For PC Gamer journal’s upcoming The Blood of Dawnwalker problem, I flew out to Warsaw to go to developer Rebel Wolves and converse to numerous its key devs, together with founder Konrad Tomaszkiewicz: Best-known for being the director of The Witcher 3, one in every of gaming’s biggest ever fantasy RPG experiences.
Tomaszkiewicz additionally labored as a co-director on Cyberpunk 2077 earlier than leaving CDPR. The apparent query is why a longtime and confirmed director would really feel the necessity to transfer on from someplace they’d helped to such success.“I arrange Rebel Wolves as a result of I felt that I needed to make one thing that’s distinctive with my associates,” says Tomaszkiewicz. “Of course, we now have an enormous love of RPG video games, and what has been accomplished earlier than up to now. [But] I really feel that these issues, these guidelines of RPG video games, will be expanded and advanced. We had loopy concepts. We knew that, you realize, if we needed to make them, we wanted to open our personal studio, as a result of it might be exhausting to persuade any large firm—you realize, with non-IP—to alter, and do one thing new, and do one thing loopy. Actually, it’s dangerous, as a result of we’re doing a little options that are new.
“And the second factor is that we now have a studio the place we work with the individuals, and amongst them, not like on the larger studios the place it’s more durable. I felt {that a} smaller staff is able to doing extra, as a result of the communication contained in the staff, and it’s simpler to talk about the imaginative and prescient. It’s simpler to really feel the artistic hearth, and to do one thing particular.”
Indeed, Rebel Wolves appears to be packing critical RPG heritage in its veins, as Konrad has been joined at his new studio by a number of different former CD Projekt builders, together with the sport’s design director, Daniel Sadowski, in addition to artistic director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, each of which labored on the acclaimed Polish studio’s The Witcher collection.
Tomaszkiewicz is now sport director on Rebel Wolves’ new fantasy RPG, The Blood of Dawnwalker, which sees avid gamers step into the footwear of Coen, a half-human half-vampire. The fundamental setup sees Coen preventing again in opposition to a bunch of highly effective vampires who’ve kidnapped his household, and brought over the whole Carpathian Mountains valley through which they reside, the Vale Sangora.
The devs at Rebel Wolves do not look like resting on their reputations, both, with the studio trying to evolve the RPG style in some fascinating methods, together with a recent ‘time as a useful resource’ mechanic, which hyperlinks each accomplished quest or activity to the passage of time on a day-night cycle. This performs into the sport’s ‘narrative sandbox’ method the place avid gamers will form their very own tales in-game by selecting which quests and duties they’ll do (and which they aren’t, as they can not do all the pieces on the similar time) as a way to take-on and, hopefully, beat the vampire antagonists.
