Earlier this year, The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz and his company, Rebel Wolves, shared the first look at The Blood of Dawnwalker. This action-RPG will put players in control of the titular Dawnwalker, Coen, a half-human/half-vampire hybrid who has 30 days and nights to save his family. But if players spend too much time in The Blood of Dawnwalker, then Coen may not be able to finish his quest.
During a recent interview with PC Gamer, Tomaszkiewicz compared the experience in The Blood of Dawnwalker to The Witcher 3’s Geralt playing the card game Gwint instead of helping out Ceri in her hour of need. There weren’t any consequences if players took their time before rejoining the main story. But in The Blood of Dawnwalker, Tomaszkiewicz noted that wasted time could prove to be fatal for Coen’s family.
“If you had some resource, and you know that maybe if you don’t go, something would happen–then your thinking about this game would be different, and maybe the immersion would be better, and maybe your emotions would be different,” said Tomaszkiewicz.
Daniel Sadowski, the design director for The Blood of Dawnwalker, added that the game treats time more like a currency. The in-game time limit won’t advance if players are simply moving about in the open world, but time will go forward if users choose to engage in any side quests, minigames, or the main storyline.
“We want the time system to be part of the narrative experience, and part of the whole ‘both action and inaction have consequences’ [approach],” explained Sadowski. “It will work in interesting ways. It will definitely force you to make choices at some points, like what to do, and what to ignore, because you will also have to choose which content you want to do, and which content you want to ignore, in order to maximize your chances of defeating the main enemy… But you will be able to choose between different ways to approach the problem, and all that ties into the narrative sandbox again.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t currently have a release date, but the gameplay reveal will arrive this summer.