My Thoughts on Vampyr
It’s ‘Vam-pier’ not ‘Vampire’…apparently.
I was first made aware of this game when it’s first gameplay trailer appeared on my YouTube recommendations page late 2016. It was dark and gritty and I liked what the game’s narrative was implying. It also had vampires in it, which excited me as I love a good vampire story. I noticed that it was developed by Dontnod Entertainment, who are the people behind the ‘Life is Strange’ games, so it had my interest.
I will leave the trailer below for you to watch.
It was supposed to be released in 2017 but was delayed and was released on 5 June 2018. When reviews started coming in, I felt that ‘Vampyr’ quickly became the marmite of video games. People either hated it or loved it. Now whilst this may seem unhelpful as to whether this is a game worth buying and playing, it was actually very helpful, as I summarised it was average at best and therefore made the decision not to buy it until I saw it at an average game price, which (for me) was £25.
Having just finished my first playthrough of this game, I would like to give you my thoughts and opinions on this game so you too can decide whether this game is worth playing.
There will be SPOILERS concerning the plot and characters from here onwards, so if that sort of thing bothers you, turn back now! Consider this your warning folks!
The game begins with a cryptic monologue that requires sandpaper to smooth off its edges, whilst showing a man with a beard at the docks being bitten by a vampire. You wake up in a pile of corpses, crawl your way out and bite a woman called Mary, who you quickly learn is/was your sister, sucking her blood in the process. Keep this image of the man gobbling up this woman for a later part for this blog.
You then run away from people (rightfully) trying to kill you, learning the game’s stiff combat in the process.
You play as Dr Jonathen Reid, a title that you won’t have to remember because the game does everything within its power brand it into your subconscious. Him being a doctor plays into the story and the gameplay (to an extent) as you talk to various civilians and can prescribe them medicine that you can make at Hideouts, which is where you can also level up and stock up on ammo for the guns you find in this rather unique take on post WW1 London that is overrun by The Spanish Flu…amongst other things.
You waste no time investigating how Jonathan has become a creature of the night, using your special vampire vision to see bloodstains and the blood flowing within you enemies and civilians/prey. This bloodstain leads you into a pub called The Turquoise Turtle, and this is where the game encourages you to talk to everyone you meet to try and find out about them, their life stories and anything they like or don’t like in the world.
It may not come to a surprise that there is A LOT of talking in this game. When Jonathan starts ‘working’ at Pembroke Hospital, I easily spent a good two hours talking into everyone inside, and this is where the game is it’s strongest in getting you to feel for the characters and their problems, with some great voice acting for the most part found in these sections. I will admit that I was getting very annoyed with the amount of talking there was by the end of the game as it dumped huge chunks of its story and world building onto you when it could have easily have been given to the player in a more organic, and engaging way. You will also notice that civilians usually have some sort of social status with someone else, be it father or son, rivals or siblings and it is usually the case one is pro something whilst the other is anti-something. There are not many voice actors in the game either, which is somewhat disappointing, given the number of civilians there are.
Talking to civilians in the explorable four districts (Pembroke Hospital, Whitechapel, The Docks and The West End) does serve a purpose beyond world building. You can suck the life out of almost every NPC you can engage conversation with, but doing so on your first encounter gives you a bit of exp, usually a number between 500–800. Each time you learn something about them, it increases the potency of their blood, with the highest being 12,000 exp (approx.)! Sucking people dry is the most efficient way of gaining exp providing they are healthy, as illness decreases the amount of exp gained from embracing them. Compared to enemies, be it a vampire or vampire hunter, they only give you 10–20 exp once you have eliminated how many you get into a fight with, not 10–20 each. It is strange that a deranged patient who believes she is a vampire can give you more blood than one of the healthy doctors...
When you first meet a civilian, you will genuinely have little to talk about, as you are most likely never have heard of this person. You have various branching options to choose and come back too, which can sound a bit weird when Jonathan asks someone to talk about something they briefly mentioned five minutes ago. To improve this, I suggest that when you play this game, you go clockwise the branching narratives.
When you find something particularly interesting about someone (which is signposted by the game) a blue option is shown to the player, which allows Jonathan to use his special vampire persuasion powers to subtly force someone to talk about such fact. In the screenshot example below, I discovered from a Rufus, a homeless Orphan, that Stella treats this teen like part of the family…despite not actually housing him.
Most civilians will usually propose a question or a statement that you can give your opinion about. This is presented one of three options (see below). You can either be saint or cunt, or you can give a neutral response. Answer correctly and a character will reveal something about themselves or someone else. Answer incorrectly and nothing will happen. But answer really incorrectly, and the game will tell you that you have lost a hint opportunity and maybe the opportunity to do their side quest (which the game calls ‘Investigations’). It is not at all obvious which one you should choose, so you are left to your own devices to play it by ear…unless you search it up online of course.
Below, Dr Thoreau Strickland has been brown nosing his hero (that is you by the way) by telling him about some experimental experiments he wants to try, which are potentially dangerous and you can either support him, discourage it, or neutrally suggest to take a break.
Many characters can offer investigations for you to complete during your playthroughs and the outcomes of most of them allow you to make a choice, which grants the player different rewards and may open up a hint about themselves or someone else. In the below conversation, Edwina Cox asks Jonathan to inspect a graveyard where she has sent some of her men (she is a gang leader). Upon completing the investigation, you discover they are dead. You can tell her men have either died (due to vampires probably) or not for the purposes of being a dick. These investigation related options are green.
There are also some moments in the game where you have to talk to civilians (like at the beginning of the game) as part of the main quest, which has a yellow dialogue branch for you to choose. Whilst you don’t find out interesting bits about the main character, these rare occasions offer insight into main story characters. In the main story conversations, these options push the game forward and are recommended for players who have less patience than I and don’t want to listen to everything about them.
Below is an Ichabod Throgmorton, who only appears during a specific point in the main story. You choose to ask him why a dead person fell from a rooftop (it makes sense in the context of the story I assure you!).
The one final way you can find out information about people is by eavesdropping on certain suspicious behaviours. Sometimes when you using your vampire senses, one or two characters glow a bright red and the game tells you that these people are up to something. You must then go to a specified location to see what they are doing, in the form of a short cutscene. Whilst these moments are rather interesting to watch, it is not clear where it is they need to stand to trigger the cutscene, which is very frustrating when you are trying to work out where to go can miss the scene altogether if you don’t have your wits about you. You have about a minute to try and work out where to go and stand to properly eavesdrop, otherwise, you will miss the cutscene and have to try again later.
I have left a video example below. My running around is genuine panic might I add!
When you put most of these conversational examples together, a typical conversation in ‘Vampyr’ will look something like this:
I mentioned earlier that chatting and questing to NPCs increases the amount of experience you get when you decide to suck their blood, which in turns makes them a fantastic source of making yourself more powerful with upgrades to your powers, health, stamina, blood gauge (to use your powers) the power of your bite and blood-sucking capabilities (on enemies).
There are a couple of things worth considering before embracing someone.
- You can’t embrace everyone from the word go. Certain districts are locked off from the player until you reach certain parts in the story, and your mesmerise level has to be the same or higher level as your target. This number increases during certain points in the story.
- The big dilemma you have with this is that with every kill, adds to the death and illness in London. Doing so lowers the sanity of a district, which increases the rate the people can become ill and eventually die. Should a district fall to ‘Hostile’ status, anyone left alive will die and traversing there will be more dangerous than it is already.
There is also the question of morals, should you grow particularly close to a character’s story, which may put you off your next meal. A patient in Pembroke Hospital, for example, wants to leave the hospital to work and feed his kids. Killing him would leave the children in a bit of a pickle, to say the least. During my second playthrough, I embraced someone's son and the father died the following night. He was completely well, so I could only presume he killed himself, which made me feel incredibly guilty, despite the fact I was deliberately going around killing everyone.
Characters within their social group also remark about who died and how it has affected them, which can drag a tear from one’s eye if potential/implied suicides and the final thoughts of your meal doesn’t do that already.
Should you choose to embrace someone, you have to guide them to somewhere quiet and alone. Embracing someone after that requires holding onto prompt for a second, so it is not immediate and you are given plenty of chances to change your mind.
I captured a…willing patient to demonstrate this.
Each district has one member who is described as the ‘pillar’, who the wellbeing of all the civilians in a given district relies on for their survival. A nurse who works at Pembroke called Dorothy Crane is the pillar of Whitechapel, for example, who is a nurse that helps the migrants and refugees who can’t read or speak English and gives them treatment. Killing her would mean everyone in Whitechapel falls ill at a much faster rate than before. As such, there are points in the story where you must choose what to do with each pillar, and it is not always as obvious what to do with them to ensure their survival and the survival of everyone in the district. There is one pillar, who will remain nameless, that causes everyone in the game to become very ill if you leave them alive and not kill them.
On the topic of Dorothy Crane, below is my encounter with her on a recent playthrough where I embraced her (killed her basically) because I am going for a couple of trophies were I have to be an asshole. Most people would think ‘charm’ is the best option, as she forgets her issues with Lady Ashbury, a female vampire who is somehow being blackmailed by her. Charm Dorothy and she comes back as a mini-boss as become a ghoul, which the game calls Skals. Choices do matter, not including what you instruct her to do during this tense scene.
If you wish to be a nice vampire who doesn’t kill innocents, that means you are going to have one tough game ahead of you, as you are constantly going to be under levelled by a good 10 levels by the end, which forces you to upgrade your weapons and health more than your powers. It makes each enemy encounter incredibly difficult as you are very weak, and you have to think really carefully about stamina management and how you position yourself against up to three enemies. You are just as much the hunted, as you are the hunter and it is rather enjoyable, for the most part. By the final quest, I was completely avoiding enemies altogether.
Bosses are always nearly impossible when doing this sort of playthrough, as most are to take you out with three hits if you don’t pay attention. You have to actually learn their attack patterns and how much each one is going to hurt should it hit you. A particular difficulty spike I had was fighting Mary Reid, Jonathan's sister, who has become a vampire for reasons not entirely made clear (which I will address momentarily), and it would appear I am not the only one. It is much easier to tackle bosses playing an overpowered bastard vampire, as bosses go down in seconds to the point you genuinely feel sorry for how weak they are.
I will leave two videos of her boss fight to demonstrate this point. The first video is my first playthrough where I was not killing anyone (other than Clay Fox because he’s a prick) and thus died MANY times to her. The second video is my evil vampire playthrough and I am considerably stronger than her, taking her out in seconds.
Note the difference in language and tone as the two communicate with each other, as well as Jonathan’s face.
This leads me onto the game’s narrative, which I believe is very interesting. However, it is one of many considerably large plotholes, and it doesn’t take an observant player to notice them. The existence of Mary as a vampire is one of them…sort of.
An hour prior to the boss fight you speak with Lady Ashbury, who feeds her thirst by sucking the blood of dying patients at Pembroke Hospital, with full consensus from Dr Swansea, the owner of the hospital. Lady Ashbury informs you, should you ask her the appropriate question, that becoming a vampire is far more complicated than being bitten by one…but that is exactly what happens to Mary. You, a vampire, bite her and she turns. Now, the wiki says this concerning her transformation:
As he realises he has killed Mary, Jonathan closely cradles her body; he inadvertently causes Mary’s lips to come into contact with his own blood on his throat. He is forced to flee when Vampire hunters began shooting at him, leaving Mary’s body behind. — Vampyr Wiki
Watching this opening cutscene carefully, you can see that Jonathan does bring her close to him, but it is not all that clear that she is close enough to him to touch his vampiric blood, and I don’t think she is bought anywhere near his neck. This is reflected in the game’s character and camera animations being rather poor when compared to the gritty voice acting. I would believe you if you told me that it was a game built by AI as everyone in this game seems to be on Botox, which I found highly confusing, especially when the 2016 trailer (see above) had more animations and life to the world.
Lady Ashbury is a character I find really annoying. She is introduced to the player as being an old and (presumably a) powerful vampire, but she is against the primal behaviours one might imagine when you conjure a mental image of a vampire. It is unusual to see a character of her status act this way, as I would expect Jonathan to behave this way, which he is for a time, which makes sense given he is a newborn vampire. This, of course, stays or goes, depending on the player’s actions.
I will admit that it is an interesting take on the vampire idea, but she is emotional to the point of being fragile and I can’t cope with people like that, especially when each conversation with her can last up to 30 minutes!
Then there is the relationship between her and Jonathan, which I personally find baffling. Because of my disdain for her character, whenever I was given an opportunity to express my own opinion through Jonathan during my first playthrough, I would often choose the option I thought she would not like. That, and I have a cruel sense of humour.
There were options that would imply intimacy between the two, which in turn would suggest that there was an ending where they go off and fall in love in a castle or something. It turned out that I was pretty spot on in my self jesting, as the two fall in love, regardless of your actions, for no good reason at all. One moment I was talking to her, purely as a source of vampiric info and the occasional mission giver and then the two start calling each ‘my love’ and Jonathan on many occasions state how he cherishes her. I have no idea how or what I said that made her think I was into her and I am concerned what she said that made Jonathan love her. Their relationship doesn’t feel forced but incredibly slapped on.
There is also a strange disconnect between the world and the gameplay. You can have a chat with an NPC on the corner of a street, go round to the other side of that corner and find a Skal, chewing on a dead body. There are also large beasts that resemble werewolves that do the same, and you are left wondering why so many people are oblivious to it all. One group of enemies who are very much aware of it are The Guards of Priwen, who are vampire hunters, and their leader Geoffrey McCullum, who you fight in the latter parts of the game. He can only fight you by drinking the blood of King Arthur, which he readily has in a flask. How he managed to get such blood is never answered and how there is even blood of a corpse as old as that is beyond me. What’s more, it is revealed that your Maker is a Myrddin Wyllt, which is the Welsh name given to Merlin who does nothing but speaks in pretentious cryptic riddles. He tells you that King Arthur is a vampire as well…which means that Geoffrey should be a vampire as well, but you are able to spare Geoffry or turn him into a vampire.
I could go on with more nitpicking, but the YouTuber Dartigan did a video sinning the game already. I personally don’t agree with all of his complaints, but I think most of them are fair.
The game itself has quite a few technical issues that I would usually avoid as they are often single case moments, but the game crashed three times, each time something different happened. The first time occurred when I was just wandering around the map. The second was when I created a custom waypoint and the third crashed occurred just after levelling up. The game also has far too many loading screens as you wander around this tiny portion of London. It is a game that cannot cope with being fast running from area to area constantly, which could be why I experienced those crashes.
I also have to mention the most bizarre glitch I have ever encountered in a game that can be used on unpatched versions of physical console copies of the game and a USB keyboard. Go to level up, choose an ability to level up and then just hold P and watch the exp that will just go up and up. Whoever discovered this is quite the weirdo!
Coda
I really enjoyed playing ‘Vampyr’, despite my first playthrough of not killing any civilians (minus Clay Cox) being as tough as nails by the end, that forty-minute epilogue with Lady Ashbury and William Marshell, the crashes, the loading screens and the hours of civilian dialogue not actually affecting the main story. It is also incredibly fun going back, an murdering everyone, and hitting max level (level 50) and being a complete force to be reckoned with, eating everyone at Pembroke Hospital and anyone else you fancy.
I do stand by my opening remark that it is most certainly 2018s Marmite Game as not everyone will enjoy sitting through its stiff branching narratives and almost dead cinematics. It is a game that is driven forward by it’s engaging, yet bitty plot. Not everyone will enjoy smacking their head against a wall at the difficulty of later game bosses because you haven’t eaten anybody, but you the player are able to make those decisions and bare the consequences of your actions.
It is a fantastic vampire simulator as the game allows you to determine how much of a monster you want to be, choosing when to strike and to take your prey and I love that the difficulty of the game is dictated by the will power of the player, whether they can resist the hunger.
I believe that there is a lot of potential for this game to develop into a cool franchise if Dontnod is willing to smooth off the edges. Should there be more games like this, I beg that they use the same composer! I am very new to the works of Olivier Deriviere, and I love how the menacing choir that I believe signifies the thirst for blood, and that tortured cello that takes centre stage. It is a brilliantly, guttural attack on the senses and it is particularly frightening when more peaceful cues in the districts become eerier as the health of the district declines.
If I were to rate this game out of 10, I would give this ‘I’m a Doctor/10’, as that is just as helpful as a proper out of 10 score.
What do you think of this game? Do you love it or do you hate it? Which of the four endings have you achieved? Do you want there to be a sequel/spiritual successor? If not/so, why?
Let's start a conversation, people!
