Vampyr Interview

VICE’s Mike Diver has quizzed DONTNOD art director Grégory Szucs about the company’s upcoming title, Vampyr. Role-playing games are a genre that the French studio has never tackled before, so there are quite a few reasons to be skeptical, but the team does at least seem to have quite a few interesting ideas and we haven’t really gotten a properly decent vampire-themed RPG since Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, so I’m certainly interested.

A few excerpts from the interview:

So, do these vampires work like we know them to, traditionally? I’m wondering if we can stroll around during daylight hours.

We definitely went back into vampire fiction, to the romantic type of vampire not in the Twilight sense, but to when they were dark, doom-filled figures, who are always questioning what they’re doing. These are predators with consciences. So not all of them embrace the beast inside them. And as you can see in the spelling of the game’s title, we’ve looked back at how the word was first used, in its Romanian spelling. There’s a huge lore, and we’ve picked and chosen particular characteristics to build our own vision of a vampire.

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Life Is Strange was a game of choices, and I notice in the demo that Jonathan gets to decide between targets or, rather, victims. And whoever he chooses to kill will have an impact on how the story plays out, won’t it?

Well, you can play as a cold-blooded killer, maximising your XP by feeding on loads of people. You can even try to heal injured or sick people you meet, getting them better so that when you feed on them later, you get more out of it. People in bad shape, feeding on them won’t be so rewarding.

So Jonathan is struggling to come to terms with his situation. He’s conflicted, so it’s down to the player how they steer his bloodlust?

Yes, you can decide to not kill anyone, as hard as that will be; or embrace your vampire nature and well, not go on a rampage, as that’s difficult and you need your cover of being a doctor to remain, but pretty much kill everyone. This isn’t quite an open world it has large hubs to explore, and there will be a lot of NPCs in each one. And I feel that’s the best way to approach this sort of game. You’re still free to roam, free to meet whoever you like and to come back later on, and visit people again. A fully open-world game can have spaces with nothing in them or, you see the filler space.