Vampyr

Vampyr

London, 1918. You are newly-turned Vampyr Dr. Jonathan Reid. As a doctor, you must find a cure to save the city’s flu-ravaged citizens. As a Vampyr, you are cursed to feed on those you vowed to heal. Will you embrace the monster within? Survive and fight against Vampyr hunters, undead skals, and other supernatural creatures. Use your unholy powers to manipulate and delve into the lives of those around you, to decide who will be your next victim. Struggle to live with your decisions… your actions will save or doom London.

Doctor Jonathan Reid, returning to London from the Great War in 1918, awakes in a mass grave as a vampire. Overwhelmed with bloodlust, he causes the death of his sister Mary, who was searching for his body nearby. Reid takes shelter from vampire hunters in an abandoned house and starts hearing the disembodied voice of his maker, a typical feature in the progeny of vampires. Realising London is profuse with corpses, he follows a blood trail to a bar. The bartender points Reid to William Bishop, a suspicious patron. Bishop is caught feeding on a man named Sean Hampton and is killed by the vampire Lady Ashbury. Doctor Edgar Swansea rescues Hampton and hires Reid to practice medicine at Pembroke Hospital.

After the room of patient Harriet Jones is found covered in blood and Hampton disappears, Reid tracks him down for questioning. Hampton insists he did not murder Jones and directs him to an underground haven for corrupted vampires known as Skals, where it is revealed that Jones faked her death. Reid later discovers a corpse in the street bearing his mother’s brooch. He pursues the perpetrator towards the cemetery in Whitechapel and finds his sister Mary with their mother Emelyne, realising Mary was turned into a vampire the night he fed on her. Mary is intent on killing him to rid herself of his voice, but dies trying. Reid vows to uncover what is behind the Skal epidemic, which he learns has been mistaken for the Spanish flu.

Lady Ashbury invites Reid to the West End on behalf of the Ascalon Club, a secret society of highborn vampires. By the order of its leader Lord Redgrave, Reid roots out the source of Skals in the district. Swansea is later kidnapped and, once located, admits to attempting to heal Jones with Lady Ashbury’s blood, thereby creating the Skal epidemic; once Ashbury finds out, she flees in shame. It is made known that the entity Myrddin, claimant to the role of Jonathan’s maker, sired him to defeat his mother Morrigan, also known as the “Red Queen”, after she possessed Jones to wreak havoc upon London. Reid defeats Morrigan in battle, resolving then to travel after Lady Ashbury to her family castle, where she hid with her maker William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

Vampyr Review

Vampyr leans hard into the RPG side of the action-RPG spectrum, and though there’s often a campy texture to the storytelling, it’s very easy to get attached to its motley crew of characters. A factory worker waits on surgery to fix a near-gangrenous arm because his two attending doctors can’t agree on an approach to treatment. A nurse and an ambulance driver rely on Reid to keep their interracial relationship secret. A man becomes an alcoholic due to his survivor’s guilt over an anarchistic plot gone wrong. A non-ordained preacher goes around the city burning the sick alive, believing God told him to cleanse the flu pandemic with fire. Everyone you can converse with has a tale to tell, and the vast majority of them are worth the time it takes to hear them out.

Walking the streets of London between residential districts, Reid is a persistent target for vampire hunters, brutal sub-human mutants called Skals, massive beasts, and highly skilled vampire elites. Encountering any of them means it’s time to take a more hands-on and proactive approach. Using a combination of bludgeons, sharp implements, firearms, and terrifying vampire magic, you’re quite capable of fighting your many enemies off, but these late-night battles are still difficult. Physical attacks and dodges drain a stamina meter that, if not carefully managed, leaves you utterly defenseless while it recharges. Your vampire powers are impressive and can devastate enemies, but they cost fresh blood to execute. While you can bite your enemies in combat to recover some, not only is stunning enemies to get the bite tricky–you either land enough hits in quick succession or parry an attack, which has a frustratingly small window of opportunity–the powers tend to use more blood than a single bite can replenish.

And yet, the credits roll on Vampyr with the realization of how seldom we see an open-world RPG experience like this, where being a citizen with a responsibility to a place and its people feels personal, even if that investment lies in who looks delicious tonight. Vampyr is certainly shaggy and rough in the technical department, but its narrative successes still make for an impactful and worthwhile experience.

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Summary
Vampyr is a slow burn of an RPG, taking its time to ramp up its intriguing blend of science and the supernatural in an elaborately gloomy version of London. When it gets going you can see the potential of the way it offers you more power if you consume its interesting citizens. But Vampyr never commits to this idea to the point where I felt I needed to make that sacrifice to succeed in its relatively simple combat, which leaves it feeling toothless and vulnerable to having a lot of its fun sucked away by technical issues, despite its genuinely engaging story.
Good
  • Enthralling characterizations and storytelling
  • Your choices have tangible, palpable impacts on the world and gameplay
Bad
  • Egregious load times
  • Enemies prone to deliver cheap hits
7.4
Good
Gameplay - 7.3
Graphics - 7.5
Audio - 7.5
Longevity - 7.2

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