The Blood of Dawnwalker creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz says that - unlike his last directorial effort in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - you'll be able to kill off random NPCs, as vampires tend to do, and some of them are even VIPs.
"It's a sandbox, meaning we're trying to maximize your options of your choice in the game," Tomaszkiewicz said of his vampiric game, made alongside a slew of other CD Projekt Red veterans at his new studio Rebel Wolves, in an interview with GamesRadar+. "But it isn't purely focused on gameplay. We were trying to play to our strengths, because our past projects were very focused on narrative, on good storytelling, interesting characters and a lot of lore to find."
Rebel Wolves isn't skimping on giving players plenty of choice while telling the story it wants, though. "It's not exactly endless possibilities, because obviously we have a set character you're playing with Coen, and he has his own personality and so on, but within this personality we're trying to give you the ability to shape your own Coen." Tomaszkiewicz calls the game a "narrative sandbox" since quests can branch and twist into different directions, "for example, we allow you to kill off a lot of NPCs, and a lot of them can be really important NPCS." I wonder if that possibility for VIP bloodshed is possible when you're just out and about in the open-world, or if it's only relegated to key points in the story.
"Sometimes this can lead to alternate outcomes or even cut off certain quest lines," he explained. "And this, of course, ties into our other systems [...] you being a Dawnwalker means that you have this blood hunger during the night time, so this can actually lead to these NPCs dying if you're not careful." It sounds like your rampages will be slightly more impactful than the ones you can go on in a GTA, let's say, though we'll need to wait for the game to come out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S to learn how exactly.
Ex-CDPR devs explain how new open-world vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker handles its time-limited story, and I'm getting big Persona vibes: "It doesn't require you to rush"
