Game News Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong RPG Trailer

[Infinitron]

Tags: Big Bad Wolf; Nacon; Vampire: the Masquerade - Swansong

A new gameplay trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong did indeed appear during the Future Games Show Spring Showcase event yesterday. This trailer focused specifically on the game's RPG mechanics, which are basically an evolution of the system from Big Bad Wolf's previous title The Council. Each of the three protagonists will have their own upgradable vampiric disciplines as well a set of general skills, the latter requiring willpower to use and the former requiring blood. Further bonuses will be provided by traits, which are gained by achieving objectives and making decisions, and talents, which are rewarded for sticking to particular playstyles. In Swansong, non-player characters will have their own fully-fledged character sheets that the protagonists will have to contend against during dialogue confrontations.

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It seems like a promising expansion of Big Bad Wolf's vision. Hopefully they'll be able to balance this system and make resource management a little more interesting than just combing areas for jars of royal jelly.

 

[Marat]

This game will live or die by its reactivity and it's difficult to judge the quality of that from promotional material. The Council managed to put me to sleep better than Tarkovsky, so I'm reserving excitement for a later date.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Is it just me, or do these characters look awful? Is this a mobile game? Is the target platform a potato?

If this were some tiny no-name studio or an indie solo developer or something, I wouldn't care. But for an IP with a recognizable name and a Nacon presumably giving Big Bad Wolf a decent budget, I would expect characters that don't look so... dead? I get that they're vampires, but "undead" doesn't mean "mannequin."

Edit: I couldn't put my finger on what exactly I didn't like about the character models. I gave the trailer another watch. I still can't say exactly what it is. I think it might be the idle face animation. They just look like they're staring blank-faced straight ahead. Maybe if they bobbed their heads a little or creased their eyebrows or shifted their weight from side to side or something I wouldn't be so bothered.

Edit 2: I think it's also the skin. The skin looks too smooth, too uniform. I don't see creases or wrinkles or pores or veins or anything. I see perfectly uniform color across the whole body.

Maybe the level of detail drops really sharply with distance. The close-ups at 0:35 and 1:40 showed detail on the skin, but elsewhere all of the characters look way too smooth.

The part where the cop is pointing a gun at the guy with his shirt off though... yeah, the skin just doesn't look right.

 

[luj1]

cinematic dialogue, sterile UI, etc

common trends of decline

 

[Roguey]

But for an IP with a recognizable name and a Nacon presumably giving Big Bad Wolf a decent budget, I would expect characters that don't look so... dead?

What gives you the impression Nacon has the money to spend on making games? Acquiring studios sure, but I've yet to see them publish anything that doesn't look like low budget eurojank (this includes the Werewolf game they had Cyanide do).

 

[vortex]

I'm worried for the cutscenes but this is only the trailer. I want to play my game.

 

[Sin2x]

Looks both too woke and generic. Probably a 7/10.

 

[Tyranicon]

To be honest I'd prefer to play with my own character, like in the TTRPG. Here it looks like they're making TLOU with a dice animation.

YouTube comments don't always get it right, but when they do, they really do.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Simp buyers: The Ass-parade - Dong-song

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Simp buyers: The Ass-parade - Dong-song

 

[thesheeep]

Is it just me, or do these characters look awful? Is this a mobile game? Is the target platform a potato?

If this were some tiny no-name studio or an indie solo developer or something, I wouldn't care. But for an IP with a recognizable name and a Nacon presumably giving Big Bad Wolf a decent budget, I would expect characters that don't look so... dead? I get that they're vampires, but "undead" doesn't mean "mannequin."

Edit: I couldn't put my finger on what exactly I didn't like about the character models. I gave the trailer another watch. I still can't say exactly what it is. I think it might be the idle face animation. They just look like they're staring blank-faced straight ahead. Maybe if they bobbed their heads a little or creased their eyebrows or shifted their weight from side to side or something I wouldn't be so bothered.

Edit 2: I think it's also the skin. The skin looks too smooth, too uniform. I don't see creases or wrinkles or pores or veins or anything. I see perfectly uniform color across the whole body.

Maybe the level of detail drops really sharply with distance. The close-ups at 0:35 and 1:40 showed detail on the skin, but elsewhere all of the characters look way too smooth.

The part where the cop is pointing a gun at the guy with his shirt off though... yeah, the skin just doesn't look right.

The game doesn't have AAA production values.
Which isn't normally a problem, but like the devs of old did, you kind of have to work around that and not just shove the uncanny valley right in people's faces.

Nowadays, close-up cutscenes/dialogue like that really needs to look more natural.
I think they would have been better off with a more stylized approach.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

IGN is comparing Swansong to the CRPGs of old in that the game doesn’t hold your hand, you can completely miss narrative altering paths if you don’t explore and investigate properly and the game doesn’t make notes for you (for example, if you find a code to a safe on a piece of paper, the game will not write it down for you in a quest log).

 

[Burning Bridges]

The game doesn't have AAA production values.
Which isn't normally a problem, but like the devs of old did, you kind of have to work around that and not just shove the uncanny valley right in people's faces.

Even in games with big budget cutscenes are unnatural and awful to watch, but this one really takes the cake, ugly dumb and pretentious. Hopefully "Swansong" is literal.