The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaskiewicz has revealed his upcoming game, The Blood of Dawnwalker, has been heavily inspired by the original Interplay Fallout games. Unlike many RPGs of today, the game director’s upcoming project aims to put players in a world where “everything is optional”.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Tomaskiewicz, who is helming the new RPG, said the title aims to give players “the freedom to experience” what they they want to experience, bringing it closer to “pen-and-paper RPGS”. As a result, there’s no main narrative, other than you have 30 days and nights to save your family.
“Kingdom Come Deliverance is not a bad example,” he told the outlet, “but still they have the main story that develops; you have the open world and the main quest which is leading you. In our game it’s different. Our game is more similar in this area to the old Fallout, the first and second [games], where you have a clear goal and everything is optional – you decide. You travel the world, you decide what you want to do. There is no main quest.”
He added: “Even if the time ends, this is not the end of the game,” but stopped short of revealing more details.
The Blood of Dawnwalker sees you play a half human, half vampire called Coen – who, thanks to his human side, is able to survive in the daytime. However, in an interesting gameplay twist, Coen’s abilities change and evolve according to the time of day.
As expected, Coen relies on drinking blood, with a recent gameplay video showing how he’s able to lunge at his enemies, fangs first, and deal damage whilst replenishing health. The gameplay video also showed off Coen’s hand-to-hand, or should we say, claw-to-hand, abilities – which can be used to deal devastating damage to attackers, with the combat system supporting dismemberment, similar to The Witcher 3.
The lack of a main storyline is certainly an interesting choice, reminding me of the Dead Rising series, which also gave players free-reign to explore the zombie infested mall, allowing them to completely ignore any central storyline if they wanted. While a narrative throughline is there, you can also just do whatever you want, and reap the consequences.
There’s no release date yet for The Blood of Dawnwalker, other than we can expect it some time in 2026. It is scheduled to launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
