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When Rebel Wolves teased its first project back in 2022, PC Gamer’s Rich Stanton said it gave him “strong vampire vibes.” When the studio revealed the game’s title and some new concept art in 2024, I said it gave me “very strong vampire vibes.” Today we got a look at Dawnwalker’s debut cinematic trailer, and it pleases me greatly to say, we were right.
The Blood of Dawnwalker, as the game is now called, is set in 14th century Europe, amidst relentless warfare and the Black Death—not a great time for humanity. Sensing opportunity, the vampires make their move to take over, leading other “creatures of the night” to do the same. One of those creatures is you, a young man named Coen who’s been turned into a Dawnwalker, but who may not be ready to fully embrace the lifestyle.
“Fight for your humanity or embrace the cursed powers to save your family,” the website at dawnwalkergame.com says. “Whatever your choice, the question stands: is your soul worth the lives of those you love?”
Ah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all vampires are all bad: “Face your foes—be they human, monster, or the ticking clock itself. But remember—the real evil may bask in the sun’s light, and the most loyal of allies could lurk under the cover of night.”
Rebel Wolves is headed up by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who previously served as game director on The Witcher 3 and head of production on Cyberpunk 20777—and before that, as lead quest designer on The Witcher 2 and story designer on The Witcher. That background really shows through in this cinematic, which could very easily be a Witcher trailer; Coen himself appears to be essentially a young Geralt, granted great powers through unpleasant supernatural rituals that robbed him of much of his humanity—or, maybe not!
The implied moral ambiguity—evil in the daylight, friends in the darkness—is obviously not unique to The Witcher but certainly a central part of it: One of Geralt’s best friends, recall, is a higher vampire who wouldn’t be at all out of place munching on the poor soldiers in this video. Even the line “the world needs what it fears” is a knockoff of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy stories, set in a realm that needs witchers but sure doesn’t like ’em.
But even if The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t look like it’s going to set new standards for original ideas, I dig the concept and I’m eager to learn more about how it’s actually going to play. For that, however, we’ll have to wait: Rebel Wolves said in a reveal livestream today that a gameplay reveal will happen sometime this summer.
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Kurt Indovina
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