning to master directional parrying from the outset, which is essential to overcome not only soldiers and vrakhiri armies scattered throughout the territory, but also local fauna, because even bears and wild boars can prematurely interrupt Coen's mission. It is when night falls, however, that Coen can fully exploit his potential. 

During the attempted revolt triggered by the events of the ceremony, Coen awakens in vrakhiri form, able to walk vertically on rocks, disembowel enemies with his claws, vanish in a cloud of black dust, but also to feed on the blood of his victims, animal or human, indispensable to avoid perishing. When every quest consumes precious hours or minutes, how long can Coen exist in the face of corruption when necessity demands it?

To find out, we will have to wait until September 3rd, and although the autumn period promises to be quite crowded, we emerged from our hands-on preview of The Blood of Dawnwalker with the renewed awareness that we are facing a title that deserves to be watched closely. Although Rebel Wolves' debut title does not reinvent the wheel or the genre, it handles the cornerstones of the action RPG with great care and considerable awareness, also demonstrating a good eye for detail. Now, all that remains is to let time pass.