Making decisions and hunting down answers can be a difficult task for some, but it was the only choice the Boston Vampire’s had if they didn’t want to see their whole organization come to an end. The World of Darkness took a heavy step as Big Bad Wolf developed the latest game for NACON to publish. Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is a narrative-based RPG that has the player take on the role of three different characters with tasks to complete and choices to make that will literally turn the tide for their future. The question I am divulging today is whether or not this narrative RPG was one worth experiencing.

Story

An underground force is an active threat to the Boston Vampire organization and is working to hunt them all down. To make matters worse, someone within the organization seems to be providing the information this underground force needs and likely to other threats. The newly appointed Prince, Hazel Iversen, has divulged a plan to save them, but things may get a little dirtier than even the Prince would like.

Giving instructions to her many constituents, the formidable tasks are going to her most trusted and specifically skilled members; Emem, Caleb, and Leysha. While each of these members may not be the most well-known for their skills, their specific traits and reputations are sure to bring success.

Gameplay

Regardless of which of the three vampires you are playing as the general gameplay itself is the same. The difference between each character really falls down to what they are going through, what their actual task is, and what powers will be at your disposal. Other than those details, it still falls down to the choices made and detective work completed.

Before you start with each character, it will ask you how you want them to be set up on their stats. They have some preset choices or you can do it yourself manually. The better you do in each chapter with that character, the more experience points you will get before their next section and you can use those points to level their stats up even further. These stats play a huge role in your level of success in each mission and how much you can actually uncover during your detective-style investigations.

Your detective-style work will have you walking around an area looking for notes, collectibles, consumables, safe rooms, and pretty much anything that can give you the information you need. There are a lot of ways to get information, outside of talking to someone, so be sure to thoroughly look around. You definitely want to find all of the safe rooms and consumables if possible as these are used to maintain your energy and hunger bars.

The choice-based aspect of the game falls on the discussions with characters. Some conversations are a one-shot, so if you mess up you won’t get another chance. Some choices will lead to a failed interaction while others will get you the information you are looking for. However, sometimes you will have actual confrontations and these are basically verbal battles that you have to win in order to get the information you need - confrontations are always one-shots. In a confrontation, you will be given a certain number of times you can lose a point in the conversation without losing the confrontation. My suggestion, you are limited to your energy and hunger bars which are used to make some of the choices - especially the winning ones - so it’s okay to hit your max number of misses in the middle of a confrontation. You mainly want to win the endpoint of the confrontation and maintain as much as you can to make that happen.

The energy and hunger bars are used in both aspects of the game. This is where the consumables and safe rooms come into play. Consumables do carry over to other levels, so be sure to use them wisely, but they can get you energy and hunger points back, as well as a few other interesting boosts that are temporary. Safe spots will allow you to find a more-so useless NPC and lure them there to feed on. If you don’t want to kill them, then you simply let go before the meter is complete. This will allow a chance for a second feeding, but that is going to kill them. Once a safe room is used a single time, that room is no longer available for use again.

Audio and Visuals

This game uses the graphical quality I personally prefer in games. They provided an environment that is nigh realistic while having characters that are just above the cartoon-style graphics. This keeps the unreal aspect of the game in check while experiencing the narrative and allows focus on the details rather than on the over-done graphic style. However, the mouth movements could have been a little better… perhaps they should have gone for a mocap option with this since there is a lot of time focusing on someone talking. They did pretty well overall, but it definitely had some flaws.

As for the music and sound effects, this game went with simply fitting styles for this. Everything was well made and suitable for the scenario while the music did its job at filling the silence while staying in the background. That said, I thought the voice work was very well done! Even the side characters seemed to have had a proper voice actor fill the role.

Replayability

As a narrative game with multiple endings and a level selector provided on the menu once you beat the game, I would definitely say that this game offers a lot of replayability. You can go back and try to find aspects you missed the first time or win a confrontation you may have failed on your first go.

What Could Be Better

As I mentioned before, the visual aspect of the character’s mouth movements seemed to be pretty close but definitely seemed a bit off. They would have been better off using masks or other face coverings for the characters, if not just look into using mocap. It’s a narrative game where they spend plenty of time looking right at someone's face while they talk after all.

The stat system just simply felt improbable to be filled out completely or even enough during a first play experience. It was so costly once you got just a little way up and there were so many things to level up. Without knowing which skills each character needed more than other skills for their specific path in the game, it was impossible to know what to focus on. A little more guidance in this field would have been helpful.

Verdict

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is definitely a fun narrative game to play through and is a solid story that can be followed even if you don’t know much about the World of Darkness. While it did feel easy to get a bit lost at times and it had its moments of frustration, it was a story that I couldn’t wait to know more about. It provided a few twists in the tale and trying to find out who the traitor was while also trying to save my organization through difficult choices was a test of morals over duty.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is now available on PC via Epic Games, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.