AI Summary
5 min readThe four hosts of The Besties—Griffin McElroy, Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick, and returning guest Mary Kish—spend most of this episode on The Blood of Dawnwalker, a new action RPG from Rebel Wolves, a studio founded by former CD Projekt Red developers who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. The game is essentially The Witcher with vampires, and the hosts are surprisingly enthusiastic about it, despite initial dread. The conversation also touches on the first official gameplay trailer for GTA VI and a brief honorable mention for the auto-shooter Blood Dungeon.
A Prologue That Teaches You to Fail
The episode opens with a long, meandering bit about the game's most striking design choice: its prologue. You play as Cohen, a regular guy in the plague-ridden, vampire-ruled valley of Vale Sangora. The prologue gives you a single day and roughly a dozen possible activities—helping your sick mother, learning Latin from a witch, finding a lost pig, spending time with your father. You cannot do them all. Each activity takes two to three in-game hours, and the game tracks this with a visible timer. The result, as Mary explains, is that "a majority of the stuff here is going to fail because you didn't have time for it." At the end of the prologue, a cascade of "You have failed" notifications pops up, which the hosts found both darkly funny and effective. The game is
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Opening Banter: The Bear-Biting Debate** - The crew argues about a vampire game that won't let you bite bears, which spirals into a tangent about Catholicism and Saint Christopher.
- 2 (02:55) **Episode Intro & Guest Welcome** - The hosts introduce themselves and welcome Mary Kish from Fire Escape podcast to the show.
- 3 (07:43) **The Prologue: A Clever, High-Stakes Tutorial** - The group praises the game's opening hour, which sets up the entire structure and stakes of the experience.
- 4 (11:49) **Consequences & The "Failed" Screen** - The hosts discuss how the prologue brutally teaches you that you cannot win everything, leading to a darkly funny moment.
- 5 (14:22) **The 30-Day Countdown & Focused Structure** - The main game gives you 30 days to defeat the lead vampire, Brencis, creating a focused, meaningful open world.
- 6 (17:28) **The "Org Chart" & How to Play Right** - The game's vampire hierarchy functions like an org chart, and the hosts discuss the right and wrong ways to engage with it.
- 7 (19:43) **Day vs. Night: The Dual Protagonist** - The hosts highlight the core mechanic: you are a human by day and a vampire by night, and the two modes play radically differently.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
The Blood of Dawnwalker proves the old adage, “The worse the name, the better the game.” The debut from Rebel Wolves, a studio composed in part of CD Projekt Red veterans, is a grim fantasy RPG set in the Carpathian mountains in the thick of the Black Plague. It looks and feel at first like the The Witcher series, though give it a few hours, and you’ll see this isn’t reheated leftover. It’s got vampires and time management and bears too powerful to be bitten by a bloodsucker! To talk about this gem, we’re joined by Fire Escape Cast’s Mary Kish!
Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!
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