The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Despite being a brand new studio working on its first game, the team at Rebel Wolves are no strangers to making groundbreaking RPGs. The studio was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who was one of three game directors on The Witcher 3, with a team bolstered with fellow ex-CD Projekt Red staffers – including his brother Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. And while the new developer could undoubtedly play it safe and stick to its roots, its ambitions are to once again break new ground for RPGs with its debut title The Blood of Dawnwalker… but not just for the sake of it.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, creative director at Rebel Wolves, explained the studio's approach to experimentation with the genre’s conventions. "There are certain features that players have gotten used to over the years because there have been so many RPG games, where you just expect to see them in the RPG game when you play. For example, itemization and having an inventory panel. If you don't have that in your RPG, a lot of people could probably try to challenge 'is it an RPG, even?'." Tomaszkiewicz added, "when you sit down to design an RPG, you have to wrestle with that - 'this is the standard RPG set of conventional mechanics, do we do them, or don't we?' And you have to always consider it very carefully, which of these can you touch or modify in meaningful ways."

However, in many ways RPGs are a tried and true formula, and the team is still cautious about what it will and won’t stray away from typical conventions with. "If you look at different games, and the response of the fans, of people playing them, sometimes even very mild changes can be extremely controversial to people." Tomaszkiewicz explains, saying, "They'll say 'it's not an RPG' or 'the game is ruined', even if it's not really a huge change on paper. It can be huge for the players, so you need to be extremely careful every time."