If life is but a dream, then The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Home Sweet Home mission must be a nightmare. I stumble into it as a bit of an afterthought, having fought my way into the alchemist’s tower while investigating the clay-baked gargoyles plaguing the city of Svartrau. But instead of leaving to show Marat the alchemist’s notes, as per my next objective, I head up the spiral staircase and ascend further into the tower.
A short cutscene plays out when I reach the landing and interact with a closed door. The alchemist himself is just inside, Coen notes – should I head inside to confront him? Thinking it would be yet another boss fight, I choose to follow my curiosity. But, instead of a blistering encounter with a magical artificer, Coen steps through the door and right into his family home.
Family business
I put the controller down and give myself a long hard stare in the TV’s reflection. From Max Payne to Night in the Woods and Mass Effect 3, dream or nightmare levels are the bane of my life in video games.
They are discombobulating by design, an intentional frustration that never fails to hit its mark. Some are repetitive walking sims. Others are combat or traversal puzzles with few, if any, auto-saves to cushion your mistakes (some might argue that a full-level reset makes for a seamless, uninterrupted experience; I heartily disagree). You need to learn the rules of the dreamworld and obey them for a time in order to escape its clutches. Unfortunately, this Blood of Dawnwalker mission involves elements of all this and more.
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It starts off simple enough. Coen awakens to find his entire family at the breakfast table, waiting for him. He stutters something nonsensical about how none of this can be real (duh), but as his mother turns to ask what he’d like on his oladkas, Coen is momentarily stunned to hear her voice again.
By this stage in my Dawnwalker adventure, I’ve uncovered a little of father Pieter’s backstory and have pieced together that his mother, Esme, suffered some kind of psychotic break many years before the events of the game. Coen never goes into detail about what happened to her or his late little brother, Alin, but it’s all implied as a sore spot for him.
Monsters attack the homestead, sending Coen’s family scattering in fear. He rushes out of the house, desperate to save them, and as I resume control following the cinematic, the first thing I do is check my inventory for the inevitable.
All of my high-level armor, my weapons, potions, powerful vampire abilities – all gone. In its place I have a common-quality sword that deals 40 damage per hit, zero equipped trinkets, and not even a pair of bog-standard bracers to keep me company. It’s like that nightmare scenario about going to school totally naked, only so much worse.
This is enough to make the dream terrible already. But, when I speed off down the path (after looting all the consumables I can from nearby carts), I’m faced with the fight that makes me want to end it all. Five ghoulish specters are swarming Coen’s mother. I’d make quick work of the lot in the real Vale Sangora, but here in dreamworld, it’s a blistering fight that puts my direction block and parry skills to the test.
Each strike of my sword barely makes a dent in my spongy foes. In contrast, a lack of proper armor means just one of their attacks can take off a third of my health bar easily. I die maybe four times before giving in to my tried and true method for all timing-heavy combat in video games: I mute the TV.
When I finally declare victory over the spirits, having hushed their nerve-wracking wails, Esme rushes over to thank Coen. I have options here again: encourage her to get to the others and head to the church for safety, or dip an experimental toe further into the dream (very, very gingerly) and talk to Esme as if she is real.
I resist the urge. Much as I’m desperate to know more of Coen’s family backstory, I don’t want to get sucked into the dreamscape. So I forge on ahead, leaving a confused and sobbing Esme wondering why her eldest boy is being so dismissive.
I drop a quicksave (thank god) and head through some gates into a larger town square, lined with locked houses. Immediately I set off to gather up all the consumables in the vicinity – healing salves, an apple, an ironic clove of garlic – before Coen draws his sword again as wraiths start popping up all around me. I start hacking and slicing at the coming horde with gusto, and again, they barely take damage.
Here is where the root of Coen’s savior complex is slowly uncovered.
Wraiths hit incredibly quickly, so much so that I barely have time to react when the directional warning indicates a coming attack. So swarmed am I by the black-cloaked enemies that I don’t see that one spirit is wreathed in red instead.
It’s familiar. I put two and two together just as I die for the sixth time: just like when I fight wraiths at haunting sites in the “real” game, I need to target and defeat that red spirit first otherwise it will draw health from the others and keep spawning new lackeys.
I reload my quicksave and get right into the fray again, this time bearing in mind the above info (enemy variety isn’t that broad in Dawnwalker). I rescue my siblings, again forgo the white dialogue choices indicating exploratory conversation, and head up to the church to confront my father. And, shock horror, a gargoyle – which is much easier to fight, considering I am a parrying pro and this is one enemy instead of a dozen.
Home to roost
I’ve done it, I think. I’ve completed the dream and rescued my family, so heading into the church to join them will surely wake Coen from the dream! Except, it does not. I enter the church and am right back where I started at Coen’s family home. The dream has looped – but a fleeting image of a well in the village square flashes across the screen, and I make a mental note to check it out later.
When I re-enter the breakfast room and the family greets me, I experiment here with a little backstory text. I have all the time in the world, it seems, and if I have to go through all that again, at least I can do it with more narrative depth.
Here is where the root of Coen’s savior complex is slowly uncovered. He tells his mother how he’s missed her, but also how he hates her for abandoning the family by retreating into her own mind. He mentions his brother, briefly – has she never forgiven Coen for what happened to… Alin, was it? Nevermind. The monsters descend and it’s time to charge back through the dream, and this time, I do a pretty decent job. I need to get to that well, and no ghoul or wraith can stop me.
It’s like that nightmare scenario about going to school totally naked, only so much worse.
After clearing the wraiths from the town square, Coen mentions the well. I run over and interact with it, only to be faced with his reflection.
It’s angry. Coen chides himself – he’s a coward, unable to come to terms with what happened to his little brother nor forgive himself for the role he played in his death. Only by screaming his brother’s name – Alin! Alin! Alin! – does the dream start to crack at its seams.
If I’d ignored the well I would have stayed stuck in the nightmare’s loop, resulting in one of the secret and most depressing Blood of Dawnwalker endings, but I am more than happy to be rid of this place. My vampire powers are back, and I’m able to shadowstep up the icy cliff in front of me and make my way through a maze of memories.
Rebel Wolves does a beautiful job of telling rather than showing the shame and guilt Coen carries with him. He blames himself for the accident that took Alin’s life when they were both mere children playing on a frozen lake. Alin was there one moment and gone the next. But he cannot square away the feeling that he could have done something – until Alin himself appears before him.
He tells his brother to forgive himself; that the worst thing he has done is not visit Alin at the site of his death. He’s been waiting for him for years, after all. Coen breaks down as Alin hugs his big brother before sinking to his knees, clutching Alin close. Alin tells him goodbye one last time and, with a shove, sends Coen tumbling out of the dream and back into consciousness.
I did not expect such a painful dream sequence to result in an equally painful narrative revelation. The pressure I was under as Coen, fighting through Hell to save his family with barely anything to his name, is the same pressure he had taken upon himself when Alin died.
Home Sweet Home turned out to be one of the most poetic examples of narrative and level design confluence I’ve ever experienced. It’s also completely optional. After waking up and killing the alchemist, I check my mission log to find that it was actually one of long-dead boyaress Xanthe’s branching side quests (she was the first of Brencis’ lieutenants I killed in the game). I’ll bear that in mind for next time. As touched as I was by Coen’s redemption after years of emotional torment, Home Sweet Home is still the best Blood of Dawnwalker mission I will not be hastening back to in an inevitable replay. I’ve had enough nightmares for days, thanks Rebel Wolves.
Is The Blood of Dawnwalker one of the best RPGs of all-time? Watch this space…
