The Blood of Dawnwalker Shows Its Console Modes, and There Is No 60fps Option at Launch

We are twelve days out from one of the biggest RPG launches of the year, and Rebel Wolves has finally shown its vampire epic running on real consoles. The studio released five minutes of footage of The Blood of Dawnwalker captured on PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X, and it settles a question a lot of players had been asking: how will a game this ambitious actually run on current hardware?

The honest answer is 30 or 40 frames per second, take your pick. Every console gets two modes, a Quality mode targeting 30fps and a Balanced mode targeting 40fps, both at dynamic 4K resolution. There is no 60fps performance mode at launch on any console, and that includes the PS5 Pro, which keeps the same frame rate targets and instead spends its extra power on enhanced visual quality.

Video: Dawnwalker (Bandai Namco) on YouTube

What the footage tells us

The video itself is worth watching, because this is not a spec sheet, it is extended gameplay of Coen exploring the game's medieval world with the mode labels on screen. The image quality holds up well in both modes, and the 40fps Balanced option is a smarter middle ground than it sounds. Because 40 divides evenly into a 120Hz refresh rate, a 40fps mode on a 120Hz display feels much closer to 60 than to 30. That is the same trick Insomniac popularized on PS5, and it works. The catch is that it only works on a 120Hz screen, so if you play on a standard 60Hz TV, the Quality mode will likely be the steadier experience.

One platform is conspicuously absent from the video: Xbox Series S. Rebel Wolves showed nothing from Microsoft's smaller console and has not detailed its modes, which at this point in the marketing cycle usually means expectations should stay modest. PC remains the place to chase high frame rates, and pre-purchases are already live on Steam.

If you want to judge the footage in person, the game is playable on the gamescom show floor from August 26 to 30, days before the September 3 release on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Our take

Some players will read "no 60fps" as a red flag, and after this generation's parade of shaky launches we understand the reflex. But there is a case for respecting the transparency here. Rebel Wolves was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who directed The Witcher 3, a game that launched rough on consoles and was rebuilt into a classic, and its old studio is still expanding that game eleven years later. Showing real console captures with honest frame rate labels two weeks before launch is exactly what we wish more studios did. A stable 40 beats an unstable 60 every single time. Now it just has to hit that target.