Vampyr Preview

Vampyr is a narrative action RPG set in London, in the year 1918. The Great War is over and the Spanish flu is killing millions all around the world, including in London. You play as Doctor Jonathan Reid a physician who has been turned into a vampire at the end of the war and now, next to saving lives, also needs to kill in order to survive and grow stronger.

The demo starts in the Pembroke hospital where you were invited to work there by the hospital administrator, who knows you are a vampire, but accepts that because of your skills in medicine. He needs your help in a case where two patients are missing. The demo also teaches us that there is a secret faction at work, the guards of Prewin, who's aim it is to kill all vampires, but hospitals are secret grounds where no blood, by or to vampires, is to be shed, which is also why the administrator feels it is safe to have a vampire work in his hospital.

When you encounter these guards you are not immediately attacked. You will first receive a warning and if you turn away they will not fight you. If you ignore that you will get a second warning, which is your last chance. Pressing on will result in a fight. This is distance related, so if you would jump from higher ground into the midst of a few guards the fight immediately starts. As a vampire you have some supernatural abilities to aid you, like a sprint which will almost instantly transport you over a short distance and which can be used in combat to surprise your opponent. The game features a stamina bar, that will deplete when you make your moves and once depleted leaves you to resort to basic combat skills only. Next to that there is also a blood bar that will be drained when you use your supernatural abilities. And finally there is a health bar, which obviously indicates your health.

Besides facing your enemies head on, you can also try to sneak behind a guard and take him by surprise and stun him by biting your opponent without killing it, which will also regenerate your blood and health bars. This can also be done in combat, but you might not have enough time then to actually stun your opponent, but you will heal a bit.

The world in Vampyr is a semi open-world, You freely move in one of the 4 different areas, but you need to pass specific access points in order to get to the other areas.

In Vampyr all NPCs in the game have a name, a story, relationships and secrets. All of the NPCs are also potential sources for blood, to heal you and to become stronger. It is however your choice to determine who you will and who you won't kill. By communicating with every NPC you will learn more about them, but you will also learn, by using one of your special abilities, what the quality of their blood is. The higher the quality the more the NPC will provide you with experience points. When you feed on someone to grow stronger, you will always kill that NPC and will gain their memories.

In the game you have an overview screen with all the citizens of the local region you are in. Some are already known by you and some are not. You can check out everything you have learned up to now of the citizens in the overview screen. The overview might also be used to determine who you are going to feed on as it also shows the blood quality of each individual. If an NPC is sick or hurt you can try to find a cure for that NPC, which will improve their blood quality and will give you more XP when you feed on them. The more you learn about the citizens of London the better a choice you can make about who to feed on.

Every NPC in the game is part of the main or one of the many side quests. As mentioned, talking to them will teach you more about them, but in that discussion you will find out that some dialog options are locked and you first need to unlock them by getting hints from other NPCs or from the environment. Besides gaining experience by killing, collecting all the hints on an NPC will also reward you with XP. What could help you in this, is that vampires have a passive ability that improves their hearing and allows you to eavesdrop in on conversations, even through a window. Another is that you can mesmerize people to make them do something they would not do otherwise, like inviting you in their home, as a vampire cannot enter a home without being invited.

After you have fed and gained a large amount of XP, you need to rest in order to spent that XP on improving your abilities or learning new abilities. To do this, you need to find a bed. Once you have found one and improved your abilities, you also level up, which basically makes you stronger.

Feeding and thus killing an NPC will always have an impact on other NPCs as each NPC has a connection to others. But it will also have an impact on the area you are in. The economy will change because of the murder, with merchants increasing their prices. Also the total blood quality level in the area will have been reduced and once it gets below a certain level the area will be lost forever. In which case, citizens are reported missing, any quests in the area will be gone  and the Skalls together with even more dangerous creatures will move in. These Skals are degenerated vampires with a strong urge to feed on others. One of your goals in the game, is to find a cure for them.
Note that when all the areas in the game are fallen, it will still be possible to finish the main quest with the ending you deserve.

Next to the already discussed abilities, also the teleport ability was shown, which comes in handy when you want to reach an inaccessible spot. Also the ability to slow down your opponents, so you can make some quick moves, was shown. The game has more abilities that you can use and get better at though, but there are only four available as quick slots, which also nicely fits on the D-Pad of the controller they were using during the demo.

In the game it is possible to turn someone else into a vampire, but they could not reveal too much about that as it is related to the main story and it is not something you can normally do.

Vampyr is a rather good looking game. It does appear to have a fair set of choices and consequences, but with four areas does not look to be a large game. You could rush it probably and skip most of the side quests, but what would be the fun in that. Perhaps if you are very much concerned about using proper vampiric lore in a game about vampires, you might be a bit disappointed here and there, but as that is not a concern of me, I think form what was shown that Vampyr could be worth my time and money.

Vampyr will release in November 2017 on PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Also the video as it was shown to me, with loads of spoilers can be found here: