The Blood of Dawnwalker's latest gameplay trailer starts out looking like a Witcher spinoff, then the main character starts walking on walls

The Blood of Dawnwalker⁠—a new vampire RPG from former CD Projekt devs⁠—has been half on my radar, but its latest gameplay trailer (following a first one in June) really has the sauce: There's a lot of very apparent Witcher 3 DNA on display, but that just seems to be a comfortable starting point for a very different kind of RPG.

The trailer starts out looking like it could almost be a Witcher spinoff: The UI, music, voices, even the way the medieval city resembles Novigrad all smacked me in the face. Junior cadet vampire Coen has Geralt's signature messy high ponytail (but in brunette), and he also shares a name with a prominent book witcher absent from the games.

The quest in question is a Witcher 3 monster hunt almost to a T: Coen talks to some "cor blimey" yokels⁠—with, I do have to say, delightfully craggy, varied, character actor-type faces⁠—who point him in the direction of monster-type happenings to earn access to a cathedral's library. Coen uses the exact same Witcher Senses as Geralt (down to the sepia filter and red outlines!) to uncover a feral vampire's lair, and the beast even cribs the Bruxa scream attack from Blood and Wine.

That's not necessarily bad: There hasn't been anything quite like The Witcher 3 in the ten years since, and The Witcher 4 is a long way off. It's all super atmospheric, well-written and acted, and there's a notable surprise in the form of a "hex" Coen can use to speak with certain corpses, a more limited version of Baldur's Gate 3's Speak With Dead spell.

I love how much of the quest is just walking around and talking, slowly building up to the action. It did make me nervous that there wasn't a single conversation in the trailer with more than two dialogue choices, but great RPGs like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, and Mass Effect have also kept things more limited on that front. The Blood of Dawnwalker seems to flex its reactivity muscles elsewhere, and there was a nice, tense dialogue exchange between Coen and a blind priest that involved some timed decisions.

Dawnwalker's combat continues to look nice and crisp. It has a Sekiro parry (which I love), and dismemberment kills are always a huge plus for me. I started really paying attention, though, when we got to see Coen accomplish the same objective⁠—get into the church library⁠—but at night.

Coen gets different powers depending on time of day: Sword and hexes by day, claws and vampire powers at night. Time appears to advance more like Disco Elysium or Pentiment, with critical dialogue or quest completion moving things forward instead of the simulated, realtime days you see in other RPGs. Rebel Wolves is promising drastically different quest paths depending on day or night, with even more potential variations of those main branches.

Instead of talking to people, investigating, and killing a monster miniboss, Coen uses his wall walking power and Dishonored blink to take to the rooftops and enter the cathedral from above. While some nefarious ritual goes on down below, Coen warps between rafters to get to the library, completely ignoring a climactic boss fight shown in the previous video⁠—though the elder vampire in question can apparently show up elsewhere, and thus be completely absent from later story beats if you kill her early.

That very elastic reactivity is seriously impressive and exciting to me. You could potentially skip major subplots, kill major NPCs well before you're supposed to, and solve quests in multiple ways⁠—some of my favorite things to see in an RPG. If Rebel Wolves can sustain that expansive design over a full game, The Blood of Dawnwalker could be very special. We'll find out for sure some time next year. For now, you can wishlist The Blood of Dawnwalker on Steam.