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Vampire's new vampire game does not have enough meat to stick its teeth into - Walla! The gaming channel

2022-06-23T10:14:13.521Z


Role play that tries to create an interesting and different experience, but mostly misses the mark. The review for The Masquerade - Swansong


Vampire's new vampire game does not have enough meat to stick its teeth into

Role play that tries to create an interesting and different experience, but mostly misses the mark.

The review for The Masquerade - Swansong

Damian Guttman

23/06/2022

Thursday, 23 June 2022, 13:00 Updated: 13:02

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Watch the trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Big Bad Wolf)

Vampire: The Masquerade is an old role-playing method (think dungeons and dragons, but for freaks) that exists mostly in the world of table games or LARP (live role-playing game) that has already made several forays into the world of computer games.

Games that rely on rolling dice to solve problems and challenges, as is the case with desktop role-playing games such as V: TM or D&D, almost always showed mixed results when they moved to the world of computer games.



Emphasis on role-playing games is, as the name implies, character role-playing and interacting with the fantasy world of the game by your character's choices and how it responds to the surrounding world. The battle of the game and loses much of the flexibility and openness that desktop role-playing games provide.



Then comes Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong which tries to keep the emphasis on role-playing and choice versus frontal confrontation, creating an interesting and different playing experience, which unfortunately for every success and interesting point also manages to miss the target as often.

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Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Photo: Official Website, Big Bad Wolf)

For those unfamiliar, Vampire: The Masquerade takes place in a universe (and a line of products and books) called "The World of Darkness" where humans and vampires live side by side (and other creatures but it's a deep pit I can talk about for days).

In this world the vampire community has decided to observe the Masquerade and hide their existence from mortals and become "wolves in sheepskin among the herd," while the three ideological factions that control the vampire community wage a cold and deadly war over control of humanity and other vampires.



Swansong takes place in Boston and follows a number of incidents that strike the vampire faction known as the Camarilla.

The new Prince of the Camarilla in Boston, Hazel Iverson, tried to strengthen the Camarilla by reuniting the Boston vampires with the Hartford cult.

This lofty ideal of united vampires in New England is not going exactly according to plan and blood is starting to spill on the floor and be wasted.

The player is tasked with recreating the course of events and locating the suspects that led to the horrific chain of events at the Prince of Boston reunion event.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Photo: Official Website, Big Bad Wolf)

In Swansong the actor gets to play three different heroes.

Each character comes from a different vampire tribe with its own abilities (oh yes, we will also note that in the dark world there are 13 vampire tribes that represent the different images and myths that exist about vampires in the world).

Each of the characters is about 100 years old, which is still considered young and green among vampires.



We have:

Imam Lewis

from the "Toriador" tribe described as "seductive Amazon", Imam lives during the roaring twenties and will feel at home in every jazz club.

Galeb

is the eldest of the heroes and belongs to the "Ventro" tribe.

Finally, there is

Leisha

from the "Malquian" clan, the player will know more details about each character as the story unfolds, but at first unless you know the source material you will understand very little about the characters and their motives, which is a recurring problem in the game.



RPG games that place more emphasis on storytelling and character development across combat and action are not unfamiliar, but Swansong takes it even further by having no fighting or battles in the traditional sense.

There are other game mechanics that make up the "role-playing" component that help make it more appealing.



Each character will face moral questions, decisions and choices and the “right” answer is usually not self-evident.

Some choices are easy to make based on how the player wants to develop and embody his characters, but the lack of a clear right or wrong answer allows the game to be driven by the player's choices and the character he wants to impart to the character during the same run of the game.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Photo: Official Website, Big Bad Wolf)

There are also other things to consider like choosing when to use the supernatural powers of the vampire, as they do not want to reveal their true nature to mortals.

Another thing to note is that vampires need to eat, and as in real life our dietary choices are important.

Food options are human blood or rats.

If you hunt too many humans and leave too many corpses and dead in your wake you will arouse the suspicions of humans and their attitude and environment will change accordingly, but a more human-friendly diet of rat blood may lead to contempt in the vampire community and loss of status and dignity.



Swansong is essentially a detective game, where the trio of vampire heroes try to piece it all together.

There are skill trees and elements of character building and development, but they all focus on conversation and information gathering.

Conversations and communication are the most important tools in the hands of the characters to find out what happened and players can develop their characters to suit their style of play.

Intimidation and threats are a good way to extract information from a stubborn character, but there are other approaches.

Investing points in persuasive power may give the character a silver tongue that lured information out of characters or perhaps computer hacking might be a more preferred way to obtain information without bothering to deal with other people.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Photo: Official Website, Big Bad Wolf)

It is commendable that he has a different approach, to her playfulness.

So many other games focus mostly on battles and action entirely and this game has managed to create a reasonable game while building everything on discourse, investigation and analysis.

Unfortunately, things do not always work out perfectly fun.

The attempt to recreate a role-playing experience is hampered by the lackluster script and story, which are a big drawback when the dialogue and plot are so important to the game.

The vocal play of the various characters ranges from tolerable to threatening, with many of the sub-characters falling into the second category.



Because dialogue is driven by choice, getting answers to the right questions and wanting to get as much information as possible from the characters often makes conversations feel unrealistic and repetitive.

The game also has some puzzles and environmental puzzles scattered around to try and make the whole experience feel like a more traditional game, but unfortunately these puzzles are uninspiring and tedious.

Well-done puzzles can add a layer of real satisfaction to cracking them and serve as a fun break from the usual gameplay loop of a more typical game, but Swansong does not have such puzzles because his ones feel like "tasks" that the player must complete to get more from the plot and game Sometimes feels like a chore).



The technical aspects of Swansong are involved just like the rest of the game.

The environments are great, at the level of their artistic design, they do a great job of creating the perfect gothic environment for the story they want to tell.

And the vampire fashion also looks as gothic and impressive as I would expect vampires to dress.

At the technical level however the environments and the modlip are not so great.

There are issues with the animations, lip sync, collision, lighting and more where it very much conflicts with the environment.

Although I can not talk about all the platforms, but on the PS5 we encountered quite a few technical bugs and visual bugs, nothing critical or a deal breaker, but definitely enough to Shay Chick.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (Photo: Official Website, Big Bad Wolf)

In conclusion

Swansong puts players in the shoes of three different vampires to solve a mystery, building on and building on the rich literary richness and games that exist around vampires, but still feels like there is nothing to stick their teeth into.



The game-driven approach completely driven by conversation and inquiry is an interesting alternative to countless games that are basically just bloody baths (ironic, I know) but it does not come without its own concessions.

The emphasis on role-playing and character selection helps to recreate a bit of the feel of desktop role-playing games, but the poor puzzles and mediocre script hurt the pace and overall experience.



Fans of World of Darkness may find something to grit their teeth at here (although your loyal vampire would prefer to eat another rat) but I think so too, just like you and I will continue to wait for Bloodlines 2.

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Source: walla

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