Konrad Tomaszkiewicz spent 17 years climbing from junior tester to director of The Witcher 3 at CD Projekt Red. Now he's walking away from that security to chase something he believes the industry has lost: genuine innovation in RPGs.
His new studio, Rebel Wolves, is built on a simple mission statement posted on its Warsaw office wall: "A studio born out of love for RPGs." The team is working on The Blood of Dawnwalker, an ambitious vampire RPG that Tomaszkiewicz argues will do something the biggest publishers struggle with anymore. It will take real risks.
"We were a little bored of making what I call same-but-new video games," Tomaszkiewicz explains. He's not being modest about the problem. When a game succeeds, publishers want sequels that are familiar but incrementally improved. Shareholders demand predictable returns. The result is creative suffocation dressed up as market strategy.
Dawnwalker looks superficially like The Witcher 3: a single protagonist, action combat, deep choices, cinematic moments. But the structure underneath is radically different. Instead of a linear main quest, the game uses what Tomaszkiewicz calls a "narrative sandbox." After the prologue, players are free to tackle the world's quests in any order. Some quests overlap, creating a deeper sense of place and consequence. None are mandatory. You could theoretically sprint from tutorial straight to the final encounter if you wanted.
The other pillar of Dawnwalker's identity is time. You have exactly 30 days and 30 nights to save the protagonist Coen's family from vampires. Actions push the clock forward. Complete an objective, finish a conversation, and precious hours vanish. This mechanic borrows DNA from Persona and Disco Elysium but applies it to a Witcher-style open RPG in a way that feels genuinely fresh.
Tomaszkiewicz credits the vampire genre itself for part of the design. He's loved Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines since its chaotic release. That game's hunger system, which could force you to drain NPCs if you ignored your cravings too long, showed him how vampire mythology could drive meaningful mechanics. In Dawnwalker, hunger overrides dialogue options when you're starved. Consequences aren't abstract. They're immediate and permanent.
The core philosophy driving all of this is personal. Tomaszkiewicz had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father. Video games became escape. RPGs especially, because they let him inhabit another world completely. That formative experience never left him. He simply won't make anything else.
"I will not go to do racing games or shooters, because role-playing games is something which is inside me," he says. "This is what I want to create."
But could he have made Dawnwalker at a studio like CD Projekt Red? Tomaszkiewicz is direct: no. Large publishers with established franchises have too much at stake to greenlight experiments. "When you have the big companies which have established IPs, it's really hard to change something or do something really innovative because it's always about being same-but-new," he explains. Even Cyberpunk, CDPR's biggest departure, nearly broke the studio. At Rebel Wolves, the 150-person team can make their own mistakes. They can chase crazy ideas.
This doesn't mean Tomaszkiewicz is hostile to the industry's direction. He's genuinely excited about where technology is heading. Crimson Desert's feature density astounds him. He used generative AI during Dawnwalker's early design phase to prototype cutscenes and dialogue before hiring actual voice actors. The final game contains no AI assets. But he sees AI's real value as liberation for developers, not replacement. Use it to automate the tedious work: terrain collision checks, repetitive testing. Free the QA team to evaluate whether characters feel alive or if combat timings sing.
For now, Rebel Wolves operates under constraints. Limited time and money force careful choices about what features ship. Tomaszkiewicz embraces this philosophy: build features that serve the story and the feeling you're chasing. Polish obsessively. Cut ruthlessly. Everything must have meaning.
The long-term vision is equally deliberate. Dawnwalker is planned as a saga, but Tomaszkiewicz won't trap himself in iterative sequels. He points to Blizzard's early approach: make Warcraft, then create StarCraft, then return to Warcraft. Refresh the team's creative energy. Rebel Wolves will develop one Dawnwalker game and a separate IP in parallel, then rotate. Keep everyone sharp. Keep everyone happy.
This philosophy traces back to where RPGs began: tabletop gaming, dice and dungeon masters. The goal is moving closer to that experience. "We're learning how to give even more freedom to players," Tomaszkiewicz says. "Not only in gameplay and exploration, but in story elements. Allowing you to complete your goal in many, many ways."
Baldur's Gate 3 set a daunting bar for this kind of ambition. But Dawnwalker's commitment to choice and shocking consequences, combined with its narrative sandbox design, suggests Tomaszkiewicz might help install another Polish studio among RPG royalty. The industry needed someone to walk away from safety.
Author Emily Chen: "Tomaszkiewicz is betting his career on the idea that major studios have become creatively conservative, and from what he's building, he might be right."
Comments