REVIEW: The Blood of Dawnwalker When I first heard that former Witcher 3 developers had built a new studio to create a gothic vampire RPG, it almost sounded too good to be true. There are far too few great vampire games out there that actually focus on the vampires themselves or their lore, and Rebel Wolves seemed perfectly suited to fix that. STORY The Blood of Dawnwalker is the first in a planned franchise of games, making it basically an origin story. Our protagonist, Coen of Laslea, is young and not yet wearied by the world, but he is wearied by the trauma of his past and the present reality of living under vampire rule. His mother is sick, his siblings are losing their childhood, his father is desperate to do something about it all, and his girlfriends don’t love him (oops, that comes later). Once the prologue is over, and Coen is properly turned into a dual-natured Dawnwalker, you have only one ultimate goal: save your family. From this point on, The Blood of Dawnwalker becomes an intensely character driven experience with each major questline focusing on a different potential ally, their past, and their own personal motivations that also reveal more about Coen in turn. You can do them all, or you can do none of them and march straight to Brencis’ castle. GAMEPLAY The first major gameplay element that has to be discussed is the 30 day in-game time limit. It is actually less like a timer and more like a form of currency, which I really appreciated. Every day has 16 total time segments, 8 during the day while Coen is human and 8 during the night while Coen is a vampire. Most every quest or activity in the game will cost a certain amount of segments, and spending those segments wisely is how you plan your journey to Brencis. I was initially worried about a restriction like this, but in my own experience I don’t feel like I actually missed out on anything I wanted to see. Combat is honestly one of my favorite parts of the game. The light directional elements in concert with parrying, using abilities, and popping mapped consumables worked very well for me. In a world where RPGs are risking their identity by abandoning turn-based more and more for action, it’s encouraging to see Rebel Wolves introduce another layer to fights in a similar way to what Warhorse has done with Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The duality of being a human by day and a vampire by night is really refreshing, not only from a narrative perspective, but also in gameplay. You have a skill tree exclusive to your vampire form, claws in combat, and a blood lust mechanic in conversations that will cause you to feed on and kill NPCs (even “essential” ones) if your health is too low at night. Swords eventually outpace claws and the blood lust becomes very easy to avoid, but just the fact that these things exist at all makes the world feel more real and engaging. EXPLORATION The valley of Vale Sangora is exactly what it needs to be, but there is plenty of room for Rebel Wolves to improve world design in the future sequels. I enjoyed combing through most of the map looking for secrets and making my way to the next objective, but there’s not a lot of variety or exciting locations to be discovered on your own. Svartrau city is easily the best location in the game. Traversing the map is well-paced and not too reliant on fast travel. There are plenty of fast travel shrines at your disposal, but I appreciated the restraint shown by the developers when it comes to the actual size of the valley. VERDICT The Blood of Dawnwalker represents all of Rebel Wolves’ well-earned experience with dark fantasy and role-playing games. It has great writing and dialogue, characters with depth and diverse motives, choices that sit with you long past making them, and unique spins on gameplay mechanics that keep things fresh and add much needed texture. It’s everything you love about The Witcher 3, yet also entirely its own and in many ways improved. 9/10 - AMAZING

You can find my FULL review of The Blood of Dawnwalker here: lifeisagamemagazine.com/the-…

I'm so glad I picked Nomad for my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 because Panam is a treasure trove of extra interactions if you come from that Lifepath. I get it now. I really get it now. She's so cool.

Woah @bearmccreary 😳

BioWare is gone, but their spirit is not.

If Mass Effect and Dragon Age can be sold, I hope they will be. These would be my ideal picks: Mass Effect ---> Owlcat Games Dragon Age ---> Larian Studios The problem is, I'm not sure why two busy thriving studios like these would want another IP they didn't create themselves, especially ones that have likely been rung dry of any remaining juice. Larian has actively removed themselves from something like this already by leaving Baldur's Gate for their own Divinity. As terrible as it is, if either of these legendary IP are resurrected, it'll most likely be by a huge passionless entity that only sees dollar signs.