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Developer Rebel Wolves boasts more than a few veterans of The Witcher 3 on its team, and there's certainly no hiding that lineage in the studio's debut title The Blood of Dawnwalker.
Like the Witcher series, it's set in a dark fantasy world grounded in ideas from real history. And it's just as shot through with grey morality—choices between two imperfect situations, and characters who are neither wholly right or wrong. It should certainly be a tip-off that the game's hero Coen is literally split between light and darkness himself, striving for justice but at the same time being drawn to drink the blood of those around him.
But heading into a hands-off demo for the game this month, I was at least working on the assumption that the game had some unequivocal villains in its grotesque vampire ruling family. They've taken over the land, demanding a blood tithe from the people and ruling with an iron fist. They brutally suppress any sign of rebellion, and they've taken Coen's family hostage, providing the driving motivation on his quest. They, uh, have giant fangs and weird, wrinkly faces. Pure evil, right?
Article continues belowIt's not quite so simple. These are dire times—the Black Plague is sweeping the land, and the king and his men are using brutal tactics to contain it. Having fallen ill, Coen's sister is condemned to death to stop her spreading it further. When the vampires arrive to kill the king and steal his kingdom, they do so in gory fashion, but in the process save Coen's sister and cure her with a taste of their own blood.
It turns out vampire rule comes with universal healthcare. The blood tithes taken from the common folk are not only non-lethal, they're reciprocated in kind with a taste of vampire blood—enough to regenerate illness and injuries, and stave off the Black Plague completely. And though their reign was oppressive, so was the feudal system that preceded them.
Within just the first hour of the game, you get to see a wide selection of the horrors they're imposing on the land—but also ways in which things seem to have actually gotten better. It's a fascinating level of nuance, especially in an RPG that, Rebel Wolves promises, will be totally driven by your choices.
"What I personally really enjoy in writing stories overall, is to write stories about people," says the game's creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. "And people are very rarely just good or evil, you know. They simply are complicated.
"We carry this over to our storytelling, we try to make characters that feel real… They are complex, and they are not one dimensional. I think that's what makes writing interesting."
Of course, the vampires also infect Coen with their condition—but thanks to silver poisoning, it's kept partly at bay, allowing him to retain his humanity as well and become the eponymous Dawnwalker. That too is both a blessing and a curse. It upends his life—but how promising was life as a medieval peasant shaping up to be in the first place?
"His family had problems, even before these fantastical vampires arrived," says Tomaszkiewicz. "It's kind of like it forced him out of this status quo that he was trapped in. He was basically willingly just continuing the cycle, but then he was suddenly given this enormous power, and now he gets to choose his own destiny."
In an RPG driven entirely by your decisions, it's the villains who gave you that power to choose in the first place. What a deliciously murky premise.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is out September 2.
