The Blood of Dawnwalker Is a Serious Witcher 3 Competitor, and It’s Launching Soon
Geralt, but more vampiric
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is widely considered one of the best open-world RPGs of all time. It raised the bar for world design, storytelling, character development, and more. Even 11 years post-launch, it still averages over 20,000 concurrent players on a daily basis. If you, like so many others, revere The Witcher 3, then you absolutely need to play The Blood of Dawnwalker. Being released on Wednesday, Sept. 2 for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X, this is the most Witcher 3-coded game we've seen in years.
Which is no wonder, really, when you realize the co-founder, CEO, and game director at Rebel Wolves, the team behind The Blood of Dawnwalker, is Konrad Tomazkiewicz, who was the game director on The Witcher 3. The senior writer and art director on Geralt's most recent adventure, Jakub Szamalek and Bartłomiej Gaweł respectively, are also working at Rebel Wolves.
In The Blood of Dawnwalker, you play as Coen. By day, you're a human. By night, however? A vampire, and it's up to you whether you succumb to and embrace the cursed powers you behold. You also have a family to save, and you'll need to make some difficult decisions. Unfortunately, some people will need to be left behind, because an in-game clock that progresses every time you complete a quest. That means seeing and doing everything in one playthrough is impossible.
According to Tomaskiewicz, The Blood of Dawnwalker will be up to 70 hours long… and in a strange decision, we've already seen the post-credits scene. At Summer Game Fest, he told Polygon that this is the start of a saga, however, one that "will lead to the modern times." We're starting in the 14th century, though, and your choices here will impact your experience in the sequel and beyond. Just like The Witcher 3, then.