Once upon a time The Blood of Dawnwalker's timer mechanic was a lot tougher, and it's because of all those pre-release complaints that it was made easier

"After all of those voices, before release even, we knew that it can be a problem"

Right, I need you lot to pipe down for a minute because you're making games less interesting. Last week, The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz shared that the game's timer mechanics may be dropped in future installments of the vampire (eventual) series. This sounds like a boring decision to make if you ask me, as it's the thing that most interests me about the RPG. And now, according to Tomaszkiewicz in a new interview, the timer mechanic was actually toned down based on its early reception.

When asked by our friends over at Eurogamer whether or not Rebel Wolves reined in the timer mechanic after some responded to it with concern, Tomaszkiewicz plainly responded, "Obviously!" He continued, "Obviously. Yes. We had at first a more restricted time where it was harder to beat the game, but after all of those voices, before release even, we knew that it can be a problem and we rebalanced it this way to give the buffer for the people to not fear this."

Tomaszkiewicz explained that the prologue was the first sort of test for the time mechanic, saying that the "didn't change it because we wanted to give this experience for people and show them what they can expect. Actually later on we changed the main game, besides the prologue, because we were afraid that people will complain too much that it's too restricted." The original version of the mechanic was apparently "quite" restrictive comparatively, but ultimately after the devs spoke about it, they landed on wanting to "give the player the proper feeling and proper emotions in the main story. This is the purpose of the main story, not to create a challenge for it."

It's hard to say how it would have been made more difficult. As it currently stands, anything from quests to using up skill points moves time forward, so perhaps even smaller actions would have done so. Tomaszkiewicz had an explanation as for why improving your skills moves time forwards too: "We figured out that if we don't have it, then what players are doing is skipping the whole content. They are farming the boars, wolves, and other enemies to [level up and earn skill points]. They're learning the perks and then they just go, on the first day, to kill Brencis," the antagonist.

All of this to say, I need you to stop complaining about interesting game mechanics because it's good when games get a bit weird with it. Revel in the friction! It won't kill you.