The Blood of Dawnwalker features a controversial time restriction that adds a layer of stress to every decision and quest in the RPG – and according to Rebel Wolves, it was actually a lot more difficult to grapple with prior to the game’s launch.

That’s because, as director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who has the likes of The Witcher 3 under his belt from his time at CD Projekt Red, tells Eurogamer in a new interview, the mechanic was far more strict during early development – until fans shared their concerns following the game’s reveal about it being too challenging, that is.

“We had at first a more restricted time where it was harder to beat the game,” Tomaszkiewicz recalls. “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.”

Although Rebel Wolves largely kept the RPG’s opening the same, the studio did change “the main game, besides the prologue, because we were afraid that people will complain too much that it’s too restricted.”

I mean… how much worse could the original take on the mechanic have been? “Quite” a bit, according to Tomaszkiewicz.

“You needed to think about everything even more carefully. But we started to speak with Mateusz [Tomaszkiewicz, creative director] and the rest of the team about what we wanted to achieve, and we figured out that we don’t want to create a mini-game from it. We wanted to give the player the proper feeling and proper emotions in the main story.”

That checks out, honestly. As Tomaszkiewicz concludes, “This is the purpose of the main story, not to create a challenge for it.” I’d say it feels well-balanced to me – but, considering all of the drama the mechanic in its current iteration has stirred, Rebel Wolves certainly made the right choice in simplifying it.

Heck, the first and biggest mod for The Blood of Dawnwalker reworks the time restriction altogether, proving that it’s an uncomfortable feature for lots of folks.

Tomaszkiewicz himself also said that upcoming sequels might scrap the feature or at least change how it works. With the new update coming next month, I wonder whether we’ll see some tweaks to it a bit earlier on, too – guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Interested in one of this year’s biggest new games yourself? Be sure to read through our The Blood of Dawnwalker review to learn more.