Vampyr: Review

It’s time to don your cloak, pick up your truncheon and whistle, and ask “What’s going on ‘ere then?”, because we’re off to the East End of London Town in Vampyr! A tale of plague, murder, and secret societies, Vampyr puts the player in the shoes of Jonathon Reid, a man whose name never looks correctly spelt, as he struggles to cope with becoming a vampire and the difficult choices he must make to survive.

Dontnod’s vision of London circa 1918 is a dark, foreboding place. Very dark. Actually, maybe too dark, to the point where I’ve barely been able to see enemies right in front of me in the sewers. But I guess this is correct for the time: London’s slums were very real, still relying on gas lanterns and sewage laying in the gutters, was an awful place to be at night. Crime was rampant in these part of London, and the number of grisly murders had been well documented since the Victorian era.

The music also really sets up the atmosphere to imitate the game's clear inspiration - cult horror films from the both the era the game is set in and of the 1950s and 60s, particularly Hammer Horror. The melodrama, the rising string instruments, and sections that heighten the dread really build up the world into more than just a generic near-apocalyptic urban hellscape.

One of the central themes of the story, that there are two different classes of vampire, is a really interesting way of depicting the class struggle happening around the world at the time. The Russian Revolution had been raging for the past year, and the German Civil War in the wake of the Kaiser’s abdication was just around the corner. Support for worker’s rights and socialist policies was rising in the aftermath of the First World War in Britain too, with workers striking over better pay and conditions, along with growing support for the Suffragette Movement. So it is fitting that the Skals, the lower class of vampire, and the Ekons, the vampiric bourgeois, are at odds throughout Vampyr’s story.

Dontnod, 2018

Vampyr has been taking some cues from FromSoftware’s brand of hack and slash gameplay. Combat is fun, challenging, and has an incredibly steep learning curve. Or at least, it did, until I found a two-handed cudgel which made short work of basically every low-level enemy the East End of Landan tahn could possibly throw at me. Irritatingly, it does appear that some enemy attacks can’t be blocked, as I’ve died multiple times with a Skal hanging off my neck as I was in the middle of bashing his wretched little face in with my big stick.

Something has to be said about the fact that combat moves are tied to your stamina meter, which honestly I am not a fan of. Dodging blows and light attacks, I feel, shouldn’t punish the player whilst in the middle of a fight, as it has nothing to do with skill and all to do with making the player lazily walking around in circles instead of outwitting their opponent.

I’ve also noticed that often times a high level mini-boss will be place next to or nearby a “save-the-citizen” activity; a side quest that has a limited time and directly affects the difficulty of the district. This is an interesting piece of level and gameplay design as it makes the player choose between lowering the overall difficulty of the game, or draining the blood of the citizen to make the boss fight easier but making the area less safe. It’s a really neat way of demonstrating consequence to the player, far better than just altering dialogue options and slightly alternate endings.

Dontnod, 2018

However, sometimes the game gets it wrong. Frequently I’ve been given quests and side missions that are locked behind areas I couldn’t access until I’d progressed to the next act of the story, or worse locked behind a behemoth of an enemy that I had no hope of defeating. For instance two characters require you to go to a pharmacy, which is stuck behind a level 19 character. I was level 8. You can work out how that went. But again, perhaps this is a consequence of not treating Whitechapel as your personal juice carton; I am on the fence with it though.

Thankfully, Johnathon has many character upgrades and abilities to choose from, and the way they are presented is really, really cool. The upgrade system drains the XP you’ve earned during the night, which is mechanically the same as it would be in other games, but it’s just a really neat way of tying it thematically to the rest of the game. Your choices aren’t permanent either, with players having to confirm their choices before they are implemented, and they can be reset at any time and reconfigured for a totally different loadout.

The player gets access to various handheld weapons too, most of which can be upgraded with better damage and some can even draw blood, which is handy. How the player equips and changes them around is not very well explained though, and I love how crafting is integral to the gameplay but many essential parts verge on being non-existent.

One thing I wish the game catered for is stealth, which is woefully lacking. You’d think a game about vampires and murder in East End alleyways would involve more cloak and dagger (ha ha), but enemies switch between being utterly oblivious to being a shotgun wielding Buffy Summers completely at random.

Dontnod, 2018

This lack of stealth makes traversing the map extremely tedious, because there is no fast travel and enemies continue to spawn in the same locations. Pathways around them often tend to be gated off and “locked from the otherside”. There are some sewers that the player can access as a kind of long way around, which is often beneficial as they contain some decent loot and collectibles.

Vampyr though, is not all about combat and treating Londoners like novelty shaped Capri-Suns: Dontnod have their cake and eat it too by carrying on their skills in character driven dialogue investigations from Life is Strange (I’ll stop banging on about it eventually, I promise). Unlike LiS however, some of these do feel a bit drawn out and dull. There’s the recurring problem of various voice actors sounding bored and lifeless, but thankfully most really throw themselves into their roles.

Utilising that convenient segue, let’s talk about Vampyr’s narrative. Its central plot revolves around Johnathon finding out who made him a vampire, and discovering the source of the vampiric plague haunting the East End. It’s a slow burner but it’s enjoyably schlocky, playing out like an old Hammer Horror film with its campy dialogue and melodramatic moments.

The relationships between Johnathon and the many NPCs are key elements to the games smaller stories. By talking to NPCs the player is able to learn more about the local area, discover secrets about other people, and even accidentally complete side quests. There are speech checks too, revealing or blocking off new ways to complete missions. But this chitchat can become drawn out and tedious, especially with the aforementioned actors who sound like they are half-arsing their role.

In conclusion, Vampyr is a campy and promising game. Whilst flawed in both narrative and gameplay, Dontnod’s return to their action adventure roots, combined with the dialogue driven investigations, is as enjoyable as it is challenging. A pretty decent Nosferatu simulator, would recommend.