THE BLOOD OF DAWNWALKER - Gameplay Reveal Recap

Beneath the light of the first summer moon, secrets from The Blood of Dawnwalker began to emerge from the shadows. 

The solstice Gameplay Reveal Event livestream with members of team Rebel Wolves revealed hidden knowledge about the land of Vale Sangora, its magic, its inhabitants and of course, much more about Coen the Dawnwalker himself.

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Here’s what you might have missed.

The biggest reveal of the stream was an exclusive new 20-minute gameplay presentation that takes Coen from day to night, showing both sides of his nature and gameplay as he searches for clues about a legendary sword that might be hidden in the crypts of Svartrau, the capital city of Vale Sangora. 

As we’ll discover, this is only one small part of the lands you’ll explore in The Blood of Dawnwalker, so let’s get started.

We join Coen on the road to the city, beset by a camp of bandits. This encounter shows how Coen’s sword skills allow you to tactically use different attack directions to exploit your opponent’s openings. 

As you successfully block, attack, and parry, Coen will build up Activation Charges that can be spent to use Active Abilities, like using a hex called Burning Blood that deals damage over time. There are many different types of Active Abilities both magical and mundane, and Coen finishes the fight with the Artery Attack which immediately decapitates his final foe.

One of the features on display here is how the combat system is designed to support players who want a more story-driven experience vs players who want to be pushed to the edge of their abilities. 

At easier difficulties, animations can be slowed down to give players more time to see and react to enemy attacks, it’s not simply a matter of having more health and doing more damage, which helps maintain excitement and a sense of mastery.

After a bit of looting, we also get a first look at Coen’s skill trees. As befits his station as Dawnwalker, he has one tree for his human abilities, one for his vampire abilities, and one that is shared between both sides.

With our abilities improved and the enemies defeated, Coen can continue to Svartrau and continue his search for the hidden weapon. He travels through the district of Silberkreis, the wealthiest region that is closest to the castle of Greifberg. 

This castle is the home of Brencis, the vampire ruler who deposed the human lord  in the Janaury CGI trailer.

Due to the open nature of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s narrative sandbox, Coen could attempt to storm this castle immediately to save his family, but the challenge would be quite intense. For now, the search for the weapon of legend continues.

Coen mixes with the many different people of the city as he searches for clues, including other mythical creatures. Vampires are not the only non-humans who inhabit this land and each type of intelligent humanoid has their own niche in Svartrau’s ecosystem.
 

At last, Coen finds himself at a splendid cathedral, richly ornamented with art, stained glass, and sumptuous tapestries. 

There is a clue hiding among the ceiling’s frescos, which Brencis has ordered obscured. For Coen to reach those high scaffolds, he’ll need to return under the cover of night.

When darkness falls, we discover the second half of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s gameplay, Coen’s vampire side. Night means that Coen has access to a completely different set of skill related to his vampire abilities, but going from day to night is also an indication of a dwindling resource, time. 

In The Blood of Dawnwalker, you have 30 days to prevent the execution of your family by the vampire monarchy. This time moves forward only when you progress in certain goals, like completing quests or changing from day to night. This gives you limitless real-world time to explore and perfect your gameplay between these checkpoints.

As a vampire, you’ll see the world of Vale Sangora from a different perspective. Skills like Shadowstep and Clawride give you new movement abilities around the rooftops.

Vampire skills also means a vampire’s hunger, and Coen can choose to feed on unsuspecting NPCs. You can choose how much to drain from a victim, to kill them or just take enough to render them unconscious. And of course, you can also choose to drink from non-human creatures or animals if you have moral objections.

As Coen nears the cathedral, he uses Planeshift, another traversal skill, to scale the heights of the magnificent building. As he steals in through an opening, he discovers that he’s not alone. Xanthe – the oldest vampire in Vale Sangora – is here with a small company of blood guards, humans who have been tainted with vampire blood.

There are several ways to handle the conversation that takes place with this formidable vampire, but tonight, it seems the only resolution will be violence.

At night, Coen uses his vampiric claws to attack, but many of the same principles of swordfighting apply here. You’ll need to stay aware of the directions you use to attack and the location of your target. Even though you are a mythical vampiric creature, the combat here is immersive and grounded. You need to stay alert to stay alive. 

Dual-wielding blood guards are stronger than normal humans; attacking their armor and blocking their swings takes a lot of stamina so Coen will need to handle himself carefully.

 

Only after defeating all three of The Blood Guards, Xanthe deems Coen worthy of a challenge and she descends to face him. 

She uses her blood control powers to cast a multitude of attacks like her blood whips - that hit Coen from left and right. Xanthe is protected by a powerful vampire ability - once her stamina runs out, Coen will have an opportunity to strike and deal some damage. 

But, be careful, Xanthe is quick to counter attack and she will also try to restore her blood. Meanwhile, look at the indicator just below her health and stamina - it’s a  timer for the Boiling Blood skill that you’ve seen in the CGI trailer. So if we don’t hurry, the timer goes down to zero - and Coen will eventually explode.

This formidable challenge proves to be too much for Coen this time. He meets his untimely end in this fight, but this battle is winnable even at this early stage, and a hardcore player might find it the perfect challenge. 

Or you can choose to grow your abilities and skill and come back for Xanthe after a few more days. Thanks to the narrative sandbox, there’s no difference between main quests and side quests, there’s only how you choose to weave your Coen’s story.

With the gameplay reveal complete, we learn even more about some of the features of the game, like the extensive list of translations including full dubbed VO for English, Polish, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

We also take a deep dive into the combat, magic, and traversal features of the game. Let’s have a quick look at some main points
 

Magic

•    Magic in the world of Dawnwalker is grounded, ritualistic, and filled with occult mystique. Instead of flashes of colorful lights and flourishes of energies, it’s naturalistic, linked to blood, heat, or pulsing air.
•    Theoretically, anyone can cast a spell, but in order to be successful at it, a strict formula must be followed. It’s very easy for an amateur to flub a gesture or carve the wrong symbol and the cost for failure could be their life.
•    Some places in the world have a deeper connection to magic than others, and that connection might be revealed by something in the environment, strange fog, distortions in the air, unusual insects or creatures, etc.
•    Using magic requires a gate to allow it to flow – practitioners must carve runes into their flesh to open the gate and welcome the power in.
•    As a Dawnwalker, Coen can use magic spells in this way, however his runic scars will seal over at night, rendering them inert.
•    Vampires, and by extension Coen in his vampiric form, can draw on the power of magic in a more instinctual way. They won’t be able to learn spells from books, but they can channel supernatural energy to use some abilities.
•    This is part of why Coen’s senses become heightened at night; he’ll be able to hear the flutter of insect wings, the heartbeats of animals and people, etc.
•    Spells and magic can be used for other purposes besides combat. For example, you can use Compel Soul to gather information or even learn secrets from the dead.
•    Magical rings and amulets can augment your stats, and they have a rarity indicator to help determine their worth.
 

Traversal

• In addition to human settlements like the city, villages, and ancient crypts and ruins, Vale Sangora is a land with many distinct biomes including swamps, forests, mountains, caves, and meadows.
• The land has been divided into regions ruled by the senior vampires in Brencis’s inner circle. Each one is responsible for their own sector.
• The entire map will be visible from the start, but important activities must be discovered to be marked on the map.
• When you enter a new area, indicators for activities in that area will be revealed without details. You’ll be able to see where something might be taking place, but you won’t know what it is until you find out more from clues, information from locals, or traveling there yourself.
• Some activities and points of interest are easy to stumble upon, others will require careful searching and exploration to reveal.
• Each area has a maximum and minimum difficulty level that depends on your level the first time you enter that region. Once a difficulty level for a region has been set, it will not change for the rest of the game.
• In general, the further south you go, the more difficult the challenge.
• You’ll be able to find various shops and merchants in villages, but there’s only one true city: Svartrau. That’s where you’ll find the widest variety of specialized merchants.
• Some points of interest you could discover include places like shrines, military or bandit camps, monster nests, haunted places or hidden treasures.
• Coen has a wide array of traversal options, including vampiric traversal abilities at night, but he does not have a horse.
• Fast travel will be available using the world map.
• It’s possible to play with a focus on either human Coen or vampire Coen, but this will mean missing out on a large portion of the game.
• Time only moves forward narratively when certain activities are completed. Each activity has an hourglass icon that displays how much time this activity will push the world forward upon completion.
• This means that you can spend real-world time exploring Vale Sangora at your own pace without moving the clock. For example, an activity involving a burning house will still be burning hours later in real time while you investigate because time within the game world hasn’t moved.
• This disconnect between how time moves in our world and time in the game is an intentional narrative choice. Even though it doesn’t reflect our reality, it allows us to maintain a sense of urgency and allows choices made by your character to remain consequential while giving you, the player, time to play without the stress of managing a real-world countdown.
• Coen has 30 in-game days to save his family. 
  
   

Combat

• The gameplay segment covered quite a lot about combat already, like the use of grounded swordfighting and attacking from different directions to keep your target off balance.
• Combat in Dawnwalker is intended as a cinematic experience that keeps you locked into the action by making every attack important.
• Coen fights with a combination of swords and magic. He only ever learned to use a sword from his father, so he cannot use bows or crossbows.
• In fact, there are not many ranged options for fighting. Visceral, dynamic combat means staying close and adapting to your enemy. That said, there are some offensive spells and vampire abilities you can use to close gaps between you and your target if they get too far away.
• You can also fight with your bare fists using punches and blocks.
• Combat in Dawnwalker is highly responsive; you can change the direction of your attack quickly or swap between offense and defense with ease. It’s fast and not animation-locked; you’ll need to engage in on-the-fly decision making to adapt as the fight unfolds, just as you would need to in a real fight.

This is all just the start of what was revealed during the livestream. 

There were also questions answered from the official Dawnwalker Discord, which you should join to learn more about the game! You can also follow along on social media to keep up with the latest news.

It was also revealed that The Blood of Dawnwalker will be coming to several major industry events, including Gamescom in August! If you’re attending, be sure to drop by the booth to say hello.

And that’s what you missed from The Blood of Dawnwalker livestream! It won’t be the last one, so join our newsletter mailing list to get an early notification of the next big reveal.
 

Prepare yourself to become the fear the world needs most.