Recently I was fortunate to get four hours of hands-on time with The Blood of Dawnwalker, the hotly anticipated new game from fledgling studio Rebel Wolves. They describe themselves as a “studio born out of love for RPGs”, and it’s easy to believe that with former Director on The Witcher 3, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, at the helm.
You can read my full thoughts on the game so far in our The Blood of Dawnwalker preview, but I also got a chance to speak to both Konrad and Environment Artist Adam Payet to find out more about their experience creating the game, the challenges with the dual human/vampire structure and more.
This was actually my first in-person interview and preview event, so I just wanted to extend a big thank you to Bandai Namco for including us, and to Konrad and Adam for their time answering these questions.
Anyway, onto the interview!
Me: Firstly, I just wanted to congratulate you on such a successful pre-launch cycle. The reception to everything shown so far has been really positive and it’s definitely had me excited for the game. How has it been working with Bandai Namco on Dawnwalker? They’ve obviously got some big RPGs in their portfolio, have they been a good partner to work with?
Konrad: It’s great, the guys are really supportive and we like speaking together about the game. They are also testing the game and making suggestions around the problems which we’re solving, or not solving if we think that they are not problems. It’s a really good experience.
Me: That’s great to hear. Now I have a question from Mick, one of the other guys on the site who’s mega-hyped for Dawnwalker. Having played the game today and hearing the presentation this morning I think I know the answer now, but can we lock ourselves out of endings or are there certain things that you can miss? Because I presume you can’t see everything in one playthrough.
Konrad: For sure you will not see everything in one playthrough. There are multiple endings and multiple states of the world, which means that you need to play a few times to see everything and to unlock all achievements, let’s say, because they are also connected with the endings.
Me: So, what are the real life inspirations for Veil Sangora?
Adam: Predominantly Romania and the surrounding territory.
So we were trying to stick to the Carpathian regions because it wouldn’t feel necessarily authentic if we pulled from non-mountainous regions, because those structures get built differently for different sorts of weather environments and everything.
But we try to pull from that very broad region so that we build something that when you look at it, and if you’ve got any familiarities with that area of the world, you go “oh, okay, I know roughly that I’m here on the map”. The sense of isolation that comes with Brencis really locking down the valley and the feeling that you’re trapped and you have to deal with the thing that’s been thrown your way was very important.
We made it so that it’s familiar, but it’s completely original. You will not find an equivalent of Svartrau anywhere in the world because it was built to fit the story, built to fit the quests and what we do gameplay-wise.
So we’re trying to evoke that feeling of it being a real place, but you can’t go there. It’s a valley lost to time.
Me: Well it definitely does feel like a real place, it’s one of the first things I noticed as I stepped out into the world.
Adam: There’s a few other cultures that we’ve pulled from in terms of creating the deep lore.
Just like Brencis is Roman and Lusanti is Greek in origin, There’re other cultures that feed into the bigger world of Dawnwalker that we pulled on, but to talk in detail would be too much of a spoiler.
Me: That’s fair, I won’t ask any more on that topic then! How do you balance Coen’s human and vampire sides so that they’re both enjoyable?
Konrad: It’s a hard question, because it’s a lot of work to be honest. This is the shortened answer, but when we create the content like the quests and all the story elements in the game, we start to think about how many things we have for the night, for the day, and which are universal, then we start to iterate and create the balance as we play the game, and decide what is cool and where it fits or not, and then we do the same with the gameplay elements, because to balance this kind of game is really difficult.
It’s like two games in one, and it needs a lot more content to make it work. It was a lot of iterations. It was a lot of iterations, a lot of playthroughs and a lot of conversations on how to do that.
Adam: So you just need to make two equally fun games and glue them together. Simple as!
Me: I noticed that even down to the items you use for healing, there are different versions of everything for each version of Coen. I can see how it ends up feeling like making two games.
Konrad: A different way of unlocking the skills, different way of building the skills,
Me: Similarly, how do you balance the vampire power fantasy and keep Coen feeling powerful but not overpowered?
Konrad: The answer is exactly the same, you know: iterations. Iterations, playing, speaking, checking if it’s cool or not, or if it’s difficult, because when you’re playing a lot the game is easier for you than for the people who did not play the game. At some point you are not sure if it’s easy or not easy, and you don’t want to make too hard a game so you need to work with external people who didn’t play the game yet to get their opinions and just iterate on it all the time. We’re still iterating on it, to be honest.
Me: I saw recently that there have been talks about potential future games. Do you have concrete ideas now on when and where you want to take Coen?
Konrad: Yeah, exactly. I cannot tell you much about it, but yeah, we planned this saga from the early beginning, and we have the arc for the whole saga.
We know that we will conclude it in the present times, and we want to travel big distances in time and through the ages and in different cultures to create this adventure with Coen.
There wasn’t something like this before, because Assassin’s Creed makes something similar, but there was different, heroes who were assassins, and in our game we have the opportunity to tell the story of Coen and to grow with Coen and change his character and so on, and see all those consequences of what we are doing and how we play him, and experience totally different stories from different regions of the world and from different times.
Me: I love that, I can’t wait to see where he goes. One last question from me – What’s one thing you’re particularly proud of with Dawnwalker?
Konrad: There’s a lot of things I’m proud of, and choosing one is really difficult, but I’m proud, of how all those things, those difficult things, risky things, like the time system, the directional combat, the day and night cycle, they come together to give you one consistent and really unique feel for this particular genre.
Adam: I think from my side, it’s maybe going to be a little bit more broad. This is my first big AAA project to deliver and I remember when we were starting it and the game was very much just grey cubes, I was thinking to myself, with all my imagination I cannot imagine it done because there’s just so much, it’s so big.
But you know, three years is a long time. That’s my tenure at the company. So I’m just super proud of that. That we did it and that I’ve put my brick into this huge, huge endeavour because making games, whether that’s big or small, is extremely difficult and every game you’re making, you’re making a completely new game.
So I’m just proud that we’ve delivered something that we enjoy, that we can look at and think to ourselves that we’re really happy that it exists and it exists in the way that we want it.
So to me, the pride comes from the completion of it, and it’s a thing that exists, works, and that people will now be able to see.
The Blood of Dawnwalker releases on 3 September on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
