In an interview with Bloomberg, studio co-founder and game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz revealed Dawnwalker’s budget as $40 million, which is a far cry from even the budget of a fairly linear blockbuster like 007 First Light, which reportedly cost $200m to make (though there were hefty licensing fees and high profile actors’ wages to pay in that case).
A more pertinent comparison, perhaps, is to CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3, which Tomaszkiewicz directed and which Dawnwalker is so alike. That game cost $80m to make, though a large chunk of that figure reportedly went on marketing. Still, Tomaszkiewicz has often talked about the two games’ productions being broadly equivalent in scope, which they don’t quite appear to be; and if you factor in that The Witcher 3 cost $80m more than a decade ago, the gap widens further still.
Despite a lower budget, Rebel Wolves – a studio 29 percent owned by Chinese behemoth Tencent – does show triple-A ambition in Dawnwalker, and occasionally realises it, though there is a pervading sense the visuals aren’t quite cutting edge and the world is sometimes stretched thin, becoming repetitive.
But what Dawnwalker lacks in that regard it makes up for in originality, with a bold take on RPG structure that does away with a main quest and leaves your adventure up to you, while limiting the time you have available for it. Dawnwalker is exactly the kind of risk-taking game former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden said our industry is in desperate need of, when he talked about bringing double-A games back.
I gave The Blood of Dawnwalker four stars in our review. “CD Projekt Red alumni create a familiar dark fantasy adventure,” I wrote, “but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own, that’s mostly, enormously successful.”
