Vampire the Masquerade – Swansong Test

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Modern adventures come in many forms and the focus is mostly on action elements. Swansong, on the other hand, succeeds in a fun evolution of the classic adventure game in combination with a complex RPG system.

All screenshots and video scenes are from GamersGlobal

I’m not a dedicated fan of Tom Cruisebut i love Interview with a vampire. Francis Ford Coppola has made a number of fantastic films, but my favorite is to this day Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Troikas Action RPG bloodlines would probably still be partly unplayable without all the fan fixes, but I still loved it. These clues only lead to one conclusion: I think vampires are pretty awesome! That’s why I’m a new adaptation of the tabletop RPG Vampires – The Masquerade very welcome.

There’s been quite a bit of interactive fiction and visual novels coming out over the past few years, but I generally didn’t feel like it. So it was hard for me to imagine a game in the universe without any action. The studio Big Bad Wolf, which belongs to Cyanide, proves itself Vampire the Masquerade – Swansong not only that a crime adventure can also work with significant RPG set pieces. In fact, it implements the concept so excellently that I’m already hoping for a successor.

A quite complex image of the RPG mechanics of the tabletop template works in the background. Skills such as rhetoric can, so to speak, be overloaded with additional willpower points in these dialogue “confrontations”.

Exciting story about three bloodsuckers

In the World of Darkness, in which Vampire – The Masquerade is set, the Camailla sect, as a large, powerful vampire faction, is in charge in many places, because it maintains the masquerade organizationally, leaving most of humanity ignorant of its existence of the Kindred. Swansong takes you to the US East Coast city of Boston in 2019. The Camarilla has a new “Prince” at its helm in Hazel Iversen, and Iversen immediately declares Red Alert for the first time. The reason for this: The massacre of vampires is increasing in the city and that’s not the only reason why the masquerade of the bloodsuckers seems more threatened than ever before. You slip into the roles of three very different vampires: Emem is a marginalized jazz bar owner from the Toreador artist clan, Leysha is a mother and belongs to the delusional Malkavian clan and Galeb is a centuries-old Camarilla watchdog from the manipulative Ventrue clan.
You take turns investigating the incidents with the three characters for Iversen, destroying evidence of vampires at the crime scenes and, last but not least, finding out whether the threat only comes from outside or also from within. The introduction of the trio also conveys the basics of vampire society to those who are not familiar with the template – the in-game codex allows for further depth.

I don’t want to anticipate much in the test, but as part of the twisting story – the course of which you influence with your actions and decisions – you will of course also get to know the established clans of the template or the vampire hunters of the Second Inquisition. This is narratively strong, but especially atmospheric. Well, facial animations aren’t Swansong’s greatest strength. But even if the character models don’t come across as lifelike as in one Detroit – Become Human (in the test, grade 9.5), their performance beats that of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson easy – and I’m not just saying that because it’s not too difficult. The English speakers in particular do a really good job (unfortunately there is no German dubbing). Only Leysha’s daughter’s lisp sounds so artificial that it would have been better if it had been saved.

Certain skills, such as Mastery, which gives Leysha beautiful glowing eyes, increase blood thirst. However, you can satisfy the urge of the vampires easily and without disadvantages, as long as you do not kill your victims while testifying.

Crime adventure meets role-playing

The developers describe their game as a “narrative role-playing game”. However, this description hits the core far less than “crime adventure with far-reaching role-playing mechanics.” On the one hand, Swansong is a further development of the classic (3D) adventure with crime scene investigations, multiple choice dialogues and, yes, puzzles. On the other hand, there is the associated RPG system, in which each playable character has a character sheet with its own skills, attributes and the like. There are also hero-specific abilities such as Leysha’s camouflage effect or the astral leaps available later for Emem (the associated skill is simply called “speed” in the game). But you can adapt all three to your own ideas within certain limits and yet quite extensively by investing experience points earned in the individual levels.

One of many puzzles in the game. You can also simply hack this safe with the appropriate skills.

Accordingly, your skill does not ensure that you can achieve a significant part of the goals at all, but only influences which solutions are open to you. A simple example: Leysha can hack a suitcase’s electronic lock in a location if she has the appropriate skills and stats. If you haven’t developed this talent with Leysha, you can find out the code from clues in the area and enter it manually. In the end it makes no difference. But since my decisions are decisive for what works and what doesn’t, I definitely feel closer to my heroes. Which character examines which location is predetermined, but after the prologue you already have the choice of the order in which you approach the scenes of the respective character.

To make it clear again: the RPG system is by no means superficial, in fact it is quite complex. You also use willpower points in the dialogues to increase the chances of success of certain skill-based dialogue lines. It’s up to you to decide whether that’s appropriate or not. Especially in the so-called confrontations, a kind of multi-phase argument battles, you could later lack willpower points if you previously wasted them on trivialities. There are also very limited ways to recharge willpower points through items and other recovery methods.

Each of the three vampires also has a blood thirst meter. It charges up when using certain skills instead of consuming willpower points. If you reach the maximum, it will literally awaken the beast in your alter ego and result in a loss of control. But that doesn’t happen that quickly. Because you can feast on “vessels” in every level and quench your thirst with their blood. Just don’t hold down the action button for too long while sucking. Because then the person dies and you violate the rules of the masquerade. However, this only happened to me once with my first vessel, which at least did not directly lead to a game over. It can also happen that you do not achieve certain goals, such as freeing certain VIPs. In general, only failures of this magnitude seem to have a real impact on the story – although in terms of game mechanics you are missing out on experience points that you could use to develop your characters.

Each of the three playable vampires also has purely individual skills. Leysha can camouflage herself and also “copy” uniforms in order to differ from the normal policewoman…	… become a member of the forensics team. This is the only way for Leysha to get to all areas of the scene in this comparatively linear section of the game.

Stylish, but with technical quirks

The 4K test video embedded above with scenes from the PS5 version I tested should provide sufficient information about the (audio)visual advantages and disadvantages of Swansong, but I would like to go into it again briefly here. I could rant about the fact that the characters’ hair doesn’t reach reference levels, or that the mirrors in Swansong make vampires and the surrounding area appear through a lens smeared with petroleum jelly. For me, weaknesses like these don’t change anything about an overall very successful, atmospheric presentation.

However, I must add that my test version was probably not yet finally patched. At least minor errors in the character animations or the mirror effect mentioned could be ironed out with it. I haven’t been able to verify the PS4 version or other last-gen versions, though. However, I assume that the cutbacks due to lower resolutions and the like will be limited.

Author: Benjamin Braun, Editor: Hagen Gehritz (GamersGlobal)

Opinion: Benjamin Brown

I am very positively surprised! I was expecting a Telltale Games type of adventure, but in Vampire The Masquerade – Swansong I got a game that pretty much matches my idea of ​​the evolution of the classic adventure. At the same time, the developers successfully combine this with role-playing elements, which I see primarily as an atmospheric enrichment and less as a game-mechanical advantage.

That’s not to say it’s just a superficial RPG layer! You have a number of options for developing the trio of very different heroes in terms of abilities, which is particularly important in order to assert yourself in dialogue confrontations. Above all, the skills open up more solutions for various tasks in a nice way. Even without the right skills, there are ways to get ahead. At the same time, I feel closer to the characters because I formed them.

There are a few things that bothered me, but they’re mostly small things. If the vampires are already visible in the mirror, then please be sharp and not with a milky veil. I also find it a pity that there is no German voice output. But points like these don’t change the fact that I feel well entertained in terms of narrative, play and atmosphere, even though I only have basic knowledge of the World of Darkness in terms of previous knowledge. Even if you don’t know the template at all, I think it shouldn’t have any less fun and you might even enjoy spending additional time studying the extensive Codex.

vampires t Masquerade – Swansong PS5