The Blood of Dawnwalker creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz isn't too concerned whether you call the upcoming vampire RPG AA, AAA, or even AAAA - he just wants it to be at the same level of quality as The Witcher 3, which he worked on as lead quest designer.
I had the chance recently to sit down with Tomaszkiewicz about Dawnwalker, and at some point I asked about the burgeoning AA space that sits between indie and AAA games. Tomaszkiewicz and his brother Konrad started up Rebel Wolves in part to let their creative juices flow without the constraints and red tape of a AAA studio like CDPR. And now that they've done that, they don't sound too keen on putting a label on anything.
Tomaszkiewicz wasn't dismissive of my question, but he made it pretty clear that he isn't nearly as worried about how to categorize his studio as he is making sure it can deliver something comparable in quality, albeit on a smaller scale, to the games he's best known for.
- The Witcher 3 director says he left CDPR to make his own open-world vampire game because "those rules of RPGs" can be bent and "a smaller team is capable of doing more"
- The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
"In terms of quality, we definitely look at AAA, because this is where we are coming from, the quality level of The Witcher 3," he said. "Definitely, our games are not as huge in terms of amount of content and gameplay hours - we are a smaller studio, this is our first project, so we definitely are building something smaller. But we want to build something as robust in terms of quality, maybe a bit shorter."
Specifically, Tomaszkiewicz said Rebel Wolves is aiming for about a 30-40 hour campaign for Blood of Dawnwalker. As someone who firmly and vocally believes games are too damn long these days, but still yearns for the glitz and glamour of AAA production, this is music to my ears.
"Comparing something to a behemoth like The Witcher, which we aimed for 100+ hours, but I think a lot of people played 200, 300 hours, is insane," Tomaszkiewicz said. "If size is your measure, then yes it's not the size of a AAA like The Witcher. But I don't know if size is the measure, to be honest, because there are AAA games like Call of Duty that aren't 100+ hours gameplay campaigns. And I don't know if anyone would call them AA, or indie."
Regardless of its budget, Blood of Dawnwalker is a highly ambitious open-world dark fantasy RPG with a unique "time as a resource" approach to its story and a "narrative sandbox" all about "maximizing players' agency and freedom of choice." I'm really intrigued by most everything I've seen, especially the deliciously gothic lore, but I'll hold out for this summer's gameplay showcase before getting too excited.
