Vampyr Analysis
1 Overview
Vampyr is an action RPG developed by Dontnod and released by Focus Home in June, 2018.
2 Formal Elements
2.1 Players
Vampyr is a strictly single-player experience. You take control of Dr. Jonathan Reid, a medical doctor who specializes in blood and who has recently returned from the front of WWI. The camera is placed in the common over-the-shoulder position, and it follows Jonathan around during his time in London. As a newborn vampire, you must find out about your maker, and as a doctor you must try to treat the people of four districts of London at the height of the Spanish Flu outbreak.
2.2 Rules
2.2.1 Locations
Vampyr is secretly divided up into areas: some areas are marked as ”safe,” and you will never be attacked there, and indeed you cannot attack others or use your vampire powers in these areas. If you are under attack in a ”danger zone,” and cross the border into a ”safe” area, your enemies will immediately lose interest in you and begin going back to their original positions.
The ”danger zones” are a throwback to the checkpoints of Far Cry 2: you will often encounter the same or similar enemies when traveling between safe locations, despite having cleared them out many times before.
Certain rooms in buildings and even certain areas are blocked off for story purposes. The developers clearly did not want players to experience some content before reaching particular story beats, so those rooms and areas are locked or blocked with gates until you reach that point in the story.
Most rooms and areas, however, are available to explored from the beginning, and the player may find new weapons, ingredients for the crafting system, or story clues for the main story or for investigations.
As a vampire, you cannot swim, jump, fly, or climb. There is a scripted teleport ability, but this is limited to pre-decided points: if you approach one, you will see a teleport prompt show up, which you will need to use in order to reach that area.
2.2.2 Gear
The gear in Vampyr is limited to one-handed and two-handed weapons, plus off-hand weapons (such as knives, stakes, shotguns, and pistols). The player may also pick up many books, letters, photos, watches, rings, and other items, some of which might have significance for the story. Most of these can be sold, broken down into crafting parts, or used in crafting weapon upgrades, or medicines.
Only two main hand weapons can be equipped at one time, and the same holds for off-hand weapons. If a two-handed weapon is equipped, it will occupy both main-hand and off-hand slots.
2.2.3 NPC Interactions
There are 64 total citizens, 16 per district for each of the four districts. You will have the chance to discuss many different things with them, from one man’s love of food, to another woman’s belief that she is a vampire. By speaking to them, speaking to others in their social circles, finding objects related to them, and by secretly observing them at key moments, you can learn about them, and unlock more dialogue options. These may give you the chance to undertake an investigation for them,
2.2.4 Stats and Leveling
Like many RPGs, Vampyr has both active and passive skills. These are locked behind both XP requirements and level requirements: you must have enough XP and be of a high enough level to purchase a skill.
Active skills usually have a branch to them, allowing the player to focus particular aspects of an ability. For instance, the player may choose between receiving blood or stun from an opponent when using the Claws ability. Passive skills are just stat boosts: they increase either the raw amount or a percentage of a stat.
2.2.5 Quests and Investigations
Your main quest is always displayed, but you can also have a secondary investigation tracked in the HUD as well. Completing steps in both the main quest and any side investigations will give you XP that you can use to level up. These may also unlock new areas for exploration as you progress through story.
2.2.6 Combat
Combat plays out similar to melee combat in many games of recent years that have been influenced by the Souls series. One-handed and two-handed weapons both have a basic attack, while one-handed weapons can be used together with an off-hand weapon and two-handed weapons have a parry that can be used to counter an enemy attack. Both kinds of attacks drain stamina depending on the item used. If stamina drops to zero, you will be unable to attack or dodge until it recovers enough.
If you stun an enemy, either by sneaking up on them or by using an off-hand weapon, you will be able to bite them to replenish your blood.
Combat is a matter of timing and space, where you need to watch your opponent’s attack patterns, take advantage of lulls or recovery animations, and manage your health, stamina and blood levels in order to win through. Although it never reaches the heights of the Souls series, it is fun to engage in combat for most of the game, and the boss battles add enough variety to keep things from getting stale.
Certain damage types, such as fire or gas attacks, deal aggravated damage. This lowers your maximum health that you can naturally regenerate to. To remove the aggravated damage requires use of your bite-heal ability or a health serum.
2.3 Procedures
2.3.1 Talking to an NPC
You will spend a long time talking to NPCs in Vampyr. There are over 64 NPCs in the game, and most of them have extensive dialogue trees for you to explore, gathering information about them, their associates, the current situation in London, and also usually increasing the value of the NPC, should you decide to ”Embrace” them.
2.3.2 Searching an Area & Scavenging
Although not an overwhelmingly large world, the four districts of London provide a good amount of level to explore, with lots of surprising hidden nooks and crannies containing extra story elements.
Besides exploration for its own sack, there are many times when you will have to move through an area in search of a particular item. This could be laying around, or it could be in one of many container types, such a cans, boxes, or cabinets.
2.3.3 Selling Loot
There does not appear to be any limit for inventory items, but it may be advantageous to sometimes sell unwanted items to different vendors throughout London. Each seems to specialize in different types of items, from weapons and ammo, to medicine or general crafting parts. If you search areas very thoroughly, you will probably be able to find enough materials to upgrade your weapons without selling to much junk, but it can be useful to sell something to pick up a particular needed item.
2.3.4 Leveling Up
You may only level up by resting in a safe house. Resting also pushes the time forward one night. This updates the health of the citizens in the districts you’ve visited, and also resets the enemies in the danger zones.
It is further possible to reset all your invested XP for a small XP sacrifice, allowing you to respec your character.
2.3.5 Managing Health Conditions
Your stamina recharges quickly when not in use, and your health will also recharge toward the limit of the aggravated damage you’ve received. Using your vampire active abilities requires blood, which you can get from a serum, by biting enemies during combat, or from using weapons that have been upgraded to take blood from enemies on attack
2.4 Resources
2.4.1 Tangible Resources
- Money: Used to buy weapons, ammo, and crafting materials from vendors.
- Weapons: Used to attack enemies. Can also be sold for money, or upgraded using crafting materials.
- Ammo: Used in pistols and shotguns. It can be sold for money.
- Books, pages and collectibles: These provide story information, advance the main quest, and sometimes provide clues for side investigations.
- Crafting materials: These can be sold for money, or used to craft medicine or upgrade weapons.
- Junk: These can be sold for money or broken down into crafting parts
2.4.2 Intangible Resources
- Health: Determines how much damage you can take.
- Stamina: Recharges quickly once used, limits your attacks and dodges.
- Blood: Can be gained from enemies and serums. Used by vampire abilities.
- XP: Gained by killing enemies, completing story beats and investigations, and finding new information about citizens.
- Level: Increases your health by 10 points per level, and also unlocks certain abilities.
2.5 Conflicts
2.5.1 NPCs
The biggest conflict is with NPCs. As you learn more about them, you may be more or less inclined to Embrace them. Several Citizens have unpleasant personalities, or have committed numerous crimes and ill-treated others, while other citizens seem sympathetic, are trying to help others or improve their lot, and are sometimes the victims of others.
Embracing them will give you access to a larger pool of XP, but it also makes enemies more difficult, increasing their damage and health bars.
Besides the gameplay ramifications, embracing more citizens leads to a darker ending, and will reduce the stability of the district the citizen belongs to. If not monitored or managed, this could lead to everyone in a district suddenly dying, preventing you from embracing them, or performing an investigations which might grant you XP (also increase the XP you would receive if you decided to embrace that citizen).
In my first playthrough, a embraced several citizens who I deemed of low value or as having a negative impact on the district. This resulted in just the situation above: one district was totally wiped out, another suffered from recurring diseases that requires treatment each new night, and I was unpleasantly surprised by the negative ending.
2.5.2 Leveling
If you decide to embrace citizens willy-nilly, you will have access to a larger pool of XP, and so will be able to unlock more abilities and higher levels of those abilities.
If you are more selective, or decide to refrain from embracing citizens altogether, you will face the choice of what abilities to invest in.
For both of my playthroughs, I found that the benefits provided by the passive vampire abilities far outweighed investing in the active abilities, and the costs of each active ability upgrade are a further discouragement to doing so.
2.6 Boundaries
2.6.1 Map
Although large enough for the story, there are many areas that are blocked off and that you cannot explore.
2.6.2 Leveling
There is no hard limit for leveling, but each enemy only gives 5XP, and without embracing many citizens it is impossible to unlock all the abilities.
2.7 Outcomes
There are three main outcomes in terms of endings, but there are many different final circumstances under which you may finish the game. The endings depend on the number of citizens you have embraced, with zero giving you the ”happy” ending, and anything more than one giving you a sad/horrifying ending.
3 Dynamic Elements
3.1 Patterns
This section focuses on game patterns as discussed by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.
3.1.1 Static Engine
This pattern can be seen in giving the player a set reward for each enemy killed and in finding money: enemies always give 5 XP and you always find 5 shillings lying around.
3.1.2 Playing Style Reinforcement
This is evident especially in terms of blood and stun. If you prefer to do a lot of damage with your weapons, you will not be able to receive much blood from them. Instead, you can change some of your vampire powers to give you blood, although this will often not offset the cost of using them. Or, you could use off-hand weapons or again upgraded vampire powers to reduce enemy’s stun upon use, and this would give you more chances to use bite in combat, and replenishing your blood thusly.
Other opportunities for reinforcement come from the types of vampire abilities you unlock. If you prefer a stealthy approach, you can use a shadow walk power that will let you sneak up on enemies in danger zones, or you can unlock several powers (such as blood spear or shadow mist) that allow you to attack from a distance.
3.1.3 Dynamic Friction
This shows up in the way that combat changes. Although officially combat is supposed to become easier the more citizens you embrace, it felt that enemies increased in level from night to night more than when I did not embrace anyone.
4 Dramatic Elements
Vampyr features strong story elements.
4.1 Characters
The characters of Vampyr are well realized, both in terms of writing and in voice acting. Each character brings their back history and view point to the conversation, and often you cannot enter the interesting dialogue branches without doing some leg work, talking to others who are familiar with them, eavesdropping, or finding critical notes, diaries, other clues.
Each district also provides different speech patterns. Those in Pembroke tend to be higher class, as do those in the West End, while the Docks and Whitechapel tend to speak as foreigners, blue collar workers, etc.
4.2 Story
You are thrown into the situation of having just been bitten by a vampire earlier, and have awakened on a pile of corpses. You accidentally feed on your sister, who you don’t recognize at first due to your thirst. This sets off a chain of events leading to your appointment at Pembroke Hospital, where you work on the night shift. You are tasked with helping the hospital cope with the flu epidemic, and also with unraveling the mystery behind your maker.
This forces you to explore the different districts, and you encounter several other vampires, who are if not friendly, at least not overtly hostile. You eventually find out that the curse of being a vampire is somehow related to an ancient blood goddess, who will periodically attempt to manifest in the world. When she does, it leads to a bloodbath/disaster, and you are tasked with preventing her from rampaging around the world.
There is even a love story that ties in nicely with the main story, but I’ll leave that out for now.
5 Conclusion
Vampyr is an interesting RPG, but it suffers from trying to be all things to all people. While the combat is mostly fun, it can be frustrating and if you play multiple times or travel a lot, it can easily get repetitive. The dialogue and social systems are innovative, and might have been better served by more development time and a great focus on the social ramifications of being a vampire in a highly networked and dependent society.
