Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is an upcoming “narrative-RPG” by Big Bad Wolf Studio published by Nacon.
Just like the developers’ last game The Council, this is a story-based game where your choices have consequences (like your Telltale or Quantic Dream game) but there’s an underlying RPG aspect that can affect those choices.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will be offering that experience from the looks of this gameplay reveal.
In Swansong, you play as three different members of the Boston camarilla, the secret society of vampires as it’s known in the World Of Darkness universe. Your goal is to discover what caused a recent assassination attack on the camarilla, which will see the three members infiltrating and investigating among humans.
You have Galeb Bazory, the strongman who can resort to violence should he need be. Leysha has the ability to see the unseen and Emem Loius has a social presence among humans. Each of them belongs to a different vampire clan, so they all have different vampire abilities, or as it’s referred in-game as Disciplines.
Galeb can use Domination to take control of one’s mind. Leysha can use Obfuscate to hide herself. And Emem can use Celerity to reach inaccessible locations.
Using vampire abilities will make you hungry for blood, so there is a system where you get to do what vampires do best- feed on human blood. You’ll need to do this out of sight- the whole bit about the Masquerade is that vampires must not themselves be known to humans. And you have to abide by the Masquerade in Swansong.
But it’s not just vampire abilities you can use. Each of the three characters can be specced to learn other skills as well like speech (to persuade people) or technology (to hack computers or break locks). You can build your three characters how you want them to be, as an RPG would let you do.
The closest thing to a combat system in Swansong is a battle of words, in the form of Confrontations. During this bit, you need to pick the right arguments or use your skills and Disciplines to get what you want out of that conversation.
From the gameplay reveal, Swansong looks promising. A narrative game where the story can branch based on your actions, but with an RPG hook built on top, is not something you see as often.
Nacon will be showcasing more videos of Swansong as it gets closer to release. One new video will be revealed as part of the Future Games Show, happening on March 24.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will be out on PS4, PS5, PC (Epic Games Store), Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S on May 19.