Are you sick of games that are just a bit too big and bloated for their own good? Well, The Blood of Dawnwalker will hopefully appeal to your tastes, as its creative director shares a similar opinion.
Speaking to GamesRadar, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz — who previously worked as lead quest designer on both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 at CD Projekt Red, it should be noted — reveals that he’s a huge fan of more focused settings that better reflect a player’s actions.
Tomaszkiewicz says that “maximising player agency” is pretty much the goal, and that it’s great to see titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 push that kind of stuff to the limit.
“I loved what they did with Baldur’s Gate 3, for example […] kind of mixing this narrative experience and maximising your freedom of choice: what do you want to do, which plot lines do you want to do or not do, and how does the game world react to this? I think this is very exciting.”
And of course, this is what developer Rebel Wolves is going for with Dawnwalker. The upcoming vampiric RPG is open world in terms of design, but its scope is relatively limited, and it’s being described as a “narrative sandbox”.
The studio wants “to have these emotional and engaging stories, these characters that you like, or you hate, or get interested in, [while] also maximising the player choice within that environment”.
It’s about finding a balance, then, as Tomaszkiewicz explains: “I feel tired with games that are way too big. I don’t have that much time, and I prefer more condensed experiences, but I still enjoy open worlds.”
He goes on to highlight the Gothic games as a source of inspiration: “They were much smaller worlds, but they were so dense with detail, quests, and characters, and it felt like you really inhabited that space.”
We definitely get where the guy’s coming from. So many open world games get hung up on size as opposed to density, or even just meaningful experiences in general.
This often results in a kind of fatigue that’s unique to the genre, where there’s so much to see and do, but you simply lack the motivation or necessary investment.
“Having this smaller world that is dense with content, and you get a lot of the good stuff – [but] you don’t feel like you’re just traversing empty spaces that much,” Tomaszkiewicz concludes.
Having said all that, we should point out that Dawnwalker isn’t some 10-20 hour adventure. Just last week, after its release date reveal, director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz revealed that current playtests are clocking in at anywhere between 50 and 75 hours (and that’s despite the game having a kind of “time limit” system).
How are you feeling about The Blood of Dawnwalker, then? Do you much prefer more focused experiences these days, or do you like to get completely lost in a huge open world? Drink up in the comments section below.
