Dontnod’s darker delve into a Spanish Flu-ridden London detours away from the preppy indie time-fiddling of Life Is Strange to offer you control over how much blood you want to spill in Vampyr.
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In a PlayStation blog post, game director Philippe Moreau explains how the action RPG’s combat system will evolve throughout the game as you choose which paths to take through the skill tree.
Essentially, the tree will offer two paths for each ability, either a more aggressive and bloody playstyle or a more stand-offish and secure style, keeping enemies at bay and allowing for greater crowd control.
“For example, Spring, a skill that allows you to rush instantly to a distant enemy, can be developed to either deal area-of-effect damage or grant temporary invincibility,” Moreau says. “The choice is yours!”
There’s also talk of a Blood Gauge which fills up during combat and tips you further over to the vampire side, allowing you to do things like impale a dude on a spike of darkness, or drink someone’s blood from the other side of the room.
The moral quandary posed by feeding on the living is also detailed, with the general gameplay benefits and drawbacks laid out in case you aren’t capable of following your own compass.
“Combat difficulty can be affected by player actions out of combat. Feeding on civilians provides a huge XP boost, which will make combat situations easier — but that comes with caveats; an increased danger on the streets, and narrative consequences for the world’s citizens, to name a few.”
It does seem that you will need to feed somehow though, which is probably what being able to listen into conversations between “citizens” and “clearly bad guys” and check their blood quality and whatnot are for.
Vampyr will appear on PC (as well as PS4, obviously) sometime in the new year, but no smaller window has been announced yet so don’t hold your breath. Unless you’re also a vampire.