Vampyr

jiminator

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
11,605
I don't see any recent threads about this, coming out next tuesday.

What struck me as interesting was the following :

Every one of Vampyr’s citizens is part of an interconnected social web, and the fate of one citizen in a social circle will impact the everyday life of the others, as well as the direction of the narrative. Each citizen has their own story, life and personal quests – and every last one can be spared or sacrificed in Reid’s quest. Reid is a vampire, and the fastest way to evolve and unlock new supernatural abilities for combat is by drinking the blood of the living. In Vampyr, it’s not “Do I kill?” but “Who do I kill?”. Deadly encounters plague the doctor’s journey, and each citizen offers a tempting source of power… but there will be consequences.

Consequences in most games are really "weak". You go around robbing and killing everyone and that is the norm in a lot of games. Other games you just rob them and try not to get caught. Anyway because of that I went ahead and picked it up.

GMG has a 25% off sale

 
The game dropped early for some people (Xbone and PS4). Here is a 2 hour stream that starts a little ways into the game so SPOILER ALERT if you watch it.

 
It's so Dark.............. You should be able to wear sunglasses and go outside.
 
Been watching this. Sounds intriguing. Dontnod had a great idea with Remember Me, but the execution was severely lacking. It looks like this game is a better realized concept and more of a real game than that was. I never played Life is Strange.
 
I'm probably going to pick it up, but I'm not sure if that day will be tomorrow. It looks very interesting, yet something about it feels off to me. I'm not sure if it's the combat or what. I'll have to check out a few more gameplay videos to be sure. The plot definitely interests me though.
 
Life is strange was a pretty solid game. I did not like the conclusion options, but all the points up until there were really good
 
game is interesting. just started, here is how it looks.

It explicitly states you can make the game easier based on the people you kill.

I am assuming this is in regards to "blood" targets, vs melee targets, since combat does not appear to be optional.

4 map zones, perhaps some weapon crafting.

7hkGtHo.jpg


8mvocdg.jpg


muUcZIP.jpg


X5Zb8QN.jpg


0UaNeo5.jpg


hlqFFxz.jpg


bCCXTTX.jpg
 
I put about 2 hours into the game. Combat is decent and requires some effort instead of just spamming the attack button. The game is much more chatty than I anticipated and requires you to do a lot of dialog interactions with many different NPCs if you want a juicer XP bonus for killing them.

The graphics are kinda of a mixed bag. The environments look alright but fairly generic at times with the same wooden crates, barrels, etc strewn about. The character textures are bland and muddy, like they were painted on, lacking any real clear definition and look like they were stolen out of a Telltale game. Model clipping is rife in chat scenes.

Being I'm only a little bit into the game I'm not sure how I feel overall about it yet. You can tell its not an AAA budget game but it has enough quality there for me to keep going.
 
Vampyr review - a beautiful premise wasted in this bland action RPG

That's the real disappointment with Vampyr - it doesn't say or do anything new with the genre (already sadly under-utilised in video games) or the interesting premise it sets up for itself...instead it retreads old tropes with no flair or wit of its own...added to this, there's a general lack of polish that tends to stack up...it's also unclear how much individual player choices actually matter...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-06-04-vampyr-review
 
"Buy, Wait for Sale, Rent, Never Touch?" - dude really liked it and called it a buy

given that districts can turn to shit based on player actions I don't understand the previous claim that player actions don't matter,. part of the game design is you can help people to "improve" their blood and then kill them. The more you do this way the more you level and the easier the game becomes.

 
Has a 74/100 so far on OpenCritic out of 50 critic reviews. Contributor reviews reflect it. Some of the more glowing reviews seem to have rose tinted glasses on from Life is Strange.

https://opencritic.com/game/6160/vampyr

By the way: the game is capped to 62 FPS on PC...
 

Sounds like any review talking about player choice not mattering did not bother to explore the game fully enough. I wonder if some of the reason that is happening is because it is so close to E3, so reviewers are trying to juggle getting games done while getting ready to go to the event, combined with Focus not sending out keys to everyone at the same time so some reviewers got more time to play the game and others didn't.
 
I don't think a person should have to re-play a game 3+ times before it's 'goodness' starts to show...most people barely finish 1 run much less multiple playthroughs...you're asking too much of your audience
 
I don't think a person should have to re-play a game 3+ times before it's 'goodness' starts to show...most people barely finish 1 run much less multiple playthroughs...you're asking too much of your audience

I think what they're trying to say (and what people generally mean when they say a game shines after multiple playthroughs) is that the game is pretty solid by itself, but should you choose to play multiple times, you'll find yourself seeing new/exciting things, thereby creating the incentive to play again.
 
I think what they're trying to say (and what people generally mean when they say a game shines after multiple playthroughs) is that the game is pretty solid by itself, but should you choose to play multiple times, you'll find yourself seeing new/exciting things, thereby creating the incentive to play again.
Adding to that, I also think what they mean is that you won't notice the difference from your actions unless you have played the game 3 or more times. The game's single auto save system will prevent most people from seeing different outcomes in a single playthrough.
 
another video to help explain better. the concept for replays is that all the characers are very well fleshed out in terms of story arcs and interactions with other characters. Some may get upset with a death, others may celebrate. These are not typical shallow NPCs where you just perform fetch quests

 
I had an issue with a "pillar" citizen which fucked me over. I had choosen a blue text option which seemed to be a pacifist choice but then right afterwards that person was considered "missing" and dropped the morale of that area a lot. I had never fed on a citizen until then...I changed after that happened.

Later on I returned and that person returned as a lvl 24 skal. Killing them gave me a key to a chest that contained garbage. After further draining more citizens of their life blood I slept and their zone changed to hostile.

Hostile zones kill everyone left alive and replaces them with skals. It popped an achievement at least so it wasn't a entire loss. Also failed a quest I had in that area as well.

Edit: I used the blue text option on another "pillar" citizen and it worked as expected. I don't know if it was a bug the first time or an intended consequence (didn't seem like it should have been to me). Really fucking hurts not having quicksave for crap like this.
 
Last edited:
Picked up the game yesterday while out doing some errands, and put about an hour into it. Really digging the atmosphere, music, and the fantastic voice acting. The few experiences with combat were pretty good too, I think this'll be a solid game, don't feel any regret with my purchase so far.
 
I rarely play games again after beating them (especially straight away) but I think I'm going to do a "good" playthrough next. Currently doing an evil vampire playthough. I'm maxing out a districts population with hints to get the max xp and then I go around murdering everyone. The devs said you can playthrough the game without killing anyone (there's an achievement for it) but that it would be a long hard road. Does appear that the good playthrough is harder as you probably dont get as much XP. Was speaking to a guy on reddit who unlocked the achievement for beating the game without killing anyone, he said he was level 27 at the end of the game. I think I am close to the end myself and I'm level 35.
 
I rarely play games again after beating them (especially straight away) but I think I'm going to do a "good" playthrough next. Currently doing an evil vampire playthough. I'm maxing out a districts population with hints to get the max xp and then I go around murdering everyone. The devs said you can playthrough the game without killing anyone (there's an achievement for it) but that it would be a long hard road. Does appear that the good playthrough is harder as you probably dont get as much XP. Was speaking to a guy on reddit who unlocked the achievement for beating the game without killing anyone, he said he was level 27 at the end of the game. I think I am close to the end myself and I'm level 35.

giphy.gif


I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I think it'll be a mix of good/bad.
 
I rarely play games again after beating them (especially straight away) but I think I'm going to do a "good" playthrough next. Currently doing an evil vampire playthough. I'm maxing out a districts population with hints to get the max xp and then I go around murdering everyone. The devs said you can playthrough the game without killing anyone (there's an achievement for it) but that it would be a long hard road. Does appear that the good playthrough is harder as you probably dont get as much XP. Was speaking to a guy on reddit who unlocked the achievement for beating the game without killing anyone, he said he was level 27 at the end of the game. I think I am close to the end myself and I'm level 35.

I was going good until the game kinda screwed me over with a dialog choice. Unless you are highly skilled in combat (which I am not) you will probably have to farm enemies on the streets and cure citizens to boost levels.

I'm about just over halfway thru the game and I'm lvl 26 after killing quite a few citizens.
 
I just finished the game, heres the small review I left on Steam.

This game is absolutely fantastic and is highly recommended. I got it when it came out and I haven't been able to put it down. The music and voice acting is brilliant and I would say spot on. I loved the investigative nature of the game, trying to find hints to unlock dialogue options. I beat the game taking an evil route. Basically I unlocked all the hints for all the characters in a district (unlocking hints boosts the XP gain you get from feeding on them) and then I would feed on the entire district. I beat the game clocking in around 23 hours of played time, I would say about an hour of that was AFK time. The combat did take some getting used to but I had no issues playing with a keyboard and mouse. As far as performance goes and tweaks: I did unlock the frame rate and was able to run the game capped at my monitors refresh rate (100hz @ 3440x1440 resolution). I am running a Titan Xp on a i7 7820X @ 4.5GHz.
 
So, what does dying in combat do? I see it resets your health and empties blood meter. Do enemies respawn? Are there any other changes?
 
I'm pretty close to the end of the game maybe another hour or two left. So far the game has performed pretty well and no crashes. I'm getting around 60 fps while exploring and anywhere from 30-60 fps in conversations @4K and max settings. Beyond some clipping issues I've only experience two gameplay bugs so far. Once was the blue text choice I talked about earlier in this thread and the second one just happened a little while ago. I lured a NPC and they did the T pose like you would see in a model editor. After I embraced him his corpse sat on some stairs and I was able to talk to him and embrace him again (no bonus xp). I walked away to go after another NPC and the buggy character was teleported back to their original position. After the territory went hostile, the buggy character was just listed as "missing".

I'm going to hold off on replaying the game after I beat it until a patch or two hopefully comes out soon.
 
I have only been piddling about, did not like how my game started, so restarted it. The stun/bite/blood bomb appears to be a pretty good combo. I was avoiding combat last time, not knowing the ramifications. Anyway not this time. Unfortunately though in wandering I stumbled across a pack of level 19 skals (vs level 4) trying to break a gate vs an old man. They can OHK me, so that is damned annoying to hit a time limited mission you can't do.
 
Been watching this. Sounds intriguing. Dontnod had a great idea with Remember Me, but the execution was severely lacking. It looks like this game is a better realized concept and more of a real game than that was. I never played Life is Strange.


Life is Strange was excellent, imho. Been playing Vampyr slowly for days,excellent game. Great atmosphere, well written. Got mine preordered on Steam months ago.
 
another video to help explain better. the concept for replays is that all the characers are very well fleshed out in terms of story arcs and interactions with other characters. Some may get upset with a death, others may celebrate. These are not typical shallow NPCs where you just perform fetch quests




Truly excellent descriptions of how the game works,it really is worth a buy. Masterful story telling,great music, atmosphere and above average voice acting,plus honest to goodness replayability,with character choices we can make that have meaningful effects on the story,game world,etc. I'd give it 8.5 out of ten,I am about half into Chapter 4.
 
I have only been piddling about, did not like how my game started, so restarted it. The stun/bite/blood bomb appears to be a pretty good combo. I was avoiding combat last time, not knowing the ramifications. Anyway not this time. Unfortunately though in wandering I stumbled across a pack of level 19 skals (vs level 4) trying to break a gate vs an old man. They can OHK me, so that is damned annoying to hit a time limited mission you can't do.

I ran into that same problem with that exact same mission. If you trigger the event, it shows up in your quest log. You have to complete it that night if it's a "save the citizen" type of quest, otherwise they are dead the following night. I think this is my biggest gripe, as basically means that if you're underleveled, you're fucked (you won't get to talk to this person). The good thing, is that this doesn't affect the good ending at all, since you didn't actually kill them yourself.

I'm still enjoying my time playing despite that issue and this one weird loading issue I had where it just wouldn't stop showing the loading screen between districts (had to restart the game). I'm liking the combat too (and that was my main gripe I'd say from watching videos, it looked sort of lame). Once you get a few abilities to use, and upgrade your weapons to where you're getting blood back on hit, you're able to use your blood abilities more often, which makes for a nice rotation (I mainly use sword, stun, claw, and bite). I'd focus on upgrading your melee weapon asap, at least to level 2, it makes a massive difference. The guns are alright (shotgun does tremendous damage if upgraded though), but I prefer the melee off-hands.

Additionally, make sure you create cures for everyone that needs them in all the districts you've visited so far. If you sleep and there are people with colds and suffering from anemia/fatigue/etc., that district's health will go down (even having one sick person will make it go down quite a few percentage points). Overall, you want to sleep as little as possible. Amass as much XP as you can before going to sleep, right up to the point where you can't really continue due to enemies being too strong.
 
yeah, have finally found the last batch of cures. no kills, level 11. combat is interesting. lock on kind of sucks as you don't rotate but I suppose that is realistic. very solid game overall.
 
yeah, have finally found the last batch of cures. no kills, level 11. combat is interesting. lock on kind of sucks as you don't rotate but I suppose that is realistic. very solid game overall.

I'm definitely trying to go for no kills too on the initial playthrough, but I may play again and go ham on everyone just to see the results. Lock on isn't too bad, at least they let you do AoE damage and flick the stick to choose who you want to focus on. Little clunky, but again, not too bad.
 
welp, came to the geoffrey mccolum fight and my build was useless against him. youtubed it. changed my build... to find everyone sick in every district. because of lord asbury. pulled some saved game folders out of the recycle bin.... I think that is going to need some changes....
 
I watched some of the videos on Steam and thought it looked awful, but it seems to be (and look) quite a bit better than those reflect. It's almost like they wanted the game to look like ass in those.
 
Completed this today 50 hours in, got the good ending as I killed no civilians and had healthy districts. The game certainly had it's enjoyable moments and bright spots, and looked promising early on but by mid game it just felt mediocre. It took good design elements from other games, and tried to mash them together into a bit of a clunky end product that didn't really excel in any one particular area.

The voice acting was absolutely top class and the best technical aspect of the game. The varied characters, their backstories and their relationships were also very well done.

What the game needed to improve the experience:
-Implement fast travel between hideouts
-Allow skipping dialogue one sentence at a time (right now it skips to the end completely)
-All the shortcut doors/gates from a preceding area to a new one should all automatically unlock once you enter the new area (this sounds like laziness but it's a level design issue)
-More fine tuned responsive combat (to be more specific: (1) remove being 'stunned/staggered' on every little hit and (2) Increase the speed of the standard melee and 'turn around and melee' animations)
-A civilian in a healthy district should only get sick once, once you cure them they gain immunity and never get sick again unless the district loses it's healthy status
-Abilities shouldn't have flat values but scale off the damage of your weapon. Some of my abilities felt useless as I could just melee for more damage.
-A way of traversing the city that didn't feel tedious and annoying. After clearing an area for the first time maybe you unlock some ledges/rooftops that you can use to teleport around.
-A larger map with more areas - only because they end up using and re-using certain areas/rooms over and over and over. There's places/areas/rooms/buildings you needed to visit many multiple times for quests or otherwise throughout the game. "I have to go there yet again? For the 5th time?"
-The quest icons for some of the 'collect item' quests needed to be more specific instead of a huge circle over an area. All this did was annoy people enough to google 'what to do/where to go'.
-Give enemies stamina and cooldowns. Enemies seem to have infinite stamina and no cooldown on their abilities, late game this gets annoying when some enemies spam abilities over and over.

I'd say the game is worth picking up when at $19.99 or lower.
 
This game is amazing, at least to me. The combat is not normally something I would go for, and I've rage quit a few times. But the music, atmosphere and story keep sucking me back in. I recommend it.
 
just started this game and was terribly turned down by the disgusting Antialiasing methods used for the game, it is a blurfest every choice of AA probably will have to add reshade with lumarshapen to improve the experience a bit, as TXAA 4X (not 2X not 6X( is required to fix the disgusting hair/beard textures in characters, i have spent more time trying to fix those small issues than actually playing it, kinda sad.
 
Back
Top