The Blood of Dawnwalker asked for an RTX 5090 and now settles for half, 13 days out

Back in April, Rebel Wolves published a spec sheet that had half the internet laughing: running The Blood of Dawnwalker at 4K and 60fps on Ultra called for an RTX 5090, which is to say the most expensive card you can buy. Four months on, the final requirements are out and they ask for half of that.

The game launches on 3 September for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, so there are 13 days to go. And this week the first long video of it running on console turned up.

Put together, the two things say something interesting about where the project is, though not quite what it looks like at first glance, because a spec cut this late can mean they have optimised hard or it can mean they have changed how they measure, and in this case it is the second one.

The Blood of Dawnwalker — console gameplay

What they asked for in April and what they ask now

The top tier is where the change shows. Those 4K/60fps Ultra figures that demanded an RTX 5090 now come with an RTX 4070 Ti or a Radeon RX 9070 attached instead. That is a drop from the very top of the market to a card two generations old.

Below that, the ladder runs like this: 1440p at 60fps on High needs an RTX 4060 or an 8GB RX 7600 XT, and native 1080p at 60fps sets the bar at a GTX 1070 Ti or an RX 5700, cards plenty of people have gone years without replacing because until now they still did the job. And at the very bottom, 1080p at 30fps, a 6GB GTX 1060 or an RX 580 holds it up, cards from 2016 and 2017. The install sits at 60GB, which for an Unreal Engine 5 open world in 2026 is remarkably little.

CPU requirements have come down too, though the studio has not published a direct comparison between the two sheets.

Mind the small print on upscaling

Let us not celebrate too fast. April's number was for native 4K. August's is for 4K with upscaling switched on, in Balanced mode, which means the card renders at a good deal less and the algorithm fills in the rest.

Put another way, the game has not become half as demanding, the measuring stick has changed. It is still a real cut and still good news for anyone without a two-thousand-euro card, but the two figures are not comparable to each other.

I find it more honest than the alternative, mind. Publishing requirements that assume upscaling is an admission of how people actually play in 2026, rather than selling a native number almost nobody will use.

And on console, which is where most of us will see it

The new video finally shows long stretches running on console, which is the first chance to judge this outside a demo PC built for the occasion. That said, it is still footage the studio picked. There is combat, and there are daytime and night-time scenes, which is when Coen stops being human.

That contrast is not cosmetic, it is the whole system. We pulled it apart in how the 30 days in The Blood of Dawnwalker work: you have a month to save your sister, the clock only moves when you push the plot forward, and exploring costs you nothing.

Behind it is Rebel Wolves, the studio run by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who directed The Witcher 3, with around 160 people and Bandai Namco publishing. Asked how he feels going into launch, Tomaszkiewicz said: "I'm really comfortable. I feel really confident about our game; we're already past friends-and-family testing and focus tests at professional companies, and the feedback is really good."

Thirteen days

What is left is the thing a spec sheet never tells you: how it actually behaves on a stock PS5 twenty hours in, with the world loaded and the town full.

3 September settles it. Until then, the launch trailer sets the tone for the final week, and if you are eyeing what else lands that month, September is stacked.