Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong - The First Hands-On Preview
Fans of Vampire: The Masquerade have had it plenty rough recently. The long-awaited sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was delayed indefinitely in 2021, meaning that the gothic horror open-world RPG saga returned to its tomb far earlier than any of us hoped. There’s a silver lining here, and it’s that the much more cerebral Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong may just have enough blood and wits to sate the appetite of any RPG aficionado whose tastes are a little more nocturnal.
Instead of running around an open world, however, you’ll instead drop into the slicked Oxfords of one of three different vampire tritagonists, each wielding their supernatural abilities to uncover secrets and conduct detective work across several scenarios that span across multiple paths, depending on how you choose to play – not unlike what you may be used to in Telltale’s The Walking Dead series. But if you were turned off by the relative shallowness of Telltale’s approach, don’t worry: after playing the second quest, which took about two hours to finish, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong seems like it’s as deep as any CRPG. It’s clear that each of the different stats, perks, and special vampire abilities play into one another in a way that gives weight to each of your decisions, especially when putting points into your character build.
It also draws heavily from lore established in the World of Darkness tabletop RPG, and as such, you can spot the long-running politics between vampire families interweaving across Swansong’s many dialogues. For instance, Galeb’s ability to detect other vampires allowed me to interrogate a certain witness during the murder investigation that’s centric to the second quest, and I wouldn’t have been able to
Read more on ign.com
