The Blood of Dawnwalker has stepped back into the spotlight with Rebel Wolves publishing the second part of its extended gameplay overview, nearly half an hour of uninterrupted footage that finally brings a previously closed doors demo to everyone watching at home. Until now, only press and creators who attended Gamescom 2025 had seen this slice, where Creative Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz walked through one of the game’s pivotal early quests. 
Seeing the same scenario again, this time with clearer commentary and an updated build, is a useful stress test: it shows how far the team of former CD Projekt RED developers has pushed its vampiric action RPG in just a few months, and why so many RPG fans are quietly treating Dawnwalker as the spiritual next step after The Witcher 3.
Rebel Wolves has leaned heavily into that pedigree, and the new video does little to dispel the idea that this is the studio where a big chunk of CD Projekt RED’s quest design brain trust ended up. The studio’s messaging is careful, but the community certainly is not. Comment threads around this new gameplay chunk are full of players joking that the real Witcher team moved out, while the old company keeps the trademarks and a more uneven mix of talent. Whether that is fair or not, the perception matters: The Blood of Dawnwalker is already being weighed against a hypothetical next Witcher before either game is on shelves. That undercurrent of rivalry hangs over every new reveal, and it quietly raises the stakes for Dawnwalker’s debut in a crowded 2026 release calendar.
The footage itself focuses on a single mission that doubles as a thesis statement for the game’s systems. We follow Coen, the eponymous Dawnwalker, a cursed half man, half vampire who can operate in daylight but only unlocks his full monstrous potential after sunset. The developers run the same cathedral infiltration twice to underline how time of day reshapes the experience. In the day run, Coen casually wanders past guards, mingling with townsfolk as he climbs toward his objective. Returning at night turns the same space into a hostile, almost alien arena: now he must rely on vampiric traversal abilities like Planeshift, which lets him blink between ethereal platforms, and Shadowstep, a short range dash through darkness that doubles as both mobility and ambush tool. Even the basic act of swinging a sword feels different once his fangs are out.
That contrast is not just cosmetic. Rebel Wolves repeatedly calls The Blood of Dawnwalker a narrative sandbox, and this quest finally makes that slogan concrete. Coen can commit fully to his curse, equipping feral claws and embracing a faster, more savage moveset, or stay with swords for a more disciplined fencing style that feels closer to classic dark fantasy. The team notes that attacks in full vampire mode animate faster and encourage aggressive positioning, while the human stance leaves him slightly slower but less conspicuous in crowded spaces. Because guards, priests, and bystanders all react to form, time of day, and the route chosen, the same mission can branch into different micro stories: a tense negotiation, a surgical assassination, or a chaotic, blood spattered escape through side chapels and rooftops. The aim is not just multiple endings, but multiple playable interpretations of the same narrative moment.
The second half of the overview quietly highlights how much has changed since that Gamescom demo. Rebel Wolves says it sifted through a mountain of feedback from journalists and community breakdowns of previous trailers, and several pain points have already been addressed. The camera, previously locked a bit too close for comfort, now has an optional farther pulled back view that dramatically improves spatial awareness in combat. Exploration and fighting can even use separate camera distances, so players who enjoy a more cinematic walk through towns are not punished when steel is drawn. Meanwhile, the Active Abilities interface no longer freezes the action when you flick through powers. Ability selection now happens in real time, forcing players to read the battlefield, swap tools on the fly, and commit without the safety net of a pause wheel, which instantly makes battles look more fluid and less gamey.
Those tweaks sit on top of a broader combat tune up. Animations have been tightened, hit reactions read more clearly, and encounter pacing has been adjusted so fights escalate rather than collapsing into a cluttered scrum. Little touches stand out: enemies stagger when Coen teleports through their ranks; finishing moves land with a crunchy finality that was missing in earlier showings; and UI pop ups stay minimal, letting the choreography of blades, claws, and blood carry the spectacle. For a studio whose alumni helped shape some of the most celebrated quests in modern RPGs, it is encouraging to see the same attention beginning to filter down to moment to moment action.
All of this arrives with a reminder that The Blood of Dawnwalker is still broadly targeting 2026 for release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. That window is getting crowded, and one giant looms over everyone: Grand Theft Auto VI, currently expected to dominate November 2026. It is not hard to imagine mid sized studios quietly circling earlier months to avoid being flattened by Rockstar’s marketing machine. In that context, Dawnwalker feels like the sort of ambitious, mid budget RPG that could thrive if it claims a quieter part of the year. The better the game looks, the more you can sense fans speculating about a role reversal where Rebel Wolves becomes the prestige dark fantasy shop and CD Projekt RED, now steering the next Witcher, has to prove it still has the magic without many of its former stars.
For now, though, this second gameplay overview does what it needs to do. It reassures those already invested that Rebel Wolves is listening, iterating, and confident enough to show long, unedited slices of play rather than heavily cut trailers. It also offers newcomers a clearer picture of what The Blood of Dawnwalker actually is: a story driven, open world, third person action RPG where systems like time of day, vampiric transformation, and player chosen routes are meant to reshape not just combat, but the story beats themselves. If the final game can deliver on that promise across dozens of hours, Coen’s cursed pilgrimage from sunlight into darkness might end up being more than just another grim fantasy, and instead become the moment a new studio truly steps out of the shadow of its legendary past.