In breaking the three-year long radio silence they’ve maintained ever since announcing their initial formation, the former-CD-Projekt-Red-dev-heavy team at the fledgling Rebel Wolves studio has finally dropped the first trailer for their highly-anticipated ‘dark RPG’, The Blood of Dawnwalker.
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As many players would argue, CD Projekt RED is no longer a ‘sacred name’ in the video game industry.
Following the near universal praise given to The Witcher 3, their follow-up title Cyberpunk 2077 was heavily criticized at upon release for the buggy, broken state in which it hit the market, with the resulting back-and-forth between players and CDPR exposing the company’s issues regarding rushed dev plans and investor-driven deadlines.
Though the game has since been vastly improved thanks to further dev work from CDPR, the game’s launch was so disastrous that the studio’s CEO, Michał Nowakowski, has fears that the entire affair may have permanently damaged their reputation.
Further, their standing with fans has also been shaken by their adoption of DEI-based corporate philosophies, as many players have found themselves fed up with any such political or social agendas coming anywhere near their video games.
In light of the Polish studio’s current stumbles, fans hoping to fill the resulting void have turned their attentions to the newly-founded Rebel Wolves, as its roster features a number of notable CDPR veterans.
Bearing a name deeply connected to The Witcher lore (and, in a bit of personal speculation, giving a hint as to their possible disagreement with their former employer’s current direction), Rebel Wolves was established in 2022 by former CDPR dev Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who perhaps most notably served as a director on both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 (as well as Head of Production on the latter).
Additional CDPR transplants include Przemysław Wójcik, whose duties in their over 13 years with the studio included leading QA for The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3, as well as producing Cyberpunk 2077, and Jakub Szamalek, Daniel Sadowski, and Tomasz Tinc, all of whom previously worked on both aforementioned series.
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At the time of their formation, the only information Rebel Wolves provided as to what players could look forward to from their first title was a piece of concept art depicting a fanged man, spear in hand and a flock of bats at his back, descending upon a group of unaware soldiers, one of whom appears to be demonic in nature.
And barring confirmation of the game’s title, The Blood of Dawnwalker, that’s all any player would hear of the game until January 13th when, in coinciding with the Wolf Moon (a colloquial name for the full moons that occur every January), Rebel Wolves unveiled its first trailer.
Beginning with a pre-rendered cutscene showing the game’s protagonist, Coen, and his Black Plague-ridden sister being rescued from certain death at the hands of a royal army unit by a group of vampires – its roster consisting of a Mongol warrior, a European knight, a woman clad in a spiked-leather mask, and their leader, an older balding man – and ending with a brief glimpse at the game’s inFamous-esque third-person vampire gameplay, the trailer certainly shows that Rebel Wolves is at the very least ambitious.
As players know, moreso than perhaps any medium, video games are notorious for falling short of their pre-launch trailers (again, just look at Cyberpunk 2077), so while The Blood of Dawnwalker looks promising, it’s probably safer to wait until it actually releases to see if it’s actually any good.
However, if Rebel Wolves can in fact deliver on the bloodthirsty fantasy adventure they’ve teased here, it’s very possible that the game – as well as the studio – could fill the void left by CDPR’s decline.
At current, The Blood of Dawnwalker has yet to receive an offficial release date. However, Rebel Wolves has teased the release of a ‘gameplay reveal trailer’ for sometime this summer.