Something to look forward to: Development studio Rebel Wolves, largely comprised of CD Projekt Red veterans, has spent the past year showcasing its upcoming open-world RPG, The Blood of Dawnwalker. This week, the company outlined the game's unique structure and release details, including the full system requirements.
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, a writer and quest designer on CD Projekt Red's first two Witcher games who went on to direct the award-winning Witcher 3, has spent the past several years building an original RPG at his new studio, Rebel Wolves. While the game resembles the director's prior fantasy series in numerous respects, The Blood of Dawnwalker features an even less linear storyline with an in-game time limit and no main quest.
The open world is set in a fictional kingdom in real-life 14th-century southeastern Europe, where vampires have taken over and players resolve quests by combining magic and vampiric powers. Players take a human form by day and vampiric abilities by night.
Like CD Projekt Red's The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, Dawnwalker presents players with choices that can alter the storyline in unexpected ways, but offers more freedom while also implementing a time-sensitive structure.
Following the tutorial, players can complete quests in any order or even attempt to confront the main villain immediately. According to Tomaszkiewicz, the system was inspired by the first two Fallout games.
However, finishing quests progresses time, and players have only 30 days and 30 nights to rescue the protagonist's family, forcing them to choose which quests to complete. Furthermore, almost every major character can die permanently, which can cut off certain storylines. Players can even inadvertently kill major characters if they lose too much health and lose control of the protagonist's bloodlust. Still, nothing can make Dawnwalker completely unwinnable – players can reach an ending even after failing every quest.
The Unreal Engine 5 title's system requirements are somewhat high despite Rebel Wolves never mentioning ray tracing, though the Xbox Store page references RT without elaborating further. Playing the game at native 1080p and 30fps requires at least an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, GTX 1070, AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, or Intel Arc A580, so handheld devices might require upscaling.
Notably, 60fps gameplay without upscaling requires at least 12GB of VRAM, so although Rebel Wolves lists the RTX 5060 as the recommended GPU for 1080p gameplay, the company is likely referring to the 16GB variant. Dawnwalker may prove demanding for the many users with 8GB graphics cards.
Native 1440p gameplay at high settings requires an RTX 4070 Ti or RX 7800 XT, while ultra settings at the same resolution demand an RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX. Maxing the game out at native 4K requires nothing less than an RTX 5090. However, Dawnwalker only requires a relatively modest 60GB of storage space.
The Blood of Dawnwalker will be available on Steam, the Microsoft Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles on September 3 for $69.99.
Witcher 3 director's Blood of Dawnwalker launches September 3 with steep system requirements
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