DONTNOD's Vampyr Catch-All

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Evidently out June 5th of 2018, DONTNOD's been working the marketing machine with a series of "DONTNOD Presents" videos to discuss their upcoming Vampyr. For those unfamiliar, DONTNOD is the studio behind Remember Me and Life is Strange, and Vampyr looks to continue the focus on narrative importance by trying to clarify the player's vampire role as a predator rather than standard ever-increasing-empowerment.

Will they succeed? Or will it turn out to just be another video game with lofty ambitions? Is that seriously the chosen box art? Time will tell!

And a gameplay video from E3 2017.

I'll be keeping an eye on this game, and this thread.

I'm hoping someone will make a vampire game better than Bloodlines or at least nearly as good. Will this be it? I doubt it but maybe it will be at least good,.

I'm largely hoping they make something out of every NPC being a proper character rather than a mobile puppet. That you only get experience from feeding on people is an interesting concept, and that they're trying to give everyone personality suggests it won't be as simple as Fable's morality systems – something that sort of comes to mind as being somewhat similar.

However, Remember Me was filled with one-note villains that could have been interesting but were given no depth. If this is more like Life is Strange where each character is given a moment to show a sympathetic side, no matter how seemingly despicable, that'll make the choice a lot harder. Anything to avoid the simplicity of "I'll just feed off of the murdering and thieving assholes".

Ideally this would reach the point where killing a boss criminal creates a power vacuum, but as the scope here is limited as a AA production, I doubt they can do that much. Nonetheless, hoping for something interesting.

As long as there are no invisible enemies, I'm on board.

Really have no idea what to even expect from this, but I'm quite interested. And if they announced DLC where Chloe's truck got sucked into a time vortex in the manner of Army of Darkness, I'd be very interested.

Posting to mark for future interest. Intriguing start.

As someone who wanted to love Remember Me and who did love Life is Strange, I'm pretty psyched about this. DONTNOD seems like a developer that, if they're learning from their projects as they go along, should be poised to do something really great. Fingers crossed.

Listening to them talk about the theory behind the game's design is fascinating. If they can pull it off, this will be a must-buy.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Really have no idea what to even expect from this, but I'm quite interested. And if they announced DLC where Chloe's truck got sucked into a time vortex in the manner of Army of Darkness, I'd be very interested.

I didn't know how badly I wanted this to be a real thing until this very moment. :O

Live... LIVE!!!!

That trailer is pushing me towards the buy sooner than later end of the spectrum. Will be very interested to see how well this is received.

This has the potential to be a huge hit, so I'm right there with you, Todd.

Too bad I just have too many games to play this year that I've already purchased (years in advance too).

Tell me where to turn in my gamer-card (and manchild card), but I dont think I can be as much into vampire stories as weird teenage drama stories.

Still day 1 of course.

I can't wait until, in 10 or 20 years, trailers use somber covers of What's My Age Again? and Baby One More Time.

All seriousness, still down, but not as hyped as everyone else.

I get that (@cc). So much depends on what you personally want to get out of the time you spend with a game. For something like this, most of the time I quickly get bored with gameplay-based trailers because play mechanics aren't enough if I'm not also invested in the purpose, characters, and atmosphere. Without those things, I just don't have enough context for why I'm playing.

So far, I've been interested in this game based on its pedigree, but this kind of story trailer (standard use of cover music aside--although I did rather like what the artist did with it), is the first content I've seen to give me a sense of why I should care about what it's bringing to the table. For me, that's big. Makes me excited to play!

I begrudge no one that at all. From my end I just have this growing mistrust of trailers. It's sort of been building since that original Dead Island trailer, even though there's not been a single outright lie since. I tend to feel like what I play isn't the same thing as the game that's advertised.

Shadout wrote:

Tell me where to turn in my gamer-card (and manchild card), but I dont think I can be as much into vampire stories as weird teenage drama stories.

Still day 1 of course.

Wait.. you're saying you prefer weird teenage drama stories over vampire stories? I mean, I'm not going to criticize your preferences, I just want to be clear on what you mean.

ccesarano wrote:

I begrudge no one that at all. From my end I just have this growing mistrust of trailers. It's sort of been building since that original Dead Island trailer, even though there's not been a single outright lie since. I tend to feel like what I play isn't the same thing as the game that's advertised.

I've felt that way about a lot of western culture in general. There's a lot of lying that happens in marketing, and not even just the hype or missed expectations of quality or length. I grew up in central Africa, and the amount of lying that is just the norm in western culture has always blown my mind.

That's of course wrapped up in a lot of my own childhood BS, parenting challenges, and other stuff, but it's how I feel. Probably it's no worse here than anywhere.

Dakuna wrote:
Shadout wrote:

Tell me where to turn in my gamer-card (and manchild card), but I dont think I can be as much into vampire stories as weird teenage drama stories.

Still day 1 of course.

Wait.. you're saying you prefer weird teenage drama stories over vampire stories? I mean, I'm not going to criticize your preferences, I just want to be clear on what you mean.

Probably easier to relate to teenagers than vampires since Shadout was once a teenager and likely not a vampire.

Dakuna wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I begrudge no one that at all. From my end I just have this growing mistrust of trailers. It's sort of been building since that original Dead Island trailer, even though there's not been a single outright lie since. I tend to feel like what I play isn't the same thing as the game that's advertised.

I've felt that way about a lot of western culture in general. There's a lot of lying that happens in marketing, and not even just the hype or missed expectations of quality or length. I grew up in central Africa, and the amount of lying that is just the norm in western culture has always blown my mind.

That's of course wrapped up in a lot of my own childhood BS, parenting challenges, and other stuff, but it's how I feel. Probably it's no worse here than anywhere.

Our current media environment is pretty sh*tty if you ask me. This whole living in post-truth sucks.

Granted, advertising has been lying to us since its inception, but as far as games are concerned we don't have to rely on trailers anymore. Tons of people will be streaming gameplay content before launch so the trailers can all pretty much be considered teasers. Coming in expecting anything more than hype from a trailer is silly. Advertising is hype, some of it more BS than others, but they're all still hype.

I should backtrack that a bit and note I appreciate the developer vignettes they've been releasing slowly. Those have actually shown gameplay and their ambitions, and it's the tone I get from those videos compared to what the trailer is trying to sell that prevents the hype. I know that the atmosphere and tone of playing the game isn't going to match with what they're selling.

This, of course, happens to games all the time I think simply because the act of playing a game has a tendency to sabotage a lot of emotional experiences you could try and create. It can certainly enhance them, but depending on the end goal you can just make it feel weird and ineffective.

Dare we mention...ludonarrative dissonance? ahhhhhh

ccesarano wrote:

I should backtrack that a bit and note I appreciate the developer vignettes they've been releasing slowly. Those have actually shown gameplay and their ambitions, and it's the tone I get from those videos compared to what the trailer is trying to sell that prevents the hype. I know that the atmosphere and tone of playing the game isn't going to match with what they're selling.

Give this goodjer all the likes.

I find it endlessly fascinating to listen to developers talk about their hopes and dreams and then see how it turned out for myself. I wish more developers could make time to do this. It's not likely given that they're all in crunch for 9 months before the game releases.

Getting close!

This is the first time in ages I've pre-ordered a game while knowing so little about it. Fingers crossed I don't get burned! At least Best Buy is offering a $10 gift certificate for pre-ordering...

I'll have thoughts on this next week! I'll get some video together too.

Went ahead and pre-ordered today! Looking forward to it.

GreenmanGaming had e-mailed a 25% off voucher which, iirc, put a pre-order at about $35.

Well, I can officially confirm this is an entertainment product released in the 2nd half of the 20-teens, because their trailer has a slow, mournful cover version of a well-known song (Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult).

Also, someone is playing this on Twitch right now, somehow. I kind of hadn't realized there was combat. I'm not sure if it's hard or if this streamer just isn't very good at it.

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