The director of The Witcher 3 is about to put out his own new game, The Blood of Dawnwalker, and he's throwing some kudos around at fellow blockbuster releases from the recent past. Specifically, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Crimson Desert, both of which he considers a breath of fresh air.
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, former vice president of game development at CD Projekt Red and now the founder and CEO of Rebel Wolves, speaks with The Game Business about the hegemony in triple-A games. "The problem in this industry sometimes is that people opening companies are thinking [too much] about how to make money. This is a really cold approach for the games," he says.
"You cannot create art like this," he adds. In his mind, creating another studio means forging a different path. "Opening a new company to do exactly the same things we did in the past is a problem, because we’ll not feel that we’re evolving, or developing ourselves," he explains. "It was really important for us as artists. We want to push the boundaries of triple-A RPGs by adding some risky stuff."
That's where Sandfall Interactive and Pearl Abyss come in, because their approaches to making massive, medium-defining games is bold and distinct in the way Tomaskiewicz is talking. "I think that this [idea] is growing these days, because when you look at Clair Obscur, or Crimson Desert right now, those games are different," he comments. "They are not a copy of other triple-A games, but delivering something quite fresh."
The Blood of the Dawnwalker is cut from similar cloth, in that it's a stylized historical fantasy RPG involving vampires, set in the Carpathian Mountains of the 14th century. Expect it to be gothic and moody but also visually striking, going by the early footage.
He even goes so far as to say the current climate makes him think about "the 1990s when I played games on my 286 PC," an assertion I find a bit of a stretch, as the industry is also in a pretty sorry state in terms of stability, but I digress. "Every game was some unknown. We want to deliver a similar experience for people," he finishes.
