The Blood of Dawnwalker wants its vampires to be villains and victims at the same time

Rebel Wolves’ The Blood of Dawnwalker is leaning into fantasy politics where nobody gets to wear a clean white hat. The studio’s debut RPG centers on Coen, a hero split between light and darkness, and that split runs through the game’s world as much as it does through its protagonist.

The setup starts with a vampire ruling family that has taken over the land, demands a blood tithe, and keeps Coen’s relatives hostage. That sounds straightforward enough until the game shows the other side of the ledger. The Black Plague is sweeping the kingdom, the old human rulers respond with their own brutality, and the vampires who kill the king also save Coen’s sister by curing her with their blood.

That push and pull is exactly what Rebel Wolves says it wants. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz said the team likes writing about people because they are rarely just good or evil. In PC Gamer’s interview, he said the studio aims for characters that feel real and “are complex, and they are not one dimensional.”

Coen fits that approach too. Vampire blood has changed him, but silver poisoning keeps part of his humanity intact, turning him into the game’s dawnwalker and giving him room to choose his own path instead of staying trapped in the life he was already living. That open-ended structure lines up with an earlier look at the game, where Rebel Wolves described a setup that lets players keep moving even after setbacks. In other words, the moral fog is not just flavor. It is part of how the RPG works.

The Blood of Dawnwalker will be out September 2. If the premise sounds like your kind of trouble, tell us what you think in the comments and join us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, and Instagram.