When we first wrote about Vampyr on the site, it appeared that the world was getting a semi open world action platformer with bad ass vampire powers that aide your campaign...whatever that may be. After my sit down with Focus Home Interactive where I saw a lot more of the game's mechanics, I soon realized it goes far deeper than that, and is impressive with what it has to offer. Here's what I learned.
The first thing you need to know about Vampyr is that your decisions matter. This isn't like in the sense that you have one or two choices to make with each village you visit, but rather who you kill in this game will have a huge impact on your experience, missions available, and the overall health of your vampire. Essentially, you can lay waste to villages by feasting on the most innocent of victims and send the town into frenzy before it descends into outright vampire chaos and lesser beings roam the streets freely. As tempting as it may be to do that, it's much more effective to balance your thirst for blood while keeping suspicion low and feasting on lesser connected members of the community. Surprisingly, killing a murderer has little negative impact on the city, and that person's death will usually cause less people to ask questions about the death.
In a way, this game appears to be a management sim in that regard. If you kill the town doctor the town may be affected with a pneumonia plague that has devastating effects on the population when you come back later in the game. If you kill someone's mother, their character is changed and you may lose any potential meeting or information you can learn about other victims through that character. There is no wrong answer to anything you do in this game, which is cool because it opens up the game to a unique experience every time you play.
Making the decision on who to kill comes from an expansive dialogue tree very similar to the Fallout franchise. Privileged information may require unlocking certain events within the town to prompt responses from said character, and will more often than not better help you personally decide whether someone is worth living or not.
All that said, the action element is still very much there. Vampire powers will aide you as you take on thugs however you see fit and do your best to make your way through the town without being outed for your undead nature. What we saw at the time was a very unpolished Alpha, so I'm hoping this game gets a bit more of a face lift when I see it next, because I definitely see some great potential here.
