A haunting role-playing game set on the history-steeped streets of a bygone era. Vampires stalk the gloom, lying in wait for victims who may or may not be imperative to the story being told. Every choice nudges time forward, inch by inch. Am I talking about The Blood of Dawnwalker or 2018's Vampyr? Well, both – kinda.
Dawnwalker, an upcoming PS5 game from ex-CD Projekt Red developers, is already showing its Witcher 3 colors. It's atmospheric, gloomy, and rocks a gritty dark fantasy aesthetic that screams supernaturality. But all this talk of killing off important NPCs and unique time mechanics sounds eerily familiar. A lot of what I'm reading and seeing of Dawnwalker has me thinking of Don't Nod's own take on gamified vampirism, underrated though Vampyr still is, and it has me hopeful for how Rebel Wolves will expand upon those elements in its "narrative sandbox" RPG.
Death becomes you
The first Blood of Dawnwalker gameplay trailer is a masterclass in scene setting. It's 1344, "somewhere in the Carpathians," and a young man's plague-addled sister has seemingly been rescued by a fanged murderer. "I am life. I am death. I am everything in between," the vampire bellows over a stirring orchestral score. Everything about it, from the excellent writing and acting to the sound design, has me thinking of Vampyr.
Given the dearth of vampire games out there, comparing a new vamp game to one of a scant few existing ones sounds kind of pointless. But the unifying factors between both games are more about execution than theme. It's not that I think Dawnwalker is copying the Don't Nod RPG in the slightest, but I'm already wondering if the Rebel Wolves game is taking a little inspiration here and there – specifically regarding how Dawnwalker might implement archetypal vampire behaviors as gameplay mechanics.
The mythos around vampires make for intriguing video game characters, but by the nature of their blessing-and-curse, are a tough nut to crack. The result is a handful of games that approach the supernatural affliction very differently, and to varying ends. Narrative-driven Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines more closely resembles its tabletop RPG roots, action-platformer BloodRayne is a bit of daft arcade fun, but only one comes close to Dawnwalker's DNA as a third-person RPG: Vampyr.
Vampyr might not have been a critical or commercial success outside of its niche fanbase – which is still pretty sizable, all things considered – but it can't be faulted for looking and feeling like a vampire game. The feeding system is integral to that. The strata of each district being held up by one or two central NPCs, with their demise throwing the whole region into chaos, makes every decision to "embrace" (or drink) a victim that much weightier. It's fully possible to drink almost all your quest-givers away, and at the very least, you can really mess up your game by being too fang-happy too early on.
If Coen can essentially go on back to back side quests, day or night, without moving the story forward, how will the vampire fantasy be maintained?
With Dr Jonathan Reid's whole conundrum being the push and pull of nature versus nurture, it feels evocative of what Rebel Wolves is hinting at in The Blood of Dawnwalker. Both games have killable NPCs and a playable character of split allegiance – protagonist Coen is half human, half vampire, while Reid is a vampire who has sworn to heal those he's driven to kill. Already, I'm on board.
I'm also intrigued by the sound of Dawnwalker's 30-day narrative timeframe that is not actually under a time limit. Rebel Wolves' Mateusz Greiner explained on Twitter that "exploring the world doesn't move the time forward, but every quest does." Essentially, you're not wasting time by exploring Dawnwalker's open world, but a sense of urgency is created through following main story beats. A similar thing does happen in Vampyr, where making certain narrative decisions can move time forward, though the effects of your decisions are not seen until the player sends Jonathan home to sleep. A vampire's daytime slumber is such a quintessential part of the creature's lore that I'm keen to see how it works for half-vampires in Dawnwalker. If Coen can essentially go on back to back side quests, day or night, without moving the story forward, how will the vampire fantasy be maintained? What other elements of vampirism will Rebel Wolves challenge or adapt as the latest in a modest lineup of games bold enough to do so?
At this point, we have little to no idea. Vampyr is really the only thing I'm using to gauge my expectations, being the closest thing to a vamp RPG blueprint that Dawnwalker seems to be following. That said, given the ex-CDPR devs' prior experience in The Witcher 3 and the brief taste of Dawnwalker's combat as seen in the announcement trailer, Rebel Wolves could be gearing up for an action-heavy RPG experience to offset the gritty, decision-based character study that is Vampyr – or maybe, if we're lucky, it will be both. Let's be real though: I'm almost bound to love Dawnwalker by default. Vampires come in all shapes and sizes in the land of video games, and although they might be picky eaters, I'm certainly not.
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