The ex-CDPR developers at Rebel Wolves making The Blood of Dawnwalker are nothing if not ambitious, and their latest publicly stated goal is to set a new bar for RPG combat.
Game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who previously directed The Witcher 3, sat down with GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2025 and walked us through the studio's thinking when it comes to combat.
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
"Our mission was to try to prepare the combat system, which will be the new standard for the RPGs, and we start to think, 'OK, what we missed in the systems we have right now, in the game.' And we thought about the Batman: Arkham Asylum system, which is almost everywhere, and we thought, 'OK, very cool system. Looks beautiful, but we are not immersed enough with it,' because we just press like, two buttons or three in some games and then watch some cool stuff on the screen."
We've known for a while that Rebel Wolves has been putting a lot of emphasis on Dawnwalker's combat, with the developers confirming in June that the game will have "authentic" medieval battles informed by extensive research and even "a few trained swordsmen on the team."
Dawnwalker features a directional combat system requiring players to slash, block, and parry using directional controls relative to their enemies' positioning. It requires a lot more coordination than your typical action-RPG combat system where it doesn't matter how you're positioning your weapon relative to your enemies' position, but Rebel Wolves is being careful not to rival the difficulty of combat systems in games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and For Honor.
"On the second hand, we have the games like For Honor and Kingdom Come, which have directional systems. We said, 'OK, these systems are a lot more immersive because I need to think, I need to watch, I need to be there. I'm actively thinking about what I'm doing,' but sometimes they are too difficult for players, because they need a lot of skills and a constant focus of what to do. And we thought, 'OK, what if we do a hybrid of those two systems?' And this is what we have done with the adaptive system, like the hybrid system of those two."
I'm eager to go hands-on with Dawnwalker's combat, as frankly, it's the only thing I've seen that gives me considerable pause, of only for its slightly stilted, clunky appearance from a viewing perspective. That said, I learned from our Blood of Dawnwalker Gamescom preview that you'll have the option to swap to a more traditional action-RPG combat system, which might be what I end up doing.
Follow our Gamescom 2025 schedule for more exciting announcements regarding new games, and check out our recap of the Future Games Show at Gamescom 2025, too.
