Interview
September 2, 2026
Here’s why Rebel Wolves chose UE5 to power its ambitious, large scale, open world RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker
Based in Warsaw, Poland, Rebel Wolves is a new development studio born out of a love for RPGs and a desire to forge the future of the genre. Their first project, The Blood of Dawnwalker, is an ambitious open world dark fantasy action RPG set in 14th-century Europe. In it, you play as Coen, a human by day and vampire by night, fighting to save your family in a story shaped by your actions and the secrets you uncover.
When setting out to build the studio’s debut project, which features a large open world with demanding technical requirements, the team knew that it wanted to focus primarily on creating the game itself rather than spending years building and maintaining proprietary technology and engine solutions.
After evaluating their options, the team selected Unreal Engine 5 for key features such as World Partition, Lumen real-time global illumination, Sequencer, Blueprints, and the all important access to source code that UE provides.
So, what are the team’s core goals for the project, and how have UE5’s tools and workflows helped reduce iteration times and improve collaboration between teams?
We caught up with Chief Technology Officer Tomasz Wójcik, Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Narrative Director Jakub Szamałek, Lead Environment Artist Jakub Cieślik, Principal Lighting Artist Ambroży Farski, and Principal Character & Technical Artist Tomáš Križan to sink our teeth into this ambitious project.
When setting out to build the studio’s debut project, which features a large open world with demanding technical requirements, the team knew that it wanted to focus primarily on creating the game itself rather than spending years building and maintaining proprietary technology and engine solutions.
After evaluating their options, the team selected Unreal Engine 5 for key features such as World Partition, Lumen real-time global illumination, Sequencer, Blueprints, and the all important access to source code that UE provides.
So, what are the team’s core goals for the project, and how have UE5’s tools and workflows helped reduce iteration times and improve collaboration between teams?
We caught up with Chief Technology Officer Tomasz Wójcik, Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Narrative Director Jakub Szamałek, Lead Environment Artist Jakub Cieślik, Principal Lighting Artist Ambroży Farski, and Principal Character & Technical Artist Tomáš Križan to sink our teeth into this ambitious project.
Thanks for joining us! As an original IP and the debut title for Rebel Wolves, what were your core goals for The Blood of Dawnwalker?
Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, Game Director: From the very beginning, it was our goal to tell the story of a different kind of protagonist, one who fits alongside what audiences expect from deep, modern RPGs while also drawing on what we loved about classic role-playing games from the late 90s and early 2000s.
Namely, we wanted to tell the origin story of a hero who is only just beginning to understand and master his new powers, while also discovering the unseen world that gradually unfolds around him as vampires take over the valley where he lives. We also wanted to explore his dual nature, which manifests during the day when he is human, and at night, when he becomes a vampire. How does he cope with this? How far is he willing to go, and how much is he prepared to sacrifice to save his family? And is his humanity truly worth holding on to? This ties directly into our gameplay, which is fueled by Coen’s duality and allows players to experience the game differently depending on whether it is day or night.
What is also critical from both a storytelling and gameplay perspective is how deeply you can shape both through your actions and inactions—how freely you can define your path once the prologue ends, and how many different ways the story can branch.
All of that, combined with our own lore exploring the balance between the worlds of day and night as observed across ages, eras, and cultures, is what we defined early on as the core goal and central concept behind both The Blood of Dawnwalker and the saga as a whole.
But ultimately, our greatest aspiration was to create an experience that stays with players long after they put down the controller: one they return to in their thoughts and revisit through multiple playthroughs.
What historical periods, cultures, or mythologies influenced the world of The Blood of Dawnwalker?
Jakub Szamałek, Narrative Director: The Blood of Dawnwalker is a historical fantasy game—meaning it's inspired by the legends and tales of our own world. The emphasis, though, is very much on the fantasy part. We didn't want to be constrained by history, instead choosing to draw freely from it. The setting of our game, Vale Sangora, is "somewhere in the Carpathians" and we very consciously decided not to be any more specific than that. While creating this place, we were inspired chiefly by Eastern and Central European history, folk legends, and archaeology. The deeper lore of the world, on the other hand, springs from our reinterpretation of the classical Greek and Roman world, as well as medieval mysticism and religion.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
As the name suggests, the game’s protagonist, Coen, has been transformed into a Dawnwalker. Can you please explain exactly what that is?
Tomaszkiewicz: Dawnwalkers look like regular humans during the day, but turn into vampires after dusk. This cycle repeats every day. However, they are neither humans nor vampires, but something in between. Like vampires, Dawnwalkers live much longer than regular humans.
How do the game’s day/night cycles and story progression mechanics impact gameplay and player choice?
Tomaszkiewicz: Everything in our game stems from the duality of our protagonist. Coen is a human during the day, so in combat he can fight with a sword and use dark magic, which is carved on his body as runes. But at night, when he turns into a vampire, he becomes faster and stronger, gaining an ability to fight with his claws and teeth, and a few other vampiric powers. It not only affects the combat but also the way he explores the open world—at night, he can walk on walls or ceilings or even teleport on short distances.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
Why was Unreal Engine 5 chosen for this project and which UE5 features stood out to you most during development (and why)?
Tomasz Wójcik, Chief Technology Officer: The decision to use Unreal Engine 5 was made at the very beginning of the studio’s existence, which enabled us to immediately begin work on the game.
We needed an engine capable of supporting a large-scale open world RPG. In practice, no engine provides everything out of the box for a project of this scope: there will always be systems and features that need to be custom-built. Among all available solutions, Unreal Engine offered the most complete feature set for our needs.
We also saw that Unreal Engine was strongly positioned as a powerful solution for open world game development, which made it the best match for our project. One of the key features for us was World Partition, which is essential for building a seamless open world, and it was one of the technologies we paid particularly close attention to.
Another important factor was our overall development philosophy at Rebel Wolves. We want to focus primarily on creating the game itself rather than spending years building and maintaining proprietary technology and engine solutions. We needed a toolset that would allow us to start production as quickly and efficiently as possible.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
From exercising supernatural skills as a vampire to more traditional interplay between sword and magic as a human, how has Unreal Engine enabled you to iterate on and shape the game’s fast, fluid, and strategic combat?
Wójcik: Unreal Engine, by design and from its very foundation, is focused on enabling rapid gameplay iteration. The engine allows developers to launch the game directly within the editor and quickly evaluate the impact of implemented changes, which is particularly valuable for combat designers.
This workflow enables teams to achieve higher-quality results by adjusting gameplay parameters and verifying their effect on the overall experience almost in real time, significantly streamlining the balancing and gameplay refinement process.
Featuring lush forests, steep mountaintops, and medieval settlements, how have Unreal Engine 5’s tools empowered you to create the game’s vast, hand-crafted open world?
Jakub Cieślik, Lead Environment Artist: The use of Runtime Virtual Textures (RVT) enabled seamless blending between roads, terrain, and rocks, resulting in a more realistic landscape. Landscape displacement further enhanced these transitions, allowing different environmental features to blend smoothly together.
Thanks to Level Instances and Packed Level Actors, we were able to create highly detailed prefabs. These tools streamlined our workflow and helped us achieve a significantly higher level of visual quality.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
Can you please speak to your use of Lumen to create the game’s gorgeous lighting?
Ambroży Farski, Principal Lighting Artist: Lumen serves as the driving force behind our in-game lighting system. Its real-time global illumination technology is a true game changer, enabling us to rapidly iterate, experiment, and validate new visual ideas. This fast iteration cycle fosters greater creativity by allowing us to test a wide range of scenarios, lighting conditions, and environmental setups with minimal overhead.
In addition, Lumen enables us to maintain a visually coherent experience across the entire game world, connecting diverse environments into a consistent and immersive whole.
How are you using Unreal Engine’s Sequencer for storytelling?
Wójcik: As a story-driven game, narrative and storytelling are among the most important pillars of the experience. Our goal is to create stories that evoke genuine emotions in players. During key narrative moments, we want players to truly feel the emotional weight of the events unfolding before them, as these are the experiences that stay with them long after they finish playing. We believe that delivering emotionally impactful storytelling is one of the elements that will distinguish our productions.
In The Blood of Dawnwalker, we utilize two primary types of narrative scenes:
- Non-interactive cinematics (cutscenes), which are created with the support of Sequencer, allowing us to deliver highly cinematic and emotionally engaging storytelling moments.
- Interactive dialogue and narrative scenes, where players are able to make choices that directly influence how the story unfolds. Our entire dialogue system is built around Sequencer technology. We have developed a proprietary pipeline that automatically generates Sequencer scenes based on scripts written by our narrative designers. Writers create the dialogue, which is then transformed into a Sequencer scene and subsequently refined by our cinematic team to achieve higher visual quality, stronger pacing, and the precise emotional tone required for each moment in the game.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
How did you make use of MetaHuman (MetaHuman Creator, MetaHuman Animator) for character creation in The Blood of Dawnwalker?
Tomáš Križan, Principal Character & Technical Artist: During production, we used MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman technology in combination with our proprietary Maya tools. This greatly streamlined the creation of heads and creatures for the project. The extensive library of facial features and assets provided a strong foundation for character development. We also leveraged the wrinkle map library and developed custom tools for our Substance Painter workflow, which helped accelerate texturing and iteration.
How did using MetaHuman reduce production time for the team compared to a traditional character pipeline?
Križan: MetaHuman significantly reduced production time, especially for facial creation. We developed our own tools for editing MetaHuman heads and integrating them into our pipeline, allowing character artists to work more independently without relying on technical animators for every update. Iteration became much faster, enabling us to make changes to characters and get them into the game quickly throughout production.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
Could you tell us a bit about your population system in The Blood of Dawnwalker? What was the biggest technical challenge, and how did the team overcome it?
Wójcik: Unreal Engine does not provide a built-in system for streaming crowds at the scale we required. Our game features thousands of NPCs, and it is technically impossible for any currently available engine to handle that number of characters simultaneously. No engine supports every possible feature out of the box. While UE5 offers an extensive set of tools and systems, some solutions still need to be developed independently.
One of those challenges was creating the technology necessary for players to experience believable, living crowds throughout the city. We had to build this system entirely from scratch to ensure the city genuinely felt populated and alive. This was particularly challenging because the solution also needed to perform efficiently within the hardware limitations of consoles and lower-end PCs.
We were able to achieve this thanks to Unreal Engine’s source code access and its flexibility in supporting custom feature development. UE5 not only makes this kind of deep customization possible, but actively encourages it through its architecture and tooling.
Which UE5 feature(s) had the largest quantifiable impact on cross-discipline workflows? How did these features help the team reduce iteration time, improve team collaboration, and/or lower production costs throughout the development process?
Wójcik: Above all, the tools in general—the editor and the entire suite of features available within it. They are not only advanced, but also thoughtfully designed from a user-experience perspective. This is one of the areas where Unreal Engine stands out compared to many other engines, as creators of similar technologies often place less emphasis on usability, which can become problematic in large-scale production environments.
Unreal Engine addresses this exceptionally well. Its tools are designed with the developer’s workflow in mind, making them intuitive and efficient to use. This significantly reduces iteration times and greatly improves collaboration between teams, ultimately allowing game production to progress more smoothly and efficiently.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
How were you able to leverage C++ and Blueprints in tandem to streamline development across teams?
Wójcik: Because our game features a large open world with demanding technical requirements, we decided that most of the core systems should be developed in C++. At the same time, Blueprints serve two very important purposes in our workflow:
- They act as an excellent layer connecting our C++ systems, enabling efficient communication and integration between them.
- They are extremely useful for prototyping. Before implementing a feature in C++, we can quickly create and test a prototype using Blueprints.
Building a project of this scale entirely in Blueprints would likely not be the best approach. However, combining the performance and flexibility of C++ with the accessibility and rapid iteration capabilities of Blueprints delivers excellent results.
How has UE5 enabled you to quickly iterate on ideas and mechanics based on the community feedback you’ve received throughout development?
Wójcik: Thanks to the ability to quickly visualize how the game would look and feel after implementing different changes, we were able to make decisions about those changes much more efficiently. This was especially important when evaluating adjustments such as the camera distance from the main character and the selection of special abilities during combat.
We tested several different approaches and ultimately chose the solutions that worked best within the overall gameplay experience.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
How important has it been for you to have access to UE’s source code throughout development?
Wójcik: It was absolutely critical. As mentioned earlier, no engine provides tools for every possible feature a developer may need. Certain solutions simply do not exist out of the box and have to be created internally, which often requires modifications to the engine code itself.
Understanding how the engine works at a deeper level is essential when developing advanced custom features. This level of understanding cannot be achieved through documentation or support resources alone. Some systems need to be analyzed directly within the source code. Without access to it, we would not have been able to create the kind of game we envisioned.
How have Unreal Engine’s profiling tools assisted your team with debugging and performance optimization?
Wójcik: Profiling is absolutely critical when it comes to understanding optimization and identifying what needs to be improved in order to achieve better performance. Without profiling, it is practically impossible to optimize a game effectively.
As the creators of UE5, you clearly understand this very well, which is reflected in how extensively you continue to develop profiling tools. Today, they are among the best available on the market, and because they are designed specifically for Unreal Engine 5, they integrate seamlessly into the workflow.
From the very beginning, we knew that profiling and optimization would need to remain an ongoing process throughout the entire production cycle. Optimization efforts will continue even after the game’s release, meaning performance will continue to improve with each update.
©2026 Rebel Wolves sp z o.o. All rights reserved
Did the team take advantage of the UE documentation, Epic Developer Community, Epic Pro Support or other parts of the ecosystem like Fab throughout development?
Wójcik: Yes. Whenever any kind of issue appears, our first step is usually to check the Unreal Engine documentation and the Epic Developer Community resources. If we are unable to solve the problem that way, we reach out through Epic Pro Support. We received several important responses there that helped us resolve critical issues.
We used assets from Fab (formerly the Unreal Engine Marketplace) for prototyping and blockout work during the early stages of production. This allowed us to focus on the game's visual style and overall feel much earlier than anticipated.
Thanks for your time! Where can people go to learn more about The Blood of Dawnwalker?
Wójcik: Thank you very much—it was a pleasure! For more information about the game, check out our website dawnwalkergame.com and follow official social media channels @dawnwalkergame.