{"id":86299,"date":"2026-09-19T23:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T15:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86299"},"modified":"2026-09-19T23:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T15:15:16","slug":"the-blood-of-dawnwalker-modders-arent-missing-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86299","title":{"rendered":"The Blood of Dawnwalker Modders Aren\u2019t Missing The Point"},"content":{"rendered":"


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This is an IGN opinion piece from Mat Jones, who thinks everyone\u2019s made too big a deal out of experience-altering mods, and wouldn\u2019t replay a video game ever, even if he were forced to do so by vampires holding his family hostage.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent the weeks since The Blood of Dawnwalker\u2019s release nodding at headlines about how the time-pressured quest to rescue lead character Coen\u2019s family \u2013 which is on a controversial 30-day timer \u2013 is the heart of the design, and that anyone looking to extend that clock with a mod wouldn\u2019t be having the intended experience<\/u>. <\/p>\n

But, after reading that the developers themselves aren\u2019t so bothered about the timer that they\u2019d definitely want to add it in again<\/u> \u2013 that a Dawnwalker sequel could strip out this mechanic and still inexorably be a Dawnwalker game \u2013 I\u2019ve interrogated my own assumptions. I wonder if we\u2019ve been giving anyone who\u2019d roll back a couple of 0s on the odometer too hard a ride. Is the example of the \u201cirresponsible modder\u201d, someone incapable of understanding that developer intent should supersede any possible alteration, a fantasy?<\/p>\n

The threat of a ticking clock is one of the first things you learn in screen writing classes: that a scene is more tense if there\u2019s an outside force driving it forward, that a conversation which would otherwise just be two people in a room is twice as interesting if one of them really needs to get out of there. In a movie it’s contrivance; obviously the timer can\u2019t end until it\u2019s dramatically interesting. A game, meanwhile, has to account for your character learning they\u2019re about to explode and then just doing their idle animation for their remaining twenty minutes of life. The idea of a long-tail timer achieves the same aim as the movie version, though. Every decision matters if you can only make so many of them, and everything has more weight if there\u2019s a cost.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s unlikely that Dawnwalker\u2019s modders, or any modders who\u2019d take the time limit out of any game, are unaware of this. I\u2019m cynical about trends, I\u2019m not cynical about individual people. I can imagine someone who has reckoned with this decision has thought about why these systems are implemented, but eventually accepts their \u201cvandalism\u201d of the art as a small price to pay to overcome problems inherent to this scale of game design.<\/p>\n

Many games don\u2019t benefit from a second playthrough. I\u2019ve been playing games almost daily for over thirty years. I\u2019m more than aware of how much gristle and sinew there is among the meat. I\u2019ve chosen not to go back to a lot of things that I\u2019ve loved in the past because I haven\u2019t wanted to do the same stuff over and over. For every great bit of combat design in the best open world games, for every narrative twist and turn, there\u2019s a lot of looking around in cupboards for bullets or pissing around in menus trying on new shoelaces that give you an extra 3% poison damage. Dawnwalker is no different; the equipment variety that will help in the quest to defeat the story\u2019s vampiric villain, Brencis, is as incremental in scale as any other game. I\u2019m fine doing this sort of stuff the first go through, but when I\u2019ve absorbed the majority of the experience, it\u2019s a challenge to get myself to care again.<\/p>\n

For every great bit of design in the best open world games, there\u2019s a lot of looking around in cupboards for bullets or pissing around in menus.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

If there\u2019s, say, enough unique stuff in Dawnwalker for a player to only see 70 or 80% of everything in a playthrough, maybe just enough to miss a chunk if you were busy making other choices, but not enough to have a radically different experience the second time around, then playing it twice would just be pushing through a lot of the same things you\u2019ve already done. Micro changes in context, but macro similarities in activity. If someone wants to see everything in there and they still want the goodie gumdrops school prefect ending, they\u2019re being more generous to their own time and patience than they\u2019re limiting their appreciation of art.<\/p>\n

I respect people\u2019s intelligence enough to believe they can be placed in a scene where the cost will be having to spend a lot of time they don\u2019t want to spare, and empathise how much that would weigh on a person who doesn\u2019t have it, without themselves actually having to carry that burden in their own game.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don\u2019t have any desire to mod the game to give Coen\u2019s family a bit more breathing room, because I\u2019m happy to accept whatever narrative conclusion I\u2019m given as the result of my actions. I like the idea that my one playthrough would be informed wholly from my decisions, good or bad, and presumably expertly paced around the amount of time the devs think a person can play the game without it overstaying its welcome. Anything I miss, well, it wasn\u2019t meant to be.<\/p>\n