The Witcher 3 director says his upcoming RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker isn't "going fully into the vampire fantasy," and expect some Dishonored vibes

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 just released to middling reviews (or in the case of our Bloodlines 2 review, pretty bad), and it seems that gamers might be feeling the vampire fatigue. Next year, the much anticipated Marvel's Blade is scheduled for release, so it's a difficult environment in which to release your new vampire-based game.

The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz is hoping to defeat the odds, with his new studio's first game The Blood of Dawnwalker. In an interview with GamesRadar+, he says that the game will not be "going fully into the vampire fantasy" thanks to the protagonist Coen's status as a Dawnwalker. Half-man, half-vampire, Coen can choose how to approach each mission, either as a regular human in the day, or a stealthy vampire at night.

"We have different creatures of the night," Tomaszkiewicz explains. "We want to tell [a] story with the vampires, not the story about [only] the vampires." By expanding the story and gameplay outside of vampire lore, The Blood of Dawnwalker can be not like the other vampire games.

There is one inspiration that he hopes will help his game stand apart from the crowd. "Dishonored was one of the inspirations," Tomaszkiewicz says. "We wanted to create [a] way of exploring for the vampire, [that's] as open as [Dishonored]." He wants to create the freedom of feeling that Dishonored did, but admits it won't be the same. "It's not that you can enter everywhere," Tomaszkiewicz admits. "But it's so open that you should feel almost total freedom."

Not quite the vampiric imsim we were all hoping for, then.

The Blood of Dawnwalker "isn’t that big" because its small team with Witcher 3 vets would rather prioritize "layers" and "didn't want to make an open world for, like, 400 hours."