Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong review – a story with bite
In complete contrast to Bloodhunt, the latest Vampire: The Masquerade game features almost no violence at all, in this dialogue driven RPG.
Vampire: The Masquerade started life in the early 90s as a tabletop role-playing game, before diversifying into video games. As a result, its setting and milieux have been endlessly refined and added to, giving every release in the series a wellspring of pre-defined lore and vampire jargon to draw on, starting with the masquerade itself; the veil of deception that keeps vampires hidden from mortals.
The recent Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt was a frenetic free-to-play battle royale but despite sharing a common history it could scarcely have less to do with Swansong, a completely gun- and crossbow-free role-playing game that focuses on conversation rather than violence, and is resolutely single-player only.
Set in 2019, you play three different members of Boston’s vampire court as it suffers a series of deadly attacks. Leysha is a neurotic psychic investigator, Emem is a 100-year-old former jazz singer, and Galeb’s an enforcer for the Prince, the vampires’ head honcho.
Swapping control amongst the three, you need to find out what exactly is going on and then work out how to stop it. Unlike the overwhelming majority of games, the way you do that uses no weaponry whatsoever, and relies solely on looking, analysing, and talking. Naturally, conversations are heavily gamified, deploying various powers and stats-based die rolls, but it’s a refreshing change from the usual lock ’n’ load approach.
All your protagonists have character sheets, a throwback to the franchise’s tabletop roots, specifying a constellation of skills and disciplines to trigger during verbal confrontations. Using most
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