The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz is building a huge role-playing game (RPG) with a team of around 155 people at his new studio Rebel Wolves. He says stepping back from a more than 500 person strong team at CD Projekt Red has helped foster “more connection, more passion, more fire.”
“I think that medium sized teams and smaller teams are actually better for making games because you have greater freedom,” he told me. “I wanted to do something new, unique and push the boundaries of the RPG genre to create our own area in this genre which is closer to the paper RPG.”
What does this mean in practice? Something that’s “more open,” he explained, where you “have more freedom, and you can do whatever you want to.”
Play your way
It’s certainly an ambitious goal, but with one of the best RPGs ever made already under his belt few developers seem better placed to achieve this vision. Titled The Blood of Dawnwalker, it’s set in a fresh fantasy world that blends elements of history and vampire fiction.
“It’s not a vampire game,” Tomaszkiewicz insisted. “There are vampires in this setting, but this is not a vampire game. We have a much richer world and much richer lore than one with only vampires – we have a lot of different creatures and an ecosystem of the night that makes it really interesting.”
“In the game, we start with the vampires because our protagonist is a guy who works in the silver mines, and has silver inside his body,” he continued. “The antagonist wanted to change him into a vampire, but the transformation couldn’t be completed because of the silver. When it’s day he’s a normal human. At night, when the sun is down, you have some vampire powers.”
As one of the titular Dawnwalkers, the dichotomy between the heroes’ humanity and vampirism is fundamental to the fantasy of the game. As a human you can learn unique skills like magic and experience the story “in a totally different way,” while venturing out in the night lets you harness powerful vampire abilities and experience a different version of events.
Like The Witcher, The Blood of Dawnwalker focuses on a named protagonist – in this case a man named Coen. “In our experience it’s easier to create the emotions and shape the story around a predefined character instead of a character that you create,” the director began. “Our specialization is to take the stories of the predefined characters, and this is what we want to do.”
Although he is a character with his own personality, you can still shape Coen through your choices. As an example, Tomaszkiewicz warns that players who kill a lot and harvest humans for blood will have to contend with a very different protagonist than those that don’t.
On top of this, players will also have a seemingly unprecedented level of freedom when it comes to how they approach the main story thanks to what the developers call a “narrative sandbox” approach. “It works like this: when you exit the prologue, you know where the main antagonist is, and you know that you need to save your family,” said Tomaszkiewicz.
“You can do whatever you want to do; all the quests around are optional. It’s up to you how you will shape your story. Whether you want to develop yourself and try to attack the castle alone, or want to find allies and do some quests, or if you want to meet some other creatures of the night and search for some powerful spells or items to help you in this mission, it’s up to you.”
Swords and stakes
Much of the marketing for The Blood of Dawnwalker so far has focused on its swordplay and combat – and you may have already spotted some resemblance to The Witcher 3 here. Both games feature animations captured by the Polish stunt performer Maciej Kwiatkowski, though there are some key differences this time around.
The flashy fights of The Witcher 3 were filled with moves based on Japanese techniques while The Blood of Dawnwalker is meant to have more grounded, authentically medieval combat.
“Maybe it looks similar, but it feels totally different,” he added, explaining that there will be more than five distinct ways of playing. This ranges from the most challenging approach, which involves playing with full directional attacks, to more lenient options with automatic directional blocking that comes at the cost of spending extra stamina on each blocked hit.
The magic system now also seems much more involved, with abilities that are designed to “change the flow” of each encounter rather than “just another fireball” or something that simply inflicts a quick burst of damage. He highlights a “powerful” ability that lets you link opponents together so that your sword strikes affect all of them at once – though this comes at the cost of making the primary affected enemy much stronger than before when it ends.
It all sounds like a wonderful evolution of what players loved in The Witcher 3, and such a strong vision could see The Blood of Dawnwalker become one of the biggest releases of 2026.
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