Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a true detective game

digitaltrends.com:

Despite it being a well-explored profession in film, few games do a great job at making the player feel like a detective. Oftentimes, games starring detectives are either too linear and handholding in the decision-making process for players. They tend to fall back on gameplay elements like puzzle-solving or combat instead of deduction-focused scenarios.

Though Vampire: The Masquerade — Swansong looks underwhelming and doesn’t have great voice acting, the preview build I played successfully made me feel like an expert investigator. People beyond fans of the Vampire: The Masquerade and titles that focus on detective work and investigations will find a lot to enjoy here.

Swansong is based on the World of Darkness tabletop game Vampire: The Masquerade, which is about “Kindred” vampires trying to survive while not revealing themselves to humanity. This new game takes place in Boston, where a new Prince has taken charge of the camarilla sect controlling the city, but is being targeted by someone mysterious. Players will ultimately be able to take control of three characters to investigate these attacks and protect the Prince.

My demo saw Galeb Bazory, a 300-year old vampire pretending to be an FBI agent, looking into the death of a banker named Jason Moore. The banker had valuable information on the Primogen Council, a high authority in the vampiric underworld. I had to interview characters and thoroughly investigate the crime scene to find important documents about the Primogen Council.

Players walk around, speak to people, and collect items to gain the necessary information to progress. A unique part of this process is the “dialogue fight” system, which returns from developer Big Bad Wolf’s previous title The Council. Like a