Since its release in 2018, avoiding Vampyr for fear of its mediocrity is a narrative that I have seen and even taken part in. Now that PlayStation Plus is offering it for free, you can avoid all risk and sink your teeth into this surprisingly rich RPG from the developers of Life is Strange.
1918 or 2020?
The story and setting of Vampyr is quite relevant to today, perhaps being a factor in its choice of free game for October. With the Spanish flu ravaging the streets of London during this period, you will come across many relatable buzzwords and situations surrounding the influenza epidemic. Whilst the great war is not quite as relatable to today’s society, the oppression and political issues that it brings up still make for interesting and believable characters.
This narrative is drip fed mostly through a huge cast of well-written characters and dialogue. The team at DontNod have also clearly done their research, with great environmental storytelling such as posters and text-based collectibles dotted around a very believable London.
The overarching narrative follows Dr Reid, a blood transfusion specialist who is trying to uncover a mysterious plight that is running alongside the epidemic. The very same plight that sees Dr Reid infected as a vampire.
London Nightlife
Vampyr is depressing. You are only able to come out at night into a London afflicted with war, sickness and ghastly monsters. The ambience is rightfully bleak with melancholic strings propping up a decent soundtrack and a typically rainy London to explore.
Visually the game is consistent with its themes, but it is not going to blow you away. The already plain enemy designs soon become samey and environmental props are noticeably reused throughout.
Despite being a game about vampires set in an already eerie period London, the game falls short on scares. Yes, there are atmospheric moments that may make you feel uncomfortable at times, but aside from some great sound effects, there is nothing inherently scary to bump into.
Bashing and Biting
With respectable narrative driven games like Life is Strange on DontNod’s resume, the combat in Vampyr feels like a tacked-on feature done out of necessity. Any cadence of personality that you feel from Dr Reid during the game’s dialogue moments or cutscenes, are soon dispelled by charging him around town bashing in people’s skulls with a big cudgel.
Combat doesn’t feel bad by any means and having to stun enemies so that you can drain their blood, helps factor in some unique strategy to certain moments. The issue is that moments of any real difficulty are very scarce. The base mechanics to the combat are so simple that even enemies of much higher level than you, should not prove much of a threat. This is damaging to Vampyr’s RPG progression system, as you never really feel too weak to deal with anything.
Mad Scientist
Finding hideouts throughout your playthrough will allow you rest and level up, forwarding to the next night. Levelling up has a surprising amount of depth to its ability choices, but the game never really forces you to use them all due to the simplicity of combat.
The same can be said about the weapons you find and can upgrade, as well as serums that you can craft to give you boosts in combat. You will find yourself mostly forgetting about upgrading your weapons or developing serums, only doing them when you stumble upon the menu from time to time.
This is mostly down to the lack of difficulty in combat, but the confusing and poorly designed UI certainly doesn’t make it any more attractive.
Village Gossip
The real meat and veg of Vampyr’s design comes from impressively woven webs of social ties and quests. Finding out more about people through those connected to them, unlocks further options for you to pry into their lives. You can choose to help these characters and complete quests for them, gaining you staggered exp, comparable to ordinary RPG questlines.
If you are in a rush and don’t care about helping out the people of London then you can instead “embrace” that character, draining their blood and giving you massive amounts of exp to quickly level up and get stronger. The caveat here is that doing more for these people will increase the “quality” of their blood, resulting in them being worth much more experience.
The huge amount of dialogue that this feature warrants, is mostly impressive. It’s all voice acted very well, and each character offers interesting insights into their lives and the setting around you.
Getting Around Town
Each web of characters is separated into the different Districts of London. You will unlock each district in a certain order, giving you time to investigate the social politics found within each one. As well as the talking and investigating that you will do, you can also help heal people who are sick with certain ailments. Doing so will not only increase their blood quality, but also increase that district’s “status” which comes with its own advantages.
There is no fast travel in the game, which can be frustrating when having to divide your time between the citizens of different districts. This isn’t helped by some really poor level design that sometimes make finding your way around irritating and exhausting.
In the Third Degree
Underneath a slightly unpolished coat is a fun RPG, that has noticeable effort poured into its setting. Vampyr tries to innovate and almost does so with its interesting social web concepts. Unfortunately, it is unable to extract the full effect of its own ideas, resulting in a mostly generic experience outside of its narrative design.
