Vampyr - vampire action-RPG from Life Is Strange devs

[toro]

I honestly enjoyed Life Is Strange, I guess I'm in the tiny minority.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Spoiler

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Maybe the ones you fight have like violent and hateful thoughts and like you learn nothing from them because they are like FUCK YOU BAGUETTE TOOTH MAN.

Yeah, I was thinking "violent action sours the blood", making it worth less xp (and you do get xp for vamp hunters, just not as much). Boom, 5 words and a perfectly good explanation, consistent with everything else, for those who demand it.

Maybe it’s just too difficult to exsanguinate someone who’s actively trying to kill you and once they bleed out it’s no longer fresh. I remember in Bloodlines it was kind of immersion breaking when you’d successfully feed on someone in the middle of combat.

Maybe they’re protected by the power of christ. If Vampyr sucks, this will not be the reason.

 

[DeepOcean]

With that setup, I can't imagine how this game will be anything other than a succession of contrived, binary and utterly nonsensical choices. Well, if nothing else, I guess they'll succeed in making a faithful follow-up to Life is Strange.

It is so easy to solve this, lets say a poor family saw you feeding and they now know you are a vampire, are you going to kill them? Now you have a really good reason to get rid of them without needing to bring contrived choices into this. Is a rival doctor causing you problems, sabotaging your effort on discovering the cure? Kill him and frame some other person. All means are justified for the right ends, this how you lose humanity. They can have feeding on only named NPCs and don't have the choices contrived, if that happens, it is only dependent of their incompetence.

 

[Doktor Best]

To be fair, if they handle "old speech" in the same way they handled youth speech in Life is Strange, the result wont differ much from what we have seen in other rpgs so far.

 

[fantadomat]

The alt-right plays manly games for manly men. Like American Truck Simulator! Roll that big rig, dammit!

Fuck off Zombra,i ride only European trucks! Also real real manly man play farming simulators.

Oh and the game will suck for certainty,i wonder how many well educated niggers will have,also trannies and other creatures of then night....... More i think about the more it sounds like fun,eating all kind of trannies and shit hmmmm.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In a way I think it's kind of sad that vampire games are so rooted in moral thermometers (and secret vampire societies, but that hasn't so far shown up in the little Vampyr hype I've seen), it ends up being rather restricting in regards to design and narrative, not to mention it undermines the possibilities of vampire fiction as it shifts vampirism more to a category of superpowers with a ultimately minor drawback. One reason why Blood Omen stands out so much is how decidedly amoral it allows itself to be thanks to the character of Kain, and this in turn does lead to a kind of brilliant emergent design in how it can lure the player into Kain's thinking. After all, when all humans are equal health packs, and you need them in such quantities due to the ever-rising size of your lifebar (and damage taken), massacre of the villagers is indeed beyond tempting because they're health packs that can't fight back.

It would be rather nice if vampire vidya as well would take notice of the kind of massive improvement that Requiem's second edition did to its Humanity by making Humanity entirely different from a moral thermometer (Requem 2E Humanity is hands down the best "morality gauge" type mechanic White Wolf has come up with ever).

I'm still at least looking forward to seeing how Vampyr turns out, even if just because vampire games are so very rare.

With that setup, I can't imagine how this game will be anything other than a succession of contrived, binary and utterly nonsensical choices. Well, if nothing else, I guess they'll succeed in making a faithful follow-up to Life is Strange.

It is so easy to solve this, lets say a poor family saw you feeding and they now know you are a vampire, are you going to kill them? Now you have a really good reason to get rid of them without needing to bring contrived choices into this. Is a rival doctor causing you problems, sabotaging your effort on discovering the cure? Kill him and frame some other person. All means are justified for the right ends, this how you lose humanity. They can have feeding on only named NPCs and don't have the choices contrived, if that happens, it is only dependent of their incompetence.

I don't really find any of these particularly interesting both as narrative and mechanical possibilities of a vampire game. There's not really that much of interest to see what will happen at the end of eternity if you define humanity as simply "good."

There's really something entirely different that place if one were to remember and grasp why Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht is the greatest vampire movie (and very possibly best vampire fiction in general), which lies in how the whole subject matter of the vampire is approached by Werner Herzog, probably best elaborated by just quoting the film:

"Death is cruelty to the unsuspecting." "Time is an abyss... Profound as a thousand nights. To be unable to grow old is terrible. Death is not the worst. Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futility?"

Maybe the ones you fight have like violent and hateful thoughts and like you learn nothing from them because they are like FUCK YOU BAGUETTE TOOTH MAN.

Yeah, I was thinking "violent action sours the blood", making it worth less xp (and you do get xp for vamp hunters, just not as much). Boom, 5 words and a perfectly good explanation, consistent with everything else, for those who demand it.

Maybe it’s just too difficult to exsanguinate someone who’s actively trying to kill you and once they bleed out it’s no longer fresh. I remember in Bloodlines it was kind of immersion breaking when you’d successfully feed on someone in the middle of combat.

Maybe they’re protected by the power of christ. If Vampyr sucks, this will not be the reason.

Personally I'm rather tired of trying to establish "scientific" logic for a creature that is at its root supernatural (as you can probs guess, I am very much not a fan of the whole "vampirism as a virus" trope that's been popular lately). Best way to handle it if you want there to be a difference in the quality of blood is to just not give answers (because it's frigging supernatural fiction) or hint that it's also a supernatural karmic effect that makes it so that the blood of the virtuous is different. Or maybe not even make such a distinction, and go with the way Kain goes about it and just engorge yourself in all untainted blood.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Personally I'm rather tired of trying to establish "scientific" logic for a creature that is at its root supernatural (as you can probs guess, I am very much not a fan of the whole "vampirism as a virus" trope that's been popular lately). Best way to handle it if you want there to be a difference in the quality of blood is to just not give answers (because it's frigging supernatural fiction) or hint that it's also a supernatural karmic effect that makes it so that the blood of the virtuous is different. Or maybe not even make such a distinction, and go with the way Kain goes about it and just engorge yourself in all untainted blood.

That first dev video suggests that they're doing precisely what you want in terms of science vs the supernatural. The main character is a man of reason suddenly thrust into a bizarre supernatural world that makes no sense; you see a cross and it looks like it will burn you. But even if they go full on mystical, there are going to be rules--it's just that you might not know why they exist. Why should all blood be created equal?

It sounds as though they're not building a karma system so much as making the world react to your murders/feedings. Kill who you want, eat them, become more powerful, but the game will try hard to make you the player feel guilty. For whatever reason, you get more XP the better you know your victims, so you should feel like more of an asshole for killing them. I like the idea--much better than a humanity meter. I'm not sure why people are saying you can't feed on hunters, because I just saw the main character do precisely that in the gameplay demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkDjdjm8cVc

I also really like the no generic NPCs rule. In any other setting, this would require too much work, but if you're only out at night during a horrible epidemic, there are going to be few enough people that it might be manageable. I wish every RPG could obey this principle.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, that certainly sounds more interesting than what the discussion at hand gave me the impression of it being like, so neat. People you know better being worth more XP as slurpies doesn't even need particular explanation, I'd approve of it just on the principle that it makes for a more interesting way of presenting vampirism.

Still, I hope you can do something about your character's hairstyle so he looks less like a douche.

 

[Zombra]

I also really like the no generic NPCs rule.

Yeah. Setting or not, it bores me to death to see people complaining that a town in a video game doesn't have 10,000 NPCs all with proper day/night schedules blah blah blah because simulating the real world to photographic perfection is more important than interesting gameplay. "But I SHOULD be able to farm bums underneath the docks to get to max level 1/8 of the way into the game because that is the REALISTIC way to get xp! SETTING RUINED!" If the "realistic" setting is so important to you that you'd rather play a boring game to maintain it, don't look at games that are trying to be interesting in the first place.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Hines]

Game's releasing June 5.

 

[Abu Antar]

June 5th release date, huh?

 

[fantadomat]

That faggot was playing whit a controller on a PC,it will be totally shit port. Can't wait to talk about my feelz with another vampyr and whine about being persecuted for simply killing old ladies for xp.

 

[CRD]

From the last video.

This image says everything I need to know about the game. Pass.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

have vampire women been confirmed yet?
very important in my decision to buy this

 

[RepHope]

have vampire women been confirmed yet?
very important in my decision to buy this

I think the person who makes you a vampire is that woman who keeps appearing in the trailers and demos. The red-headed(?) one.

 

[Hines]

Hands-on impressions are just around the corner.

 

[dragonul09]

From the last video.

This image says everything I need to know about the game. Pass.

Whoever invented the dialogue wheel should be flayed alive and put in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, that will teach the fool.

 

[Sykar]

From the last video.

This image says everything I need to know about the game. Pass.

Whoever invented the dialogue wheel should be flayed alive and put in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, that will teach the fool.

Wasn't it Bioware and ME 1 who brought it into existence first?

 

[Morgoth]

Placeholder art?

If not, boohoo.

 

[Belegarsson]

Does that mean I can finish the entire game by hugging everyone?

 

[Anomander Rake]

Why do I think it will be like TWD, where all the choices you do in the end do not matter?

Why do I think that they won't be able to match the expectations people have on the game?

Why do I think that you won't be able to roleplay properly?

Why do I think that the dialogues will be a la oblivion\fallout 4, namely one word\retarded answers?

 

[fantadomat]

From the last video.

This image says everything I need to know about the game. Pass.

Ok,this one makes me scratch my head. What the fuck is charm??? The other two are pretty obvious and say something about the situation. You will ether eat the fucker or let him go. Do you charm him in to telling you that he is no innocent or charm him in to sucking your dick?
Uhhh anyway it is a console piece of shit,very low hopes.

 

[Sizzle]

Charm = persuade.

 

[Morgoth]

Looks like the first previews of last week's Focus Home "What's Next" event are coming in:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/14/vampyr-preview/

Vampyr isn’t the afterlife of the party just yet

By Adam Smith on February 14th, 2018 at 11:00 am

I feel like Vampyr has been part of my life for a very long time. It was only three years ago that I first saw the game, but I’ve been following it closely since then. It’s always been at arm’s length though, seen in the occasional video playthrough or prior to an interview with the developers. Last week, I had my first chance to play it, and spent two hours healing and hurting the people of London. It’s been a long wait and at the end of it, being dead was a bit of a drag.


Vampyr is a confused game. Perhaps that’s apt. It begins, as these stories often do, with the protagonist, Jonathan Reid, waking up with what seems like the world’s worst hangover, but turns out to be actual undeath. As if that’s not bad enough, the whole city of London seems to be suffering from corruption. The game is set in the aftermath of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic; there are bodies piled in the streets and many of those still living are afraid to leave their homes.

Reid blunders around the carnage for a while before the horror of his situation becomes clear, then he rapidly comes to terms with his new status as a blood-thirsty creature of the night.

He’s quite upset, with good reason, but he also seems just a little bit pleased that he’ll get to hang out with the cool Romantic goths at their poetry nights. Hardly anytime has passed before he’s coming out with lines like, “What is life but death pending?” and “Have the very streets of London become a mausoleum?”

Tell me those aren’t the words of a man who has been waiting his whole life to join Club Dracula.

Being a moody, handsome morgue-dodger isn’t all red wine and roses though. Reid was a doctor in life and he’s going to be a doctor in death. That’s the game’s central conceit – you are a healer but also, by necessity, a killer. A preserver of life whose own life is a grotesque parody, lived out in shadows and filth. And once you arrive at the hospital, which is the central hub for at least the early portion of the game, things start to get interesting, with social webs of potential victims forming, and decisions about who to spare and who to feast on distracting from the combat.

Oh, the combat. Perhaps I’d have more patience for it if I hadn’t been trying to cram as much interesting play-time as possible into my two hours with the game. The prologue seemed to last forever, taking up precious time before I even reached the hospital, and managing to be both an enthusiastic but ineffective exposition dump and a series of unhelpful combat tutorials. Everything happens at once, but very slowly.

You wake up, realise you’re a vampire, then within half an hour you’ve discovered a clan of monster hunters that apparently know all about your kind and are defending London from an infestation of vampires. They seem to own the streets and are, in fact, the only people you’ll see as you make your way across the city, searching for the creature that created you.

Reid shouts things like “don’t make me do this” as you sneak up behind them and chomp on their necks, slurping their arteries like cheese strings. They, in turn, call him a “parasite” and try to set him on fire.

Combat is simple. You have either a two-handed weapon, like a scythe, or one in each hand – say a machete and a pistol. Being a vampire, you have powers too, though all but the most basic must be unlocked. The most basic are powerful though, allowing you to take loads of damage and to dodge around rooms and streets at supernatural speed. Kill a few hunters and you’ll unlock your feral claws, letting you charge up a big attack that wallops enemies onto the floor so that you can pounce and drink their blood.

I called the tutorials unhelpful and that’s because they don’t do a great job of explaining how important blood is, and how you can get more of it. The first off-hand weapon you’ll find is a stake and it lets you stun enemies. That’s great because when they’re stunned you can smooch them until their blood dribbles into your mouth.

But why do I need the blood, you might ask – it’s basically the mana that your vampiric skills require.

The problem is that hitting an enemy with the stake doesn’t release a torrent of blood and most of the time it doesn’t stun them either. There’s a sort of “TWOING” sound effect and the stake bounces off harmlessly. Is there a timing to master or do I need to strike them from a particular angle? It’s not clear. So I spam the stake until the hunters reel and then I suck them dry. That seems to work, but I can’t help but feel it’s not quite right.

Later, I had to fight skal, which are effectively scruffy vampires. You’ve got your sexy aristrocratic vampires at the top of the pile and the skal at the bottom, eating rats in abandoned warehouses and barely able to string a series of snarls and groans together. They’re tougher than human enemies but I found the fights more a test of patience than skill. Dodge, hit, stab, charge blood, claw, suck, dodge, hit, stab, charge blood, claw, suck. There are more hitpoints to chip away at during tougher assignments but the process is the same.

I’ve spent all this time talking about combat and I wish I hadn’t spent any time talking about combat. But this is exactly why the game is a muddle. I want to talk about the characters I met and the way I had to learn their secrets by talking to their friends and colleagues. The more you know, the sweeter they taste, effectively, which means you get a bigger experience boost if you mesmerise them, lead them somewhere quiet, and drain them.

There’s a lady who thinks she’s a vampire but is actually suffering from Cotard delusion, and across the ward from her is a soldier with severe burns across his face who allows her to drink from his veins, satisfying her cravings. Reid’s reactions to this whole scenario and the people involved shows the writing at its best; he wants to be Mr Rational and to help, even if he might have to be cruel to be kind, but he’s also…well, he’s a vampire. That goes against his rational worldview somewhat.

The key complication of Vampyr is that strength comes through blood, so to level up your abilities you’ll need to kill some of the NPCs you encounter. Keep them alive and learn about their lives and secrets and the reward for killing them increases, but might also discover hidden depths that make murdering them seem very unkind indeed.

It’s a smart idea but from what little I played, it seemed far too easy to fill in all the blanks. Talk to everyone about everything and you won’t go far wrong. There are dialogue choices but whatever I had Reid say, even when reacting to people in a hostile manner, I always seemed to be able to step back from a decision and try different approaches. That might not be true throughout the game, and I hope it isn’t because the ripples of my decisions would be the main attraction.

Killing someone and seeing the effect of their death on their friends and family could be awful. In the best possible way.

But why, you might wonder, would I want to become stronger? Well, there’s a plot. It involves the source of the infection, I’d guess, and the vampire who turned Reid at the beginning of the game. To move through the plot you’re going to have to complete quests and that means fighting lots of skals and other vampire types, as well as those hunters.

I got involved in a mission to retrieve some medical supplies from an abandoned building, over-run with skal. It involved lots of repetitive fighting and following objective markers through dingy rooms.

This is the confusion of Vampyr. It’s a game that tells me that taking a life matters, but then finds ways to throw disposable enemies at me whenever I leave the safety of the hospital. It’s a game that wants me to consider my choice of victim, but I’m only killing them so that I can unlock awesome new murdery vampire abilities. And I was shocked by how quickly it moves from being the story of a freshly turned vampire to being a game in which the existence of vampires, in various forms, and the presence of a vampire-killing cult in central London is entirely ordinary. Some of the mystery of the myth is waved aside far too quickly.

Two hours is far from enough to judge the game as a whole and my hope is that I’ve been scratching at an unappealingly scabby surface and if I’d been able to keep at it, I’d have found that sweet blood I craved. Only time will tell, but for now, I’m going to proceed with caution.

Vampyr is out June 5th.