Ah, so, “We have The Witcher at home,” is that it? Well, not exactly. The sameness might feel derivative at first, but give it a minute. Once you get through the prologue, the world opens up in a way that invites exploration of its very pretty, blood-soaked world. There’s no way to beat The Witcher 3 in depth, breadth, or sheer volume, but The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t try to replicate or surpass that scale. Instead, it gives you a simple goal and a limited time to pull it off. That sounds restrictive at first, but it plays out in a way that’s more freeing than you’d expect.
Dawnwalker takes place in a fictional plague-era medieval world. You play as Coen (I call him Young Geralt), a poor peasant who lives with his family in a town controlled by evil vampires. After some inciting events, the Draculean boss vampire kidnaps Coen’s family and turns him into the Dawnwalker—a vampire hybrid that manifests as a human in the daytime and a bloodthirsty vampire at night. You’ve got 30 in-game days to save Coen’s family. You’re already running out of time.
Gameplay is split into day and night cycles, each with eight time segments. Completing a quest or doing anything of consequence will pass one or a few time segments. Otherwise, time does not pass idly. If you’re running around and exploring, you have all the time to fart around in the world that you need. The game warns you when something you’re about to do will pass the time, so you can choose to keep going or leave and find something else to do.
I worried this system would feel constricting, like being forced on a set path in an open-world game. Turns out, it was exactly what I needed to stay motivated and keep exploring.
My problem with The Witcher 3 and open-world games like it is that there is so much of it. You’re tasked with some time-sensitive mission—rescue your daughter before the world ends, etc.—but then you while away hours and hours on side quests. Games like this can punish you if you rush the main storyline, cutting off quests, choices, and even characters that those smaller efforts would have unlocked. When I play, I feel obligated to do all the small stuff first, then build to the main quests. When a narrative and world gets that dense, it can start to feel like a chore.
Dawnwalker gives you many activities across the world. Some are clearly story quests; many are treasure hunts or things that feel much smaller-scale. Knowing I can’t do everything lets me prioritize what needs doing. A ticking clock always counting down on the screen usually would make me anxious in games, since failing to do the right things at the right time means you lose. Weirdly, Dawnwalker’s countdown feels less punishing and more like motivation to do the very best you can with the limited resources you have. If you know you can’t see everything in a single playthrough, it’s easier to let go of the things you miss.