Vampire: Swansong: Video – How to play the bloodsucker RPG

Vampire: The Masquerade is a damn good role-playing game brand, but unfortunately the video game implementations are still lacking. Bloodlines, the undisputed highlight, is already 18 years old and is today – thanks to countless fan patches – a cult game. The promising successor? Going through development hell at Paradox. The World of Darkness MMO that wanted to score with great graphics a few years ago? Has been in the CCP bin for a long time. That’s why all eyes are now widening Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong.

The “narrative role-playing game” is currently in development at Big Bad Wolf, so the same French team that did the rather successful The Council delivered. Swansong relies on a similar concept, so it clearly focuses on the story and decisions, but combines the whole thing with the wonderfully dark vampire setting. We were recently able to find out for ourselves how it plays: At a digital preview event, we were able to play the entire second story chapter, and we put our impressions in a preview video for you. In it you get a foretaste of the staging and the gameplay, with which the developers want to combine the depth of a role-playing game with the advantages of modern adventures.

Three vampires, one story

Swansong is set in modern-day Boston, where a new princess has just taken over the leadership of the Camarilla. She thus controls one of the most influential vampire sects in the city and must now ensure that the law of “masquerade” is observed. It’s basically a code of conduct that keeps vampires unrecognized among humans. But this very order now threatens to tip over when several members of the Camarilla are attacked and attract curious looks. That’s why the princess sent us to investigate the case as quickly as possible. And “we” doesn’t mean a single vampire: In Swansong you take turns playing three different bloodsuckers.

• emem, a 100-year-old former jazz diva who is now a member of the Toreador clan. Its members are distinguished by their beauty and have various diplomatic abilities to influence people according to their will. Emem also has special speed and can cross chasms to enter hard-to-reach areas.
• Leysha, a young Malkavian. Although the members of their clan often develop special supernatural abilities, they also suffer from psychological problems up to and including severe mental illness. How exactly this will be expressed in gameplay is not yet known. At least we already know that Leysha can use some kind of stealth ability by copying NPCs’ costumes. She can also examine hotspots more closely with her auspex talent and is probably also haunted by visions of the future.
• Galeb is the third playable character that we also controlled in our hands-on demo. Galeb is a 300-year-old bitter bloodsucker who belongs to the elite Ventrue. Its members see themselves as the “ruling clan” and are characterized above all by their claim to leadership and their aristocratic demeanor. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t roll up their sleeves when they have to.

You take turns playing three vampires from different clans.

Source: Nacon

RPG without fights? This is how Swansong plays

If you were expecting an RPG like Vampire: Bloodlines, we have to disappoint you: Swansong is a “narrative RPG” that puts its emphasis on story and decisions. As far as we know, there will be no active fighting. When confrontations arise, they run as a scripted sequence in which you have to choose between actions or use skills. (By the way, you can already see such an action sequence in our preview video.)

The majority of the game runs but probably much quieter. In our demo we searched a crime scene for clues, talked to witnesses and police officers, collected documents and solved a few well-done puzzles. It basically felt like a solid adventure. But there is also a genuine role-playing game ticking under the hood: each character has different skills that can be upgraded several times. You get the necessary experience points by completing mission goals or by mastering certain situations. Skills that can be learned (some of which improve through use) include hacking, intimidating, education and lockpicking. To use these abilities, you consume willpower points, which are shown as a blue meter in the HUD. Talents and willpower are also used in “dialogue battles” in which we have to beat our opponent with arguments.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will be released on May 19, 2022.

Source: Nacon

In addition, all vampires also have supernatural skills that can be expanded via small talent trees. For example, Galeb is able to immobilize interlocutors or attackers with his sheer presence. However, using vampire abilities causes hunger, represented in-game by a purple meter. If the bar is full, we threaten to lose control of our fang. That’s why it will also be possible in later chapters to refill some blood from certain NPCs – or to suck the victim completely dry. Decisions like these are supposed to have a major impact, some of which you experience immediately, but often only much later. This could be really exciting!

However, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong (buy now ) Another problem: Graphically, the game is no longer up-to-date. The locations are decently designed, but the characters in particular with their stiff facial animations can’t keep up with modern AAA role-playing games by far. The somber atmosphere still comes across well, thanks to decent English speakers and a successful background music.