The open world subgenre which is characterized by a vast and sprawling, massive world where players can freely explore and choose to tackle the in-game objectives in any order they seem fit, is also becoming one of the most used tropes in gaming, to the point where the worlds are no longer as exciting as they used to be and largely act as backdrops to the core gameplay experience, rather than having their own character and meaning. But the upcoming The Blood of Dawnwalker aims to rectify this by making it’s open world feel genuinely alive and meaningful, and moving away from making the player push through tons of filler contents.
In a recent interview with IGN, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, former director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has opened up on the design philosophies of the world in The Blood of Dawnwalker, affirming that they’re aiming for a more organic experience with it’s world rather than relying on fetch-quests to make the player endlessly engaged with it.
“A good open world has a meaning, that was our starting point, that it needed to have meaning.”
He also said that he’s against the grind-fest-designs of many open world RPGs: “I have this personal vendetta against filler content,” he says. “I really dislike it. I know it’s very difficult to avoid in open worlds, but I personally really like handcrafted custom and unique content pieces. A little twist or at least some kind of new information that it brings to the table.”
“What makes the open world and the game interesting is the connections,” Konrad says. “If you explore, you sometimes open big branches of the story you cannot predict and something good can happen.”
These insights confirm that the open world featured in the upcoming title will break out of the conventional design elements that have dominated many virtual worlds in videogames and will offer a far more memorable and engaging experience to the players.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is developed by some of the former devs behind The Witcher series so you can be sure that it’ll be quite the visual stunner when it comes out on September 3rd this year. You can also check out the recent gameplay overview that showcases many gameplay elements from the upcoming title including both traversal and combat mechanics which look pretty exciting in more ways than one.
