Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong | PS5 Review

World of Darkness is a universe entirely foreign to me. I’ve definitely heard of it, and have been aware of its forays into the world of video games previously, but they’ve always eluded me. I was excited to finally have an entry point with Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong from Big Bad Wolf and Nacon. Unfortunately, it didn’t put me in love quite the way I hoped.

Making Your Mark

Let’s start with the gameplay itself, though. I’ve never played a game quite like it, which is a rare thing to say in this day and age. A lot of the game is scouring environments for the right items you need to progress, much like a point-and-click adventure. But the majority of your time will be spent in conversations.

Now, this isn’t the same conversation mechanics you might be familiar with in other titles. In Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong, conversations are much closer to a combat encounter in a turn-based RPG than anything else. You have stats galore for each character you play as, and you use those stats to outwit your opponents. There are different skills you can use as well, and it can really affect the outcome of each individual scene you find yourself in.

A Tension in the Air

There’s even a clever spin on boss battles, where the conversing has different phases. In these phases, you’ll have to win a set amount to come out victorious in the exchange. It honestly felt like there were major ramifications for failing these, which turns up the pressure. Combined with the game’s aggressive autosaving, there is a weight and peril in your gut each time you encounter one of these.

Between these “set piece” conversations and the more obvious decision points, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a complex, branching set of narratives and I can only imagine the intricacies of its web. Considering the fact that there are three interconnected storylines with three different leads, you’d be hard-pressed not to awe at the design smarts that must have gone into the game. I only hope you received a more positive ending than myself.

The Need to Feed

Being a vampire is integrated somewhat clumsily into the whole affair, unfortunately. There’s a Hunger meter tied to your character’s Discipline meter which is essentially this game’s version of mana used to power your aforementioned skills. It’s a small bother to worry about, however, as restoring it is a complete non-issue in between encounters. The only real punishment I felt was in having to watch the same drawn-out cutscene every time I fed on an NPC, or if I forgot to feed before a conversation and paid the narrative price. It feels more like busywork than anything.

So, generally, I enjoyed the conversational “battle” mechanics. In the industry’s slow suffocation of innovation, I will happily applaud any efforts that have new ideas. It’s just that for a game all about talking, you’d think it’d do a better job of investing you in its story.

Open Season on All Suckheads

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a simple enough premise. There’s been an assault on a vampire gathering, and that threatens the so-called Masquerade. The Masquerade is the credo vampires live by to keep their identities a secret from the human populace, thus securing their anonymity in places of power. Such a public and large-scale attack threatens that. Leysha, Emem, and Galeb are your three playable characters, and they’re each given an assignment by The Prince that will investigate the matter further. Obviously, things get much more complicated from there.

Now I expected to be lost going in. This is a pen-and-paper universe that has existed for decades. There’s jargon and lore around every corner, and the game expects you to already know this universe fairly intimately. There’s a codex for you to read up on the universe provided, but its dense, dull prose and infuriatingly tiny text do little to pull you in. There’s no audience surrogate character to learn from, which I normally appreciate, but the game makes no effort to catch you up in clever ways. You’re sort of just left floundering.

These Are Strange Times

The characters themselves are likable enough, buoyed by great performances from each of the leads. Though try as they might, these poor actors simply can’t elevate the script they’re given. It’s all written in such a drab way, with little punch or personality to invest you in the proceedings. And I’m not normally a graphics guy (famously so on the podcast), but without good dialogue to distract you, the marionette behaviors of every character become all the more apparent. There’s barely an emotion on any face the entire 25 hours I spent in this world, and everybody moves like a bizarre robot. It would be easier to forgive these shortcomings if I felt invested in the story.

Which leaves us in a strange spot regarding Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. It’s a video game all about story and characters talking, yet it’s impossible to feel invested in either. The way things can branch is interesting in its implementation, but I don’t care about the overall story. It has this fascinatingly unique take on turn-based combat, but I don’t feel the tension I should (outside of boss battles), because I don’t care what happens. Every scene felt like it dragged on because I just wanted it to end. If you’re deadly curious about the mechanics, it might be better to wait for the developer’s next game and hope the writing improves. As it stands, I can’t imagine anyone but the most ardent Vampire: The Masquerade fans finding enjoyment enough to see things through. The mechanics are cool, but it’s simply not worth suffering to see them.

To hear me talk more about Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong, be sure to listen to Episode 398 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 42:01 time stamp.

 

This review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy of Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong provided by HomeRun PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on Playstation 4, Xbox, and PC via Epic Games Store.