The release of the narrative role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is just over two months away. Now players can finally learn about the unprecedented crisis plaguing Boston’s vampire community.
Mysterious assassins have attacked the Boston Cabal, a secret society that brings together most of the city’s vampires. Galeb Bazory, Emem Louis and Leysha are tasked by Hazel Iversen to find out the identity of the attackers, as well as the motives behind this large-scale attack. The orders are simple: infiltrate, investigate and get answers, using supernatural powers if necessary.
As in an investigation game, the player visits various locations in search of valuable clues, solves puzzles and interacts with a wide range of characters to progress through the game.
Each of the three heroes has a character sheet that can be fully customized by the player. You can be an expert in oratory and persuasion and dominate others, or you can develop your technological skills to be able to hack computers and locks. Heroes also have vampiric powers of their own: the Disciplines. For example, Leysha can Obfuscate to hide her presence, Emem uses Celerity to reach otherwise inaccessible places, and Galeb turns others into her puppet using Dominate.
Some particularly twisted NPCs trigger Showdowns, dialogue-like combat where the player has to find the right arguments and use Skills and Disciplines to convince the other person to reveal their secrets.
The heavy use of vampiric powers comes at a high price: hunger for blood. If one of your heroes is short of blood, his inner beast takes over, directly affecting your possible actions. To prevent this from happening, you can take advantage of one of the humans, feeding on his blood. But make sure you do it out of sight, to uphold the Masquerade, the vampire law that hides the existence of creatures of the night from humans.
In some situations, scripted action phases are triggered during which you have to keep your head and make the right decisions despite time pressure. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is a story-driven game with multiple storylines, in which certain choices permanently affect the fate of your heroes and the Boston vampire community.
Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong launches May 19 on PC (Epic Games Store) and consoles.