5 gameplay quirks that set RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker apart from The Witcher 3

September is set to be a very busy month within the gaming calendar, bringing us Marvel’s Wolverine, Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and Minecraft Dungeons II.

The month also marks the arrival of Rebel Wolves’ debut title, The Blood of Dawnwalker, although it’s a debut project with rich AAA heritage.

Rebel Wolves was set up by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who previously directed CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and now he brings that expertise to The Blood of Dawnwalker, with many other CDPR devs having made the jump with him.

Set within the 14th century, The Blood of Dawnwalker introduces players to Coen, who resides in Vale Sangora in the Carpathian Mountains. After the black death sweeps through the region, the Vrakhiri take control - an ancient clan of vampires led by Brencis. Vale Sangora’s residents are forced to attend Blood Mass in exchange for ‘protection’ but an uprising eventually occurs.

Bandai Namco

It’s during this uprising that Coen is attacked by Brencis, somehow surviving to become a daywalker. He can navigate the world as a human by day and as a vampire by night. Angered, Brencis kidnaps Coen’s family, with our protagonist having 30 days to locate them in this supernatural, open-world RPG.

We recently had the opportunity to go hands-on with close to five hours of the game. “Whilst the team clearly built upon its former fantasy RPG experience, this is an entirely original beast with unique narrative quirks and gameplay systems that set The Blood of Dawnwalker apart from just about anything else I’ve played,” our preview said.

With that in mind, here are five unique facets of The Blood of Dawnwalker that set it apart from The Witcher 3.

There’s a 30-day time limit

Within The Blood of Dawnwalker, players have 30 days to find and save Coen’s family. There’s no in-game clock, though, with each day and night instead being split up into eight time chunks. While there is a main narrative, it’s heavily dictated by what players choose to do, as each quest will consume a listed number of time chunks - and there are more quests than you have time available.

It’s only the main and side quests that chew through time. You can explore and complete smaller tasks freely. The idea behind this system is that developers didn’t want players to lose that feeling of urgency. It’s very easy in open-world games to spend 50 hours dilly-dallying, but that sort of undermines the narrative of Coen’s family being at risk. With this system, you’re always inching closer to the game’s conclusive events with every choice you make, writing the narrative yourself.

Dual quests allow for two approaches

The day portions of the game are very different to those at night. During the day, as a human, Coen is a competent swordsman who is also able to make use of some light witchcraft, as taught to him by friend Anca. At night, he’s a vampire who can use his claws, drain blood, and shadowstop to far-to-reach locations. Whether you attempt a quest during the day or at night completely alters the nature of the quest.

Bandai Namco

In a preview of the game at Gamescom 2025, I saw this in action. The mission required Coen to acquire information. In the night version of the quest, Coen broke into a cathedral, shadowstepping to the rafters to obtain the intel. In the daytime version, he used a necromantic spell to commune with the dead to get the information, which resulted in a fight.

As such, The Blood of Dawnwalker has great replayability because for most missions, there’ll be a version of that mission you won’t have experienced the first time around.

It’s shorter than The Witcher 3

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a tad more concise than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. According to How Long To Beat, that CD Projekt RED title has an average playtime of 104 hours. The Blood of Dawnwalker’s director Konrad, told me that during testing, playthroughs are coming out between 50 and 70 hours.

Rebel Wolves’ debut title still features a sprawling open-world for players to explore, but it’s one that you should be able to scour in a more digestible amount of time.

There’s an infamy system that unlocks unique consequences

Brencis is the head of Vrakhiri with Ambrus, Xanthe, and Bakir forming his court. Each vampire lord oversees a different part of the game’s open world, and if you do something to upset them within their territory, their anger will grow. In my hands-on, I tore through a load of camps belonging to Ambrus, destroying his blood supplies. Eventually, players can max out the anger level for each vampire lord, unlocking a new unique quest.

Bandai Namco

In addition to that, Brencis will hear about your actions, no matter which lord you upset with the open-world conditions changing depending on just how infamous you become. Developers wouldn’t give too much away about what that looks like in practice, but it’s a nice little system that fills a gap left behind by the absence of the Nemesis System in gaming.

There’s too much to do in one playthrough

While key objectives are indicated throughout the game, what you do in The Blood of Dawnwalker is really up to you. You can follow the main path, consume all of your time doing side quests, and even skip time. Significantly, there are more quests than you have chunks of time, so you won’t be able to complete everything in a single playthrough - and the quests you don’t do have as much of an impact on the story as the quests you do.

To prove that, I’ll draw your attention to this segment of our preview: “I decided to help out a woman who’d lost a rather grisly new banner she’d been instructed to hang in the church hosting the Blood Mass. Someone had taken it. I rather mundanely scoured the village for clues before confronting the culprit and forcing them to hand it back. When Blood Mass came, there it was, hanging front and centre.”

We continued, “I spoke to another journalist who didn’t choose to complete this quest. After comparing anecdotes, it came to light that the poor woman in his playthrough was killed and strung up for all to see in the church. The journalist in question had no context for who this woman was or why she was dead; it was only because I’d done the quest in my playthrough that I put the puzzle pieces together. After all, she did warn me they’d kill her if the banner wasn’t found.”

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.