The Blood of Dawnwalker: what the creators of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 made next

No, The Blood of Dawnwalker is not another Cyberpunk 2077. It is dark fantasy about vampires in the 14th-century Carpathians, and its structure is closer to The Witcher 3 than to Night City. The game launched on 3 September 2026 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. According to the launch reports cited in the original article, it sold more than a million copies in its first three days.

The connection to Cyberpunk is its people. Rebel Wolves was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, director of The Witcher 3 and one of the production leads on Cyberpunk 2077. Here is what the game offers, how it was received and what kind of PC it needs.

Who made Dawnwalker, and why the Cyberpunk comparisons?

Rebel Wolves was established in 2022, with Bandai Namco as publisher. Its team includes many former CD Projekt RED developers: design director Daniel Sadowski, narrative director Jakub Szamalek and art director Bartlomiej Gawel worked on The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Konrad's brother, led quest design on those games.

That background explains the “new Cyberpunk rival” headlines before launch. In an April interview with The Game Business cited by the original article, Tomaszkiewicz discussed a different comparison: The Witcher. He was comfortable with that comparison, and said focus tests had produced positive reactions. He identified greater freedom in quests and mechanics more often associated with indie games as points of difference.

The scale of the studio is different too. Back in 2024, Tomaszkiewicz told Bloomberg that Rebel Wolves had around 90 people and did not intend to grow to CD Projekt's roughly thousand-person scale. Those are historical figures, not a current headcount.

Dawnwalker, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 compared

The main distinction is clear: Dawnwalker and The Witcher 3 are closer in genre and setting, while Cyberpunk 2077 stands apart. There is another difference under the bonnet. Rebel Wolves uses Unreal Engine 5 rather than a proprietary engine, whereas CD Projekt RED built both earlier games on REDengine.

Human by day, vampire by night, with 30 days to act

The protagonist, Coen, has become a Dawnwalker, a being caught between human and vampire. By day he is human and fights with a blade; at night he becomes a vampire with a different set of powers and a different combat style. The time of day changes more than the lighting: it changes the tools available for the same tasks.

The second central idea is the campaign's 30-day limit. Time is not consumed simply by walking around the map, but by major story activities and key decisions. Exploration itself is not a continuously running countdown, yet important steps use part of your allowance. Choosing what to do first therefore matters.

Parkour joins elements familiar from The Witcher, while the music is by Piotr Musial, who also contributed to the third instalment of Geralt's adventures.

Reception: scores, sales and disagreements

The original article's sources reported the following launch-period figures. Aggregator scores can change, so these are not presented as a fresh live snapshot:

• More than one million copies sold in three days, announced on 5 September.
• Metacritic scores of 84 on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and 83 on PS5.
• A recommendation rate of 94% on OpenCritic.
• PC Gamer awarded 83 out of 100, praising the story and combat.

There were criticisms too. PC Gamer took issue with the time mechanic: the 30-day limit will not suit everyone. According to the original article's launch reporting, consoles were initially capped at 40 fps, before a day-one patch opened a 60 fps option on all models except Xbox Series S. Performance was a recurring topic in launch-period Steam reviews; that does not describe the current overall Steam rating. Rebel Wolves also issued hotfixes 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 in the first days after release.

Language support is another purchase check. The Russian source article reported no Russian localisation and no announced addition in the immediate update plans. UAE readers should check the current language table for their chosen edition, including any Arabic requirements. This adaptation does not assume Arabic support or infer game localisation from the language of Steam reviews.

What PC does The Blood of Dawnwalker need?

The original article describes two reductions in Rebel Wolves' requirements: an initial Core i7-8700K and GTX 1070 minimum was lowered to a Core i5-11400F and GTX 1060. There is an easy-to-miss qualification: all four tiers in the final table assume Balanced upscaling, rather than native-resolution rendering. The original sources attribute that clarification to the game's official X account.

All tiers list 16 GB RAM, 60 GB of SSD space, Windows 10 or later and DirectX 12. These are the source article's stated target configurations, not independent HYPERPC benchmark results.

A published Gizbot test illustrates the difference in practice. Its system paired an RTX 5070 with a Core Ultra 9 285K; the page was updated on 16 October 2026. This is a third-party test, not a test conducted by HYPERPC:

In that test, even a current-generation card did not reach 30 fps at native 4K with maximum settings. DLSS and frame generation were enabled together in the comparison, so their separate contributions were not measured. Generated frames are not equivalent to native rendering performance or responsiveness.

For the version covered by the original article, the reported limitations were 2x frame generation only, without 3x or 4x Multi Frame Generation, and a restart when changing DLSS or frame-generation settings. DLSS Frame Generation supports RTX 40 and RTX 50 cards; the source describes FSR Frame Generation as the alternative for RTX 30 and older cards, AMD and Intel. Exact availability should be checked against the current game version and supported hardware.

The practical conclusion is that Dawnwalker places substantial demands on the GPU, and even modern hardware can struggle without upscaling. A system may not have enough headroom for the new game. In the target requirements above, high settings at 1440p start around an RTX 4060 with upscaling, while the 4K tier calls for an RTX 4070 Ti-class card or better. These tiers are not a guarantee of a particular frame rate in every scene. If your current PC falls short, explore HYPERPC gaming PCs for the UAE with a suitable GPU. No UAE price, stock or delivery promise is implied here.

Patch 1.1 and what comes next

Rebel Wolves announced its first major update on 16 October, with a planned release during the week of 19–25 October. As of this adaptation on 21 October, the exact release status still needs to be checked against the official update feed: an announcement is not confirmation that a patch has shipped. The announcement described more than 1,100 fixes and improvements, including:

• Skill resets for the swordsmanship, spellcasting and vampirism trees.
• Renaming the existing Story difficulty to Forgiving, with a new Story mode offering more combat assistance.
• Updated frame generation with separate settings.
• Subtitles for all lines and larger text.
• Camera, animation and combat lock-on adjustments.
• The ability to pet cats and dogs.

New Game+ was not part of the announced 1.1 package. Tomaszkiewicz said it was being prepared, but no date had been given in the sources used by the original article.

So which game is it really competing with?

Rebel Wolves was not trying to make a second Cyberpunk. It made a game that follows the broad path of The Witcher 3, but with its own rules: a protagonist with a dual nature and a strict day allowance. The source article's launch reports describe a million copies sold in three days and critic scores above 80, while PC players were waiting for patches to match the game's ambitions.

If you are planning a trip to Vale Sangora, the sensible next step is to check whether patch 1.1 has arrived, read its notes and compare your GPU with the table above. The longer-term question belongs to the studio: can a relatively small team, reported at around 90 people in 2024, deliver games of this scale more frequently than the roughly five-year rhythm associated with CD Projekt RED?

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