World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong - narrative RPG from The Council devs - now on Steam

[Jenkem]

Damn, I didn't realize this was published by Nacon... I'm kind of down on them after what they pulled with Frogwares.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[vortex]

 

[Jedi Exile]

It's... not bad.

 

[Rahdulan]

So her everyday look is yet another black woman with afro? Great.

 

[Zombra]

Looking at all three character trailers at once, I'm loving the contrast. I'll say it, it feels just a little bit like 2004.

 

[Infinitron]

Big feature in PLAY magazine:

Spoiler

 

[Demo.Graph]

I don't quite get it. Is this game supposed to be a visual novel or what?

Edit: Zombra, I'm serious. While the game is in RPG forum section, the trailers show only cutscenes and chars walking, "narrative RPG" sounds suspiciously like "we don't have any gameplay" and I haven't seen anything about game mechanics.

 

[Zombra]

Big feature in PLAY magazine

Encouraging article. I'm not seeing any red flags. I particularly like what they've said about how much information is available but not critically necessary to forward the story.

In the absence of a player-created character, three protagonists is an excellent idea to stop any one prefab from getting too tiresome.

 

[vortex]

I want to play as vampire succubus. Will this Emem character feed my thirst?

 

[Gradenmayer]

I don't quite get it. Is this game supposed to be a visual novel or what?

Edit: Zombra, I'm serious. While the game is in RPG forum section, the trailers show only cutscenes and chars walking, "narrative RPG" sounds suspiciously like "we don't have any gameplay" and I haven't seen anything about game mechanics.

There is literally a magazine page couple posts above your's describing the gameplay.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I don't quite get it. Is this game supposed to be a visual novel or what?

Edit: Zombra, I'm serious. While the game is in RPG forum section, the trailers show only cutscenes and chars walking, "narrative RPG" sounds suspiciously like "we don't have any gameplay" and I haven't seen anything about game mechanics.

There is literally a magazine page couple posts above your's describing the gameplay.

The 1st paragraph states that there're skill checks with a resource system (effort). The 4th paragraphs states that resource in this system is actually renamed to blood. And the 7th paragraph states that NPCs have stats that the skills are checked against (of course they do, it's kinda the whole point). And maybe those NPCs can attack you somehow (without stating whether that occurs on a prescripted basis or is there some AI in place). Oh, and on the first page it's stated that the game has a linear mission structure.
Based on those descriptions I don't even have an idea whether resource is limited per dialogue, scene (or save point) or a mission.

There're references to the "combat system in the Council" but I haven't played it. Quick search through Steam discussions didn't give anything. Quick look at a LP for the Council on Youtube showed me a skill "tree" with 15-18 skills, but descriptions for all of those were "Unlocks new dialogue options" and "Reduces cost in effort points". I also saw protagonist walking slowly to point-and-click something. I saw no combat and was too lazy to click through hours and hours of videos to find it.

So far it looks like a visual novel to me. I still don't have a slightest idea whether this product has some gameplay systems besides branching dialogue.
And if it's not an RPG (because for me having branching dialogue isn't necessarily enough for a game to qualify as an RPG), I don't get why is it in RPG section of the Dex and not in, say, adventure.

And that's exactly why I ask. Does anyone know whether there're some game mechanics? Maybe a time limit? Reputation rationing? Puzzles? Arcade? Tactical combat?

Edit: spelling

 

[V_K]

There're references to the "combat system in the Council" but I haven't played it. Quick search through Steam discussions doesn't gave anything. Quick look at a LP for the Council on Youtube showed me a skill "tree" with 15-18 skills, but descriptions for all of those were "Unlocks new dialogue options" and "Reduces cost in effort points". I also saw protagonist walking slowly to point-and-click something. I saw no combat and was too lazy to click through hours and hours of videos to find it.

There is no combat in The Council but there are dialog "confrontations", where you had a limited number of "blunders" (choosing a wrong option) before you fail. You can't die, but you can lock yourself out of a good ending or fail to prevent an NPC death.
Effort is a long-term resource that is carried between dialogs and is never restored fully - there is no resting mechanics; a small amount of effort is restored on level-ups, the rest has to come from consumables. For context, your starting effort maximum is enough to do maybe 3-4 easy checks before running out; and hard checks can even require more effort than your maximum, if you don't have the required skill levels. Overall, effort management was a pretty big part of The Council, and having Vitae work that way in Swansong makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Maybe a time limit? Reputation rationing? Puzzles? Arcade? Tactical combat?

The Council has some pretty decent puzzles (with clues locked behind skillchecks); hopefully Swansong will do too. As for time limit, in The Council some events happened on a timer, so you could miss the opportunity to do some things (e.g. save some NPCs).

 

[cyborgboy95]

I don't quite get it. Is this game supposed to be a visual novel or what?

Edit: Zombra, I'm serious. While the game is in RPG forum section, the trailers show only cutscenes and chars walking, "narrative RPG" sounds suspiciously like "we don't have any gameplay" and I haven't seen anything about game mechanics.

There is literally a magazine page couple posts above your's describing the gameplay.

The 1st paragraph states that there're skill checks with a resource system (effort). The 4th paragraphs states that resource in this system is actually renamed to blood. And the 7th paragraph states that NPCs have stats that the skills are checked against (of course they do, it's kinda implied in the first paragraph). And maybe those NPCs can attack you somehow (without stating whether that occurs on a prescripted basis or is there some AI in place). Oh, and on the first page it's stated that the game has a linear mission structure.
Based on those descriptions I don't even have an idea whether resource is limited per dialogue, scene (or save point) or a mission.

There're references to the "combat system in the Council" but I haven't played it. Quick search through Steam discussions doesn't gave anything. Quick look at a LP for the Council on Youtube showed me a skill "tree" with 15-18 skills, but descriptions for all of those were "Unlocks new dialogue options" and "Reduces cost in effort points". I also saw protagonist walking slowly to point-and-click something. I saw no combat and was too lazy to click through hours and hours of videos to find it.

So far it looks like a visual novel to me. I still don't have a slightest idea whether this product has some gameplay systems besides branching dialogue.
And if it's not an RPG (because for me having branching dialogue doesn't necessarily enough for a game to qualify as an RPG), I don't get why is it in RPG section of the Dex and not in, say, adventure.

And that's exactly why I ask. Does anyone know whether there're some game mechanics? Maybe a time limit? Reputation rationing? Puzzles? Arcade? Tactical combat?

I played the Council a while ago, and if memory serves me right, there is no combat in the traditional sense, only dialogue 'confrontations' and puzzle-solving aka a smarter telltale with RPG-esque skill trees and decent writing (the plot took a nose-dive in quality at the end though)

Seem like confrontation will return in Swansong but aside from that, we know next to nothing about this game. The Council is an andventure game so it's quite puzzle-heavy, while Swansong is advertised as a narrative RPGs so perhaps there will be less puzzles and more RPG mechanics this time?

 

[cyborgboy95]

I tried to probe some more info out of the devs in Discord but they gave a pretty ambiguous answer. Still, I would advise anyone expecting Swansong to be as puzzle-centric as the Council to brace themselves in case the game feature less (or none) puzzles this time around and wait for reviews before purchase.

 

[V_K]

It might be that they're under some sort of embargo from the publisher on what information they can share.
This is TBH my biggest worry - they weren't owned by Bigben when they started The Council, so how much creative freedom they get this time around is a big question.

 

[Chippy]

Looks like total shit.

 

[Fedora Master]

Looks like total shit.

 

[Infinitron]

Olivier Deriviere is known to be a bit of a maverick when it comes to the creation of music, scoring a number of famous video games, the latest of which is Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong.

Drawing on a range of styles, Olivier tells us what led to the creation of 3 diverse themes for our playable characters and the main theme of the game.

This music is part of the backbone of Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, a narrative RPG where 3 characters' intertwined stories will decide the fate of Boston. Coming in 2022 to Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

 

[cyborgboy95]

VtM: Swansong is about exploration, deduction, and discussion as you unravel the truth behind events unfolding around you. There are also sections where you need to make a series of rapid decisions that can have wildly different outcomes. Would you feed or use your powers?

 

[HoboForEternity]

I hope this is good because i really enjoy the council

 

[Gradenmayer]

Puzzles in the council were good: Not too easy while making logical sense. If they plan to dial those back, something needs to replace them, but thus far they have only shown mechanics that have already existed in The Council.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

Leysha is a troubled character, her ability to see powerful prophetic visions puts a target on her back when all she really wants is to protect her daughter. We wanted that conflict to resonate in her theme, which is brought to life with VAYY's haunting vocals.