Rebel Wolves and Bandai Namco have set September 3, 2026 as the launch date for The Blood of Dawnwalker and opened pre-orders across PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The announcement arrived on April 28, 2026 alongside more than 10 minutes of new gameplay captured on a current PC build and a separate story trailer introducing the cast around protagonist Coen. (VGC, Wccftech, RPGRPG. Role-Playing Game — a game built around character progression, story, and player choices. Site)

What the game is

The Blood of Dawnwalker is described by Bandai Namco as a “dark fantasy open world action RPG.” It is the debut title from Rebel Wolves, a Warsaw-based studio founded by former CD Projekt Red staff including Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. The setting is 14th-century Europe in the grip of war and the Black Death, a window of weakness that a cabal of vampires called the Vrakhiri exploits to seize control. The player character, Coen, is a young man who has been turned into a Dawnwalker — neither fully human nor fully vampire, able to walk in daylight while retaining vampiric strengths and weaknesses. (VGC, Wccftech)

The studio’s leadership reads like a Witcher 3 diaspora list: Tomaszkiewicz as CEO, game director and co-founder; Bartłomiej Gaweł as art director; writer Jakub Szamałek; design director Daniel Sadowski (Witcher 1); animation director Tamara Zawada; CFO Michał Boryka; and studio head Robert Murzynowski. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, who spent nearly 13 years at CDPR on The Witcher 3’s quests and Cyberpunk 2077’s quest direction, joined the team after the studio was already established. (VGC)

What’s new in the latest reveal

The April “Road to Launch” event shipped two pieces of material. First, a 10-minute-plus gameplay capture built on a recent PC build focused on open-world activity in Vale Sangora. Second, a story trailer that introduces the characters Coen will meet as he races to stop the vampire lord Brencis before a blood sacrament claims Coen’s family at the end of an in-game month. (VGC, Wccftech)

A separate “Everything You Need to Know” trailer followed on August 14, 2026. Bandai Namco’s accompanying press notes describe the dual-nature hook at the heart of the loop: Coen lives as a human by day and a vampire by night, and the world is shaped by decisions made in quests found across the open world. The 30-day timeline is presented as a resource — quests consume segments of Coen’s 30 days and 30 nights, and players are told up front they will not have time to do everything. Combat is a hybrid of real-time and turn-based elements, with an optional directional combat system that players can toggle off for a more traditional action-RPG feel. (RPG Site, Polygon)

On August 21, 2026, Bandai Namco published a five-minute “Console Footage” trailer breaking down the performance targets. PlayStation 5 Pro, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X each have two modes: a Quality mode targeting dynamic 4K at 30 FPSframerate. How many images (frames) the game shows per second; higher = smoother motion. 60 fps is a common target., and a Balanced mode targeting dynamic 4K at 40 FPS. (Gematsu)

The studio and its pedigree

Rebel Wolves was founded in Warsaw by people whose combined credits cover nearly every major CD Projekt Red release of the 2010s. Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the studio’s CEO, was game director and head of production/secondary game director on Cyberpunk 2077, and game director on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. His brother Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz joined as creative director in a later round of hires after spending nearly 13 years at CDPR, where he was lead quest designer on The Witcher 3 and its expansions, then quest director on Cyberpunk 2077. Other named co-founders include art director Bartłomiej Gaweł (Witcher 3), design director Daniel Sadowski (Witcher 1), animation director Tamara Zawada (Witcher 3), writer Jakub Szamałek (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077), CFO Michał Boryka, and studio head Robert Murzynowski. (VGC)

The studio’s positioning has been consistent from the first trailer. Tomaszkiewicz told Wccftech that he is “really comfortable” with the inevitable comparisons to The Witcher series and that the project has cleared both internal friends-and-family testing and external focus tests run by “professional companies.” The 10-minute gameplay capture released in April was pulled directly from a current PC build rather than a target render, per Rebel Wolves’ framing at the time.

The 30-day clock and the world

Time is the load-bearing mechanic that the reveal leans on. Players have 30 in-game days and nights to save Coen’s family, taken hostage by the vampire lord Brencis, whose three named lieutenants — Ambrus, Xanthe, and Bakir — enforce his rule ahead of his planned coronation. Time does not pass on its own during open-world exploration of Vale Sangora, but starting or advancing certain quests does consume time segments, and the marketing makes clear that the player will not be able to do everything in a single playthrough. The Vrakhiri serve as the opposing force. Combat is described by both Rebel Wolves and Polygon as a hybrid that blends real-time swordplay and magic with what Polygon compared to the pause-and-command feel of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. (VGC, Wccftech, RPG Site, Polygon)

The story trailer released in April shows Coen, after his family is taken by the vampires, operating on a personal timetable. Bandai Namco’s press notes for the August 2026 “Everything You Need to Know” trailer frame the dual-nature hook as the core loop: Coen lives as a human by day and a vampire by night, and the world is shaped by decisions made in quests found across the open world. Quests that begin or advance cost time segments, and the trailer explicitly tells players they will not be able to complete everything in a single run.

Console performance and the September launch window

The “Console Footage” trailer published on August 21, 2026 is the most concrete technical disclosure Rebel Wolves has made. PlayStation 5 Pro, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X each have two modes: a Quality mode targeting dynamic 4K at 30 FPS, and a Balanced mode targeting dynamic 4K at 40 FPS. No 60 FPS mode is listed for any of the three consoles. (Gematsu)

The 30 FPS Quality and 40 FPS Balanced targets are conservative by 2026 standards, particularly on the PS5 Pro hardware. PC targets were not disclosed in the same trailer, but the Steam and GOG listings do carry official minimum and recommended system requirements — roughly a GTX 1060/RX 580 class GPUGPU. Graphics Processing Unit — the chip that renders the game's visuals; the main driver of framerate and image quality. at minimum and an RTX 4060/RX 7600 XT class GPU at recommended, with 16 GB of RAM and 60 GB of SSD storage. Separately, Wccftech’s coverage of the PC specifications reported that native 4K/60 at the Ultra preset demands RTX 5090-class hardware, with DLSS and FSR upscaling available for less powerful GPUs.

The September 3 launch puts Dawnwalker more than two months ahead of Rockstar’s currently scheduled GTA 6 launch on November 19, 2026, an unusually open release corridor for a high-profile open-world RPG. Polygon listed it among 2026’s strongest Game of the Year contenders, and July’s hands-on round from outlets including VGC and Xbox Wire put it high on those publications’ most-anticipated lists after extensive preview sessions. (Polygon, VGC, Xbox Wire)

Editions and the launch lineup

The Steam listing and Microsoft’s store carry the Standard Edition of The Blood of Dawnwalker at $69.99 USD. Per Gematsu’s coverage of the announcement, the Eclipse Edition runs $79.99 USD and includes a digital world compendium, a digital soundtrack, and a digital comic book; its contents also appear on the GOG listing. A physical Collector’s Edition has also been shown but is not listed on Steam at the time of writing, so its regional availability cannot be verified against an official storefront. Pre-orders opened on April 28, 2026, the same day as the gameplay reveal.

What remains unconfirmed

Pricing for the standard edition is confirmed at $69.99 USD, but full regional pricing breakdowns, Xbox Series S performance targets, and any post-launch roadmap have not been disclosed in the cited sources. Coen’s voice actor, the length of the campaign, the number of distinct endings, the size of the Vale Sangora map in square kilometers, and any DLC plans are also not addressed by Rebel Wolves in the material reviewed. The “Road to Launch” event description refers to “several announcements to come” between April and September, so additional reveals are likely.