During last week’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Games Showcase, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Blood of Dawnwalker stepped out of the shadows and into the light. After all, Dawnwalkers can do that. It's kinda their 🔴🌸whole thing.

The open-world action-RPG is the first game from Rebel Wolves, an up-and-coming studio founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, one of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3's trio of directors. Set during the Black Death but with a fantastical twist — a loose set-up it interestingly shares with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:A Plague Tale — The Blood of Dawnwalker casts players as the titular s🌞ort of vampire, the kind that can go out during the day.

Like Fangs Need A Neck, Vampires Need RPGs

Vampires and RPGs ar⛦e a match made in heaven because the elements that make RPGs compelling are the same elements that have kept audiences coming back to vampire stories for centuries.

In the , The Blood of Dawnwalker sets up the familiar dilemma: "You play as Coen, a young man turned into a Dawnwalker, forever treading the line between the wౠorld of day and the realm of night. Fight for your humanity or embrace the cursed powers to save your family. Whatever your choice, the question stands: is your soul worth the lives of those you love?"

Those are familiar vampire questions, and they're also the questions that make great RPGs great (and, if we go even further, the questions that drive most stories, and if we want to go further still, human morality). Do you want to choose the easy path to success, but hurt o🍒ther people? Or do yo🃏u want to take the more difficult path, but avoid destroying innocent human beings?

The Cult Classics Paved The Way

This ethical conflict has powered multiple vampire games over the years. In my personal favorite, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, you h𝓡ave to drink blood to progress, but how you get the blood is up to you. You can get small amounts by killing rats a♐nd raiding blood banks, but getting enough to thrive requires cornering humans in back alleys.

Drinking a human's blood is framed as a necessity, but it's up to you whether you drink just enough, or drain them dry. If you go raisin mode, expect to lose humanity points. And if you do it in public, you'll violate the 'Masquerade,' the la🌞ws that require keeping vampiric behavior to the shadowꦍs.

Vampyr, Don't Nod's 2019 follow-up to Life is Strange, plumb🤡ed the depths of depravity and the inherent dangers of vampirism, following Jonathan Reid, a recently turned vampire in 1918 London. In that game, you could make it to the finish without drinking hum🌄an blood, but it would mean missing out on leveling up — a pretty tough handicap in an RPG. What's more, the game built on its foundation as a relationship-driven RPG, with NPCs' blood gaining potency the closer your relationship became.

Vampire games aren't always big hits, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:theyꦛ certainly don't alwa♐ys deserve to be. Both of the games I've mentioned have achieved cult status over the years — especially VTMB, which is the Velvet Underground of video games — but neither was a huge hit when it launched. VTMB's release was eclipsed by Half-Life 2, which launched the same day. Paired with how janky tಞhe game was at launch, that was the kiss of death. Vampyr, meanwhile, only sold all rig🎃ht and received mixed reviews. Those who loved it, really loved it, but most ignored it.

The Blood of Dawnwalker has potential to break out in a big way. It's a medieval RPG launching the year after 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It has The Witcher 3 pedigree. It's a big choice-driven RPG at a time when audiences can't get enough of them. Sure, it looks a little janky, but players increasingly understand that interesting, deep gameplay is wo💧rth trading a little fidelity for. The Blood of Dawnwalker could do the impossible and bring vampire games out into the bright sunshine o♛f the mainstream.