The Blood of Dawnwalker Has Grown Beyond Its Original 40 Hour Plan as Testers Now Spend Up to 70 Hours in Vale Sangora
Rebel Wolves may have started The Blood of Dawnwalker with a more restrained ambition than The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, but the studio’s debut RPG is clearly evolving into a much larger experience than initially planned. According to a recent report from Gamereactor, Creative Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz revealed that the team originally targeted an average playthrough of around 40 hours. Now that the full content is in place and testing is underway, internal results are showing a much broader range, with playtime stretching from around 50 hours to as much as 70 hours depending on how players approach the game.
That is a meaningful jump, especially for a new studio working on the first entry in what it hopes will become a long term franchise. Tomaszkiewicz explained that the final playtime depends heavily on several factors, including difficulty level, how thoroughly players explore Vale Sangora, how much time they spend upgrading gear, and how selective they are with content and progression. In other words, The Blood of Dawnwalker is not simply becoming longer because of filler. It sounds more like the game’s systems, world design, and player freedom are naturally stretching the experience beyond the original estimate.
This is an important detail because Rebel Wolves has always had to balance expectations carefully. The game draws immediate comparisons to The Witcher III because of the studio’s roots, but it is being made by a smaller team with a different production scale. Even so, a 50 to 70 hour range puts The Blood of Dawnwalker in a very competitive position for modern story driven RPGs. It suggests that players can expect a substantial world, meaningful exploration, and enough role playing flexibility to create very different playthrough lengths from one player to another.
That variation also fits with what the studio has already been saying about the game’s design philosophy. The Blood of Dawnwalker has been positioned as a dark fantasy RPG where player agency, consequences, and multiple approaches matter. If testers are already showing such wide playtime differences, that likely reflects how much freedom players have in deciding how deeply they want to engage with the world, side content, gear progression, and story branches. For RPG fans, that is usually a much stronger sign than a fixed headline number.
For Rebel Wolves, this is also a strong message ahead of launch. A longer than expected RPG is not automatically better, but when it comes from internal testing rather than inflated marketing promises, it gives the impression that the studio may have built a world with more depth and replay value than originally intended. If that depth is matched by strong quest design and pacing, The Blood of Dawnwalker could end up feeling far more expansive than many expected from a first project.
The big challenge now will be making sure that scale translates into quality. A 70 hour RPG only works if the time is supported by compelling storytelling, rewarding exploration, and systems that stay engaging throughout the journey. Still, for a game that already had strong momentum among fantasy RPG fans, this latest update only reinforces the sense that The Blood of Dawnwalker is shaping up to be one of the more substantial role playing releases of 2026.
Would you rather have a tighter 40 hour RPG with stronger pacing, or a 50 to 70 hour experience if the world and exploration stay consistently rewarding?
