Is the trailer for The Blood of Dawnwalker hot mashed cranberries with caster sugar? Because it is so my jam. My colleague Ben Sledge has already detailed why the basic elevator pitch of “medieval X-Files” is an easy sell for me, but there’s a lot more to it than referencing one of my all-time favourite TV shows.
There’s the fact it comes from a team of devs who helped make The Witcher 3, including its director. I don’t love The Witcher as much as some others do, but the fantasy RPG’s atmosphere was always top notch, and that seems to have been imported over. The gameplay could well be a sticking point, but we’re not seeing that until summer, so for now I choose to believe. And (if you have a South African accent) speaking of ‘staking’ points, the game is all about vampires. Although one of these vampires may be a jiangshi.
The Blood Of Dawnwalker Has A Cool Twist On Vampires
The game takes place “somewhere in the Carpathians”, which using modern day nations, would mean somewhere in either Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, or Ukraine. However, one of the vampires in the trailer appears to be Asian. They also wear the uniform of a Hun warrior – you may recognise these from Mulan – which hints at the presence of a jiangshi in more ways than one.
On the surface, it’s not too strange for an Asian person to be in Eastern Europe in the 14th century where the game is set. The Mongols of that age expanded as far west as Poland, which is the furthest west of all the countries that could claim to be “somewhere in the Carpathians”. Aside from the vampires and the magic powers, it’s historically accurate to have an Asian person be in this place at this time – although not everyone seems to care about historical accuracy.
However, this is not a history lesson. We very deliberately see an Asian character in the central cabal of vampires, and that suggests they will have a unique story to tell in the game. That may be linked to the Black Death, which is the focus of the trailer, as the invasion of the Mongols causing evacuations has been linked to plague outbreaks by some historians. However, the fact they appear to be dressed as a Hun implies something deeper.
The Huns were most active between the 3rd and 5th century, and this game is in the 14th. His long lifespan is easily explained by the fact he is a vampire, but if you have an Asian vampire from the 3rd century, surely exploring the idea of a jiangshi crossed the developers’ minds?
What Even Is A Jiangshi?
Let’s not be backwards in being forward here – what even is a jiangshi? As you may have guessed, it’s an Asian (more specifically, Chinese) vampire. But it combines the Western ideas of a vampire with that of a zombie. Jiangshi are often depicted as walking corpses – in some versions of the myth, they hop or teleport instead – and rather than sucking your blood or even physically attacking you at all, they can drain your life force with a touch of their hand.
And we could do with a jiangshi in video games. When I reviewed Horrified: World of Monsters, in which the jiangshi joined the party, I was inspired to write about the distinct lack of creature features we seem to have in horror games. Its only legacy in gaming seems to be Tiger Road and Phantom Fighter, which released in 1987 and 1988 respectively. It’s also the mascot for mahjong series Shikinjou, but that’s like claiming Count Chocula is a cereal ‘about’ vampires.
Of course, there are some flaws in this reasoning. Owing in part to film adaptations of the myth, Jiangshi are most commonly associated with the early Qing dynasty of the 17th century, 300 years after the game is set and 1,200 years after the Huns died out. Also, just because you have an Asian that’s a vampire doesn’t mean it’s the Asian vampire, although I would expect this lineage to be a narrative factor somewhere. Finally, we do see the creature feast on blood in the trailer, which suggests even if it is a jiangshi, it’s leaning closer to a Western vampire than a traditional depiction.
Still, it makes me very interested to see what The Blood of Dawnwalker has up its sleeve. This feels like a different take on vampires, helping the poor and weak instead of feasting on them, breaking crowns (symbolically dismantling power structures) rather than usurping them, and lamenting a careless loss of life instead of relishing in the violence. Including a character whose racial background could lead to fresh stories (jiangshi-related or not) is part of that take. Those hot, bubbling cranberries sure look a lot like blood, and I can’t wait to see if The Blood of Dawnwalker has the gameplay to back up the hype this summer.