After having announced the release date and price for The Blood of Dawnwalker, creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz revealed a few more details about the upcoming game, including the fact that players can go for a full evil playthrough, since they can also kill most of the in-game NPCs.
“Evil run. Generally speaking, you can kill off the majority of NPCs,” he said during a Q&A, which you can check out below. “Maybe not every single one; there are specific cases where, for narrative cohesion, we had to limit that. But we tried to make sure you can kill off most NPCs if you want to, and the main story handles it: you get different outcomes, different endings for different plot lines. It was actually a big point of discussion in the studio: ‘Is this true to Coen? Would he do these things?’”
“But it’s always this tug of war between player agency and narrative cohesion of the character. We believe we managed to satisfy both, but because of our narrative sandbox approach, we leaned more toward player agency most of the time. I really want to see evil Coen playthroughs and see how people react.”
Tomaszkiewicz had confirmed the ability to kill important NPCs in The Blood of Dawnwalker back in February 2025. He noted that, since studio Rebel Wolves wants to give players a sandbox with an emphasis on player agency, being able to kill NPCs is an important aspect of the RPG.
“It’s a sandbox, meaning we’re trying to maximize the options of your choice in the game,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “But it isn’t purely focused on gameplay. We were trying to play to our strengths, because our past projects were very focused on narrative, on good storytelling, interesting characters, and a lot of lore to find.”
This ties into the studio’s larger ambitions to offer a “narrative sandbox” with The Blood of Dawnwalker. Tomaszkiewicz discussed this in January 2025, where he explained that players should have the ability to affect the story by interacting with the in-game world.
“So narrative sandbox refers to the way we craft our content,” he explained. “It’s how we allow you, the player, to interact with it. So the core of it is maximising players’ agency and freedom of choice, while, at the same time delivering the high-quality narratives that we are known for crafting in the past. Dawnwalker is not going to be a game where it’s a pure sandbox, where you’re just focusing on the gameplay. We do want you to experience these moments with the world of the characters, and the emotions that these situations can evoke, and so on, and so forth. But, at the same time you are looking for ways of maximising freedom as you do.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on September 3rd. For more details, check out its PC specifications, which reveal that players will need an RTX 5090 if they want to play at 4K/60 FPS.
