Any RPG fanatic should know by now that a new vampire epic is out in the wild. But this time, no need for subtlety to avoid breaking the Masquerade. It's an all-out bloodbath, so you'll never go thirsty. The Blood of Dawnwalker not only boasts a vast open world begging to be explored, but also implements vampire powers brilliantly and features phenomenal writing punctuating the experience.
However, despite all this, the only thing I seem to hear about this game since release is about the game's built-in time limit. This feature requires you to save Coen's family in 30 in-game days, effectively giving every small decision weight and meaning. It's been the game's biggest jumping-off point, and equally, for some, the game's biggest draw.
I'm here to set the record straight. It's just not that deep, and it shouldn't factor into whether you choose to play this game or not.
Time is a construct; Vhakhir are eternal
From well before this game was in my possession, I knew that Dawnwalker was taking a risk with this time limit idea. It's something that has hampered many games before, and it puts a lot of pressure on choices a player makes. If you say they all have weight, then you have to deliver every time one presents itself.
I’ve now played this game back to front and sideways — from the roofs of Swartrau to the Uriashi mountains. And I can tell you that while your choices do affect quest outcomes and NPCs' fates, if you use your time productively, you'll be able to see everything this game offers with ease.
By the 27th day (of the 30 allocated), I had completed all major main and side quests, discovered all endings open and available to me, had romanced all possible characters, completed oodles of completely optional tasks, and still had plenty of time to spare.
I wasn't incredibly careful with my time. I wasted quite a lot of it on choices that led to nothing. And yet, I still had time to spare before Brencis, the big bad vampire of the realm, slaughtered my family. After playing the game from every conceivable angle, I struggle to see how a reasonably thorough player could run out of time without deliberately burning days at a shrine.
Plus, it bears mentioning that if you’re not all that much of a family man, you can simply let those 30 days elapse and turn the rescue attempt into a tale of vengeance, while also having infinite time to tie off loose ends.
It's a system that flatters to deceive, often pushing time onward with arbitrary decisions just to keep things moving. It functions more of a passive motivation to progress than an albatross around your neck. It feels like there is the perfect amount of content to consume in those 30 days, and the rest is just superfluous filler.
Yet, I see players actively seeking out mods to elongate their time in-game. To that I say, you needn't bother. It's a very generous time limit, one that doesn't affect your enjoyment of exploring the open world of Vale Sangora at all.
Tick-tock that genuinely shocks
When it comes to time limits sewn right into the fabric of a game, Dawnwalker is truly a weenie hut junior experience compared to the Salty Spittoon offerings of other time-focused titles out there.
You see, Dawnwalker does have time constraints, but critically, it doesn't have a timer.
Meanwhile, time loops like Outer Wilds have a strict time to explore before you're reset to factory settings, and the original Dead Rising has a constant ticking clock reminding you at every moment that you only have three days (6 real-world hours) to uncover the secrets of the mall you find yourself trapped in.
Or, if you want to get really sadistic, you can endure the ever-present time pressures of Pathologic — a game that makes it almost impossible to save everyone and push back the plague that ravages your village. Truly, it’s a suffering simulator disguised as a game.
This is all to say that time limits come directly at the cost of freedom, at least to some degree. When time is a factor, you may lose progress, you may miss something critical, or you may have to choose something at the cost of another.
Dawnwalker merely offers the illusion of time pressure. Everything feels like it matters; every choice and time notch spent feels like a fork-in-the-road moment. But in reality, you're never under all that much pressure at all.
It's a dawnwalk, not a dawnsprint. So just take your time, stop stressing, and resist going to Nexus Mods for a solution. Time is merely a construct, so just play the game as the developer intended, and I assure you, you won't miss a thing.
