Feast Your Fangs On Vampyr's First Footage
Poor (blood)sucker
Johnathan Reid, the protagonist of upcoming action-RPG Vampyr [official site], is having a torrid time. As if fighting in The Great War wasn't hard enough, he's returned to a broken London that's overcome with Spanish Flu. He's a surgeon, which means he's on the front lines of the epidemic, and he's only just now discovered that he might be a vampire. In a job that deals directly with open wounds. Sheesh, that's a moral meltdown right there.
After a smattering of screenshots, developers Dontnod - of Remember Me and Life is Strange fame - have now shown Vampyr's first in-game footage at E3.
A short segment of combat-heavy Vampyr footage was shown during the PC Gaming Show earlier this week, with our Johnny being hunted by some less-than-friendly locals. Skip to 1:11:28 for that:
And now have a swatch at the mandatory E3 trailer. It underscores poor Reid's moral plight. Poor (blood)sucker:
"I did not choose the thing I've become," says Reid there. "But I can choose the lives I now take."
And that's his predicament. Reid must kill to survive, but is chained to the fact "every single life will have a butterfly effect on the other NPCs surrounding them," say publisher Focus Home Interactive. Vampyr is clearly a million miles away from Life is Strange in both theme and concept, then, but the fact that's it's rooted in choice means it bears a striking resemblance to its narrative-led sibling. Here's Focus Home on how that dichotomy ties into the game:
"Vampyr includes a unique level-up system that plays on this narrative conundrum, where huge amounts of experience points can be gained by feeding on innocent people, compared to combat. As a doctor, you must decide how many lives must be sacrificed in order for you to find a cure for this 'disease', the ultimate goal of Jonathan."
Still no launch date for Vampyr beyond a tentative "2017" for now.
Don't miss the rest of our E3 2016 news this week.