The Blood of Dawnwalker is the debut project from Rebel Wolves, a studio founded by The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz and comprised of other CDPR alums, and apparently the project was only possible at a smaller studio with less red tape.
Dawnwalker quickly clawed its way to the top of my list of most anticipated games with its stunning reveal trailer from earlier this month. The vibes are deliciously dark with a story about a young man who gets turned into a Dawnwalker, a hybrid of human and vampire. There's a sense of scope that belies the relatively small studio making the thing, and the vampires actually look genuinely scary. The only thing I'm still hesitant about is the gameplay, but that's solely because we've hardly seen any of it.
Anyway, Tomaszkiewicz told PC Gamer that he left CDPR to start Rebel Wolves and make Dawnwalker because he wanted to make something "unique."
"Of course, we have a huge love of RPG games, and what has been done before in the past," he said. "[But] I feel that those things, those rules of RPG games, can be expanded and evolved. We had crazy ideas. We knew that, you know, if we wanted to make them, we needed to open our own studio, because it would be hard to convince any big company—you know, with non-IP—to change, and do something new, and do something crazy. Actually, it’s risky, because we’re doing some solutions which are new."
Another reason Tomaszkiewicz and CDPR went their separate ways is because, with Rebel Wolves, there's much more direct communication between the higher ups at the studio and the developers on the ground. "I felt that a smaller team is capable of doing more, because the communication inside the team, and it’s easier to speak about the vision. It's easier to feel the creative fire, and to do something special."
Although Tomaszkiewicz won't be helping out on The Witcher 4 and CDPR isn't working on Dawnwalker, there seems to be little bad blood between the devs. A group of current CDPR devs recently shared their support for Rebel Wolves and Dawnwalker, with one remarking, "these games have shared lineage and shared values."
