The Witcher 3 director's new vampire open-world game sure sounds like it took a page from the D&D and Baldur's Gate playbook: "Sometimes it feels like playing a paper RPG"

The Blood of Dawnwalker is the upcoming RPG from a group of former CD Projekt Red developers, and it's starting to sound like it borrows some influence from Dungeons & Dragons and Baldur's Gate RPGs.

In an interview with PC Gamer, The Blood of Dawnwalker design director Daniel Sadowski doesn't explicitly name D&D, Baldur's Gate, or early BioWare games, but he does say playing the game sometimes "feels like playing a paper RPG where you can really just go into the world, and pick your adventures." Obviously, D&D is the seminal tabletop RPG which Baldur's Gate 3 and many other games of its kind are based on.

Blood of Dawnwalker creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz also says studio Rebel Wolves' main goal is "maximizing players' agency and freedom of choice, while at the same time delivering the high-quality narratives that we are known for crafting in the past."

Rebel Wolves is headed up by The Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who left CDPR in 2021 following an investigation into workplace bullying (via Eurogamer), which he later told Bloomberg absolved him. Tomaszkiewicz, meanwhile, was lead quest designer on The Witcher 3 and later quest director on Cyberpunk 2077 before leaving the studio in 2021, eventually joining League of Legends and Valorant studio Riot Games in 2022, and ultimately landing at Rebel Wolves as co-owner and creative director.

"Dawnwalker is not going to be a game where it’s a pure sandbox, where you’re just focusing on the gameplay," added Tomaszkiewicz. "We do want you to experience these moments with the world of the characters, and the emotions that these situations can evoke, and so on, and so forth. But, at the same time you are looking for ways of maximizing freedom as you do."

Blood of Dawnwalker is the debut project from Rebel Wolves, and it's billed as an open-world dark fantasy RPG with a day/night cycle and time-limited narrative that initially reminded me a lot of the calendar in Metaphor: ReFantazio and the Persona games. All we've seen so far is a cinematic trailer and a tiny glimpse of gameplay, but Rebel Wolves says we're getting a much bigger gameplay showcase this summer.

In the meantime, here are the best RPGs to play right now.