Vampyr Interview

The folks at GameWatcher have published a new interview with the Dontnod developers who are currently working on Vampyr, a vampire-themed action-RPG set in London, during the period immediately after World War I. Dontnod has only published two titles so far, the tepidly-received action game Remember Me and the critically acclaimed Telltale-style adventure Life is Strange, and so far the interviews and preview seem to mirror their history.

In other words, I’m really liking what they’re saying in terms of narrative, but I don’t get the impression that the game has strong mechanical and design ideas. That said, I’m certainly eager to give it a try:

GameWatcher: In the game you play a vampire, an undead creature of the night. How much of the vampire mythology – such as stakes, running water and so forth is conveyed in the game?

Stephane Beauverger: The vampire figure is very complex because it is such a huge architype; there are many, many versions of this creature. Can it be affected by holy water? Can it be affected by crosses? Does it sparkle in the sun? We had to decide on the specifics, and once we had that, we had our own unique type of vampire. So in a way we created our own lore. For example, they are not ghosts, they have bodies and they can see themselves in mirrors, but they cannot enter a house without being invited. We created all the rules and then decided how to use them.

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GameWatcher: As a vampire how do you evolve and become stronger? Do you gain experience as you kill people?

Stephane Beauverger: You don’t have to kill anybody in the game, whether you decide to take that path is up to you. You can gain XP by killing rats and other creatures, and you gain experience by completing missions as well. By killing a citizen or another vampire you get a huge surge of XP, so there is a string incentive to kill others. It really is the dark side of the force. It is easier for you to go that way. We don’t want to create a moral system where we say if you did good or bad, you are a vampire so it is in your nature to suck the blood of others.

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GameWatcher: Speaking of Whitechapel, how do the citizens cope with all these hideous vampires walking around? Why aren’t they all running around the streets in panic?

Stephane Beauverger: At the time people were much more at ease with freaks of nature. John Merrick, the Elephant Man is a great example. People who came back from the First World War sometimes had terrible wounds to the face, and they had reconstructive surgery with mixed results. So the people of London were used to some terrible sights at the time, so they just figure the vampires are humans who are horribly scarred. Historically there have also been many cases of people who have been struck by dementia because of the Spanish Flu. There have been a few cases of people killing their whole family because they were crazy with the fever. So when the vampires kill, the citizens presume it was just another murder.