The Blood of Dawnwalker - Dark, Brooding and Quintessentially Eastern European

We had a chance to get hands-on with Rebel Wolves’ debut title, as well as to chat to one of the game’s key writers, Piotr Kichask. Read on for one part of our massive roll-out of The Blood of Dawnwalker content we’ve prepared, feast-like…

From the outset The Blood of Dawnwalker pulls no punches. In our opening minutes with the game we’d seen a young sibling turned into a vampire, only to become an equally eerie part of a scarily growing flock of blood-suckers, replete with the sort of confidence and antagonism such a trope has.

“Hurry up, Coen! They’re waiting."

Yet, it was all a dream… or was it?

After a salvo for the ages -- one we won’t spoil out of respect -- what presents early on is a game brimming with narrative verve, a game that has not just a story to tell, but an entire mythology to express that isn’t expressly tied to its geographical, cultural or calendar roots. Coen’s story is bleak and full of bloodlust tied to familial loss and hope, but it’s also the story of a young man not destined for chores, a young man who likes the young lass down by the river, and who wants to be there for his mates. But, is also there for family and duty and where, maybe, he feels he’s also not ready for the grander scheme of things beset by a world coming to grips with sicknesses not yet wholly understood.

Out of time and place, Coen’s lot is more ordained than the cultural background to his home; as a result, the immediacy of all of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s setup means he will bend over backwards and work to a better solution. Which is to say, there’s no task too big or too small for him to undertake. He’s confidently written in this way and is ostensibly an “everyperson” in make-up, yet still malleable from both the player perspective and one from the writing team. And entirely unlike a Geralt of Rivia, Coen grows with every decision the player makes on his behalf because he’s not yet the man he’s set to become. Which is clearly where we come in, as players, because if we learnt anything from our time with the game it’s that Coen’s journey is a trial by blood and sacrifice enshrined in a world deeply rooted in superstition and folktales, but one also older than first thought, and one even more brutal than the very plague the land has been beset by, that also started this whole thing.

The Blood of Dawnwalker

Genre: Action-RPG
Developer: Rebel Wolves
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Release Date: September 3, 2026
Classification: MA15+
Author: Stephen Farrelly
Date: July 08, 2026

Oh, You’ll Catch on, Sooner or Later

We spent roughly three and a half hours with The Blood of Dawnwalker, and in that time had unfettered access to the game’s introductory space. Most of this took place as an everyday human and as alluded to above, involved performing chores and generally just helping out the folks in the village in which Coen and his family live. Specifically, it’s Coen -- the eldest, his younger brother and sister, his dad and his ailing mother who appears more shell-shook than ill. She won’t eat, however, and is plagued with nightmares and a seemingly invisible trauma, and as the oldest it’s up to Coen to perform chores and generally help his father out as much as possible, grumpy as the old man is.

"The studio should be applauded for delivering this new IP to the masses so confidently already..."

Equally highlighted in our intro, the writing amongst all of the game’s notable characters early on is a stand-out. But more than that is the direction at play. Each in-game cut-scene and moment of import is handled with stylish and, at times, moving aplomb. Camera angles, depth-of-field and the use of colour help bring the harsh and decaying world around Coen to life. Dialogue is next-level and while we did come into a handful of repeated lines, these throwaway background elements never took away from the gravity of the immediate story at hand. Moreover, as Coen offers the player multiple retorts or lines of questioning in dialogue choices, we get an early sense of being able to be the Coen we want to be.

There’s a genuine sense of morality and mortality tied to him that is part altruist and part naive, both of which are naturally at odds with his eventual need to feed once he becomes his supernatural self. The normalisation of his plight against the backdrop of a village essentially herded as cattle for the Vrakhiri was the game’s biggest standout for us and the studio should be applauded for delivering this new IP to the masses so confidently already.

Would you like to know more?
From 1346 to 1353, Europe came under attack by an invisible enemy commonly referred to as "the Black Death". It's an interesting real-life event used as a brilliant pull for The Blood of Dawnwalker as it was often seen as a punishment from God, but where Rebel Wolves has utilised it to show vampires as a benevolent saviour. We know, of course, this isn't the case, but similarly to the backdrop of Asobo Studio's A Plague Tale, Rebel Wolves is milking the actual plague as a narrative pull to normalise its world and its monsters. That said, from our experience thus far, it is also treating the real-life event with the respect it deserves and we can't wait to see what else it does with it.

Mass Acres 

Also, this game is huge -- both narratively and geographically. (But we'll explore that in another feature.)

The Blood of Dawnwalker's overall narrative arc sees a group of ancient vampires (the above-mentioned “Vrakhiri”) descend upon a kingdom nestled in the Carpathian mountains that has been hit hard by the black death, otherwise known as the plague (read our “Would you like to know more?” box out for… MORE!). Their blood is used as a means to ‘heal’ the sick, but in actuality is more a means to control the province and its surrounding villages to use its denizens as food. But it’s also much more than this. Tapping into the superstitions of the time, the vrakhiri puppeteer the church and repurpose passages from the bible for their own gain, setting themselves up as saviours.

"Even just 30 minutes into our play-time we came across an ancient tomb featuring murals depicting an age past feud with the vrakhiri..."

This comes after years of hiding, with Knyaz Brencis, their leader, of ancient Roman descent seizing on the opportunity the plague has offered him and his vampire outcasts. Rebel Wolves has woven a deeply layered tapestry of its own lore that feels poised to become one of the great vampire stories across modern media. And it has done so by embedding that rich lore into the world itself. Even just 30 minutes into our play-time we came across an ancient tomb featuring murals depicting an age past feud with the vrakhiri, led by a warrior woman from an ancient civilisation. But in playing by videogame rules, this environmental exposition also delivered us neat gear, a minor boss battle and a sense of discovery and character growth all modern action-RPGs require. Rebel Wolves has just already done it better than most.

“Basically, our philosophy was that [we wanted] to give players as many fun activities as possible, mainly connected to narrative beats,” explained Piotr Kurchaski, one of the game’s key writers to us (in a forthcoming interview). “But you also don’t want them to feel like it's too much, right?
 Like, you know, you're stumbling upon [one thing after another and another]. And at some point they are, like, ‘okay, I just want to do something else’, and so they can just go back to the main [story], right? 

“[So] in our game the philosophy is that you have this main goal but the rest of the [world is] optional, really.
 You can do whatever you want to, right?” 

Would you like to know more?
Don't want to be a bloodthirsty Coen? Well, you kind of still have to be but you can also not hunt humans and just raze the world for animal blood instead. The problem is you get far more sustenance and power from humans than animals, so there's both risk-reward and moral choices tied to his need to feast. The studio has also suggested players can attempt to skip any vampire sequences should they so choose, only having to play out the ones tied specifically to the main storyline, so it will be interesting to see how the community tackles this. But hey, how often do you get to be a both a human (with witchcraft powers) and a vampire all at once? We think we'll embrace the lust when we get right to it...

Hours Go By

What ties this together so interestingly is the game’s heavily-touted use of time. Where in other games of this nature players are usually moving through an in-game day and night cycle directed by an overall 24-hour timespan, The Blood of Dawnwalker insists that you think about how you’d spend either 12-hour side of said overall 24. In this way, each segment of Coen’s play-time -- human or vampire -- is defined by a meter featuring eight bars. Certain tasks, missions and quests in the game, even some dialogue, can then eat into this meter. Once all eight have been filled, Coen will switch to his other personality. All of which means you’ll need to consider any engagement featuring an hour glass icon because that will be permanently spent. But not all activities in the game advance time, so exploration and just going off the beaten track to bushwhack or the like isn’t costly.

"Do you go full vrakhiri and just feast indiscriminately on the so-called cattle Brencis and his cohorts are also draining from?"

It truly is a unique system that the studio hopes will promote multiple playthroughs and spawn different playstyles and approaches to tasks. And then there’s the moral dilemma -- do you go full vrakhiri and just feast indiscriminately on the so-called cattle Brencis and his cohorts are also draining from? Does that simply make you as bad as them? We queries Kurchaski on the fine-line between player choice and Coen’s own moral makeup.

“The way we designed him, Coen is quite young and inexperienced, but he is also very good at reading people,” he tells us. “But [also] because of his tough upbringing he’s also had [a choice] -- he could have become a hardarse because of the trauma, but he chose to go the other way.

“But of course we want players to have the choice to play as the Coen they want to play as. There’s some rigidity around this because we have to keep up with the character [as we wrote him] -- he can’t go from goody-two-shoes to an evil bastard in two hours of gameplay, so it was a tricky one. I think that the player, if they decide to indulge Coen’s darker side; the hunger side, killing [will] become easier and easier, right? This was the point of his journey [for us].”

Duelist

The dual nature of Coen’s existence in the game proper is best highlighted across both traversal and combat, the latter of which is akin to a dance with the devil, figuratively. Essentially what we found with this is maybe best described as a cross between the swordplay in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and The Callisto Protocol. Rebel Wolves refers to it as “omnidirectional” where understanding where an attack is coming from or where you have an opening is how you go about both defense and offence -- and this applies to both the human and vampire personas. 

"This equally opens up exploration and the ability to find new missions or other parts of the game, meaning investing in both the day and night versions of Coen will net more rewards..."

Though it should be said there’re in-depth skill and ability trees to invest in. Coen’s Perks, for example, come in the form of Witchcraft, Swordmastery and Vampirism, and how you feed into these will have a heavy hand in how you play the game. He also has Active Abilities that are used for more regular play, such as being able to walk up walls or teleport while in vampire mode to play both stealthily and to reach areas “daywalker” Coen can’t. This equally opens up exploration and the ability to find new missions or other parts of the game, meaning investing in both the day and night versions of Coen will net more rewards, it’s just as with the “Hours Go By” sub-head and text earlier, at night you’ll be fending off a bloodlust and desire that might get out of hand which could severely impact the kind of Coen you want to play as, though Rebel Wolves also has a minor workaround for this -- it just adds to the layers of gameplay that will fill out your overall time with The Blood of Dawnwalker (read our second “Would you like to know more?” box out for… MORE!).

It should also be noted that the game also pulls no punches in the brutality stakes, and combat is no different (nor is feasting as a vrakhiri) so be prepared for a bit of a blood and gore fest when you play, because given the overall setting and era, the game is remarkably tonal and won’t be for the feint of heart.

The Future is Written

When we were done with our hands-on time with the game we’d fetched items, discovered ancient tombs, found a lost friend, engaged in some detective work, learnt some Latin and even flirted a bit. We’d also slain baddies and aggro beasties and even taught a bully a lesson or two. We’d also had our lives turned upside down and felt a need to quench a thirst. And we’d done all of this at our own pace and in our own playstyle. This whole feature should paint to you a picture we have of The Blood of Dawnwalker potentially being one of the great debut titles from a relatively young studio.

"While we see the potential for combat to become a skilful dance, we’re still not entirely sold on the directional component to it all..."

It’s not without concerns though. Coen’s animations in combat feel less fluid than they should and he feels less weighted than he should in general traversal -- elements that plagued The Witcher 3 from start to finish, which is this studio’s pedigree. And while we see the potential for combat to become a skilful dance, we’re still not entirely sold on the directional component to it all and worry it relies too much on a basic rock, paper, scissors design setup, but it should be said that investment in your Coen will ramp up your skills and abilities around this which should bolster the whole thing anyway.

What we loved most of all though was the confidence in world-building and embedded lore Rebel Wolves is presenting. And with the knowledge that this is set to be a multi-series IP and that this won’t be Coen’s only title speaks to the confidence equally inside the studio.

“From the very beginning we (Rebel Wolves) were thinking about an angle for a saga, right? [And] vampires are a cool answer to that because they can live for many, many centuries,” Piotr says of the studio’s plans to continue Coen’s story into new adventures. “And now we’ve shown the Summer Games Fest trailer; showing Coen in the future and in the present times and so to us, this is a promise, right? It’s a promise to players that if you’re in for the long haul, we will keep [making those] stories for you.”

The Blood of Dawnwalker is out for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S this September 3. We have even more content coming from our time with the game and with Piotr, so stay tuned to 3rd-Phase Boss for more.

About the author

Written By Stephen Farrelly
Stephen Farrelly is a veteran journalist and editor with more than two decades experience in the worlds of gaming, entertainment, lifestyle and sport. He is a proud pug dad, loves art in all forms (particularly street and tattoo culture), and is the director of Swear Jar Editorial and Media Pty Ltd, this site's owner and publisher. When not dispensing words, he's also dispensing boutique beers as a taproom fixture at Bracket Brewing in Marrickville, NSW...
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