Vampyr is really a number of contradictions, part by design and part, seemingly, by accident. Torn between healing and killing, combat and narrative, personal gain and sacrifice, Vampyr is a paradox from the start, and this contrast becomes both game's greatest strength and it is greatest weakness.
The struggle begins when Doctor Jonathan Reid, a classy doctor and person in London's elite, awakens on a pile of corpses: the unburied victims of the 1918 Spanish Influenza. Within the chaos of escaping these cramped, claustrophobic quarters, every sense on alert, Reid finds himself conscious of the blood pulsing through the rats around him. When a human-shaped figure appears before him, heart pumping with vibrant red blood, Reid lunges and bites without a second thought-and for the reason that moment, his true dilemma begins. Though Reid has dedicated his life towards the study of medicine, saving lives in the truly amazing War and sworn to complete no harm, he finds himself a vampire, with an insatiable urge to hunt, drink, and kill.
Despite his condition, Reid has the capacity to attain a situation at a local hospital, assisting the numerous dying and desolate victims of the plague (and maybe picking off one or two for their own needs). Vampires-or, because they prefer to call themselves, Ekons-aren't quite as mythological nowadays as they are in ours. Certain people are in the know, and vampires have their own social structures to navigate, with Ekons at the top and lesser types of undead like Skals at the bottom. A gang of vampire hunters referred to as Guard of Priwen have taken up patrolling the streets, attacking any “leeches” that could compare.
It's in this hospital, as well as in venturing in to the safe zones of other districts, that Vampyr's greatest strength comes into play: a clever Catch-22 system set up to force players to choose between compassion and killing. To unlock much more of his vampire powers and level up, Reid needs to gain experience, and and away the quickest and easiest supply of experience may be the blood of the innocent civilians populating the town. The more blood he drinks, the more powerful he becomes. There's a catch, however: the greater Reid knows a citizen and the healthier they're, the sweeter their deaths become-and the greater blood they are able to provide. Before killing a person, then, Reid must optimally spend time with that person, asking them regarding their lives, uncovering their secrets, curing their diseases, helping them with their set goals by completing sidequests on their behalf, and learning how they tie into the all around health from the district around them, making the best decision to kill a hard one. Killing people also offers permanent consequences around the health of each district, and if the overall health of the zone ever dips too low, monsters begin roaming the streets and the game gets harder throughout.
Players aren't required to kill citizens, just as they aren't required to save them. I managed to go my whole first playthrough without killing any innocents, since i have wanted to see as much of the storyline as you possibly can without reducing any avenues of knowledge. This revealed the 2nd 1 / 2 of how the system is clever: since blood is directly associated with experience, it puts the difficulty of the combat directly into the hands from the player. On my no-kill playthrough, I was effectively around the hardest difficulty level and perpetually underleveled. Every time I died on my small peaceful playthrough (which happened a lot, since right at the end I could get killed with a single enemy blow if not careful), prompts around the reloading screen taunted me, reminding me the blood of civilians would continually be available if only I would just give in and make the experience easier on myself. Dr. Reid's restrained attitude in regards to blood reflected within my combat; with simply several abilities to choose from and a lower pool of resources, I needed to be restrained and careful myself in how I approached fights.
Glut your self on blood, however, and you'll have use of all of Dr. Reid's vampire powers. Combat offers plenty of options, if you gain enough experience to unlock them. A stamina meter lets Reid run and dodge with vampiric speed, while a blood meter acts as a mana of sorts for the vampire abilities. Stun an opponent in the center of combat, and you will be in a position to leap at them and drink their blood. This blood may then be used in ultimate attacks, summoning shadows to crush your enemies, vicious claws that swipe at your foes and drain blood, a self-healing blood drain, abilities to clot your enemies' veins and make them vulnerable to your attacks, and much more.
Reid also wields a variety of mundane weapons in combat, with one-handed swords and cudgels that take up stamina to attack, two-handed scythes and clubs, off-hand stunning staves and blood-siphoning knives, and a variety of low-ammo guns. Since enemies have different resistances-resisting your blood powers, shadow powers, melee damage, or ranged damage with respect to the foe-you'll have to use a mix of powers and weapons to achieve success. Mundane weapons could be upgraded through scrap and metal parts you discover around the world, or through purchasing parts through merchants (provided you didn't kill the merchants on the bloody rampage, anyway).
It's difficult to judge the caliber of combat in general, since the modular impossibility of upgrading weapons and unlocking new abilities greatly changes the feel and flow of each and every fight. If you are restricted in abilities and underleveled, the game turns into a series of harrowing, desperate fights against extremely bulky enemies that might too be bullet sponges for the damage you're doing. Get too strong, though, and you'll chew through enemies like tissue paper. Discovering that sweet spot where combat provides a challenge but reveals enough options to be entertaining is a tricky balance.
However, the combat also reveals another can of worms, one which had me especially frustrated on my small no-kill run: the narrative dissonance. While rescuing civilians from danger, creating cures for their wounds, and uncovering their life stories, there's a sense that each life is precious. The lowest beggar, inflicted with sepsis and cursing life, has some inherent worth, and that's reflected both in learning their stories and in each civilian being worth 1,000 to five,000 xp a pop. In the streets, however, most of the enemies that attack you are humans as well. Sure, they'll shout “a leech!” and charge you having a gun or bayonet, why are their lives so disposable and cheap simply because they're hostile? Some human enemies are even named and carry crosses or other unique weapons. What makes killing them suddenly morally okay? (And also, since I'm already killing them, why can't I get more than 5 or 10 xp worth of blood from them?) There is no way of preventing killing these enemies, even on the run that awards the achievement for not killing any civilians, and it's a jarring dissonance that's present through the entire game.
Vampyr includes a hardly any other weaknesses as well. It's no stranger to jank-some from the animations can be a little wonky when talking to NPCs, and most after i got some strange camera angles when initiating conversation with one out of a unique spot. I often got some flickery lighting glitches whenever entering or leaving a hideout, locations scattered around the city where Dr. Reid can rest and craft and level up. At some point a combat dash left me stuck behind some crates in the road I could not escape from without reloading the sport. Of the many words I would use to describe Vampyr, “polished” is not one of them.
For its flaws, though, I enjoyed Vampyr. It might have too much combat for fans of narrative games like Dontnod's Life is Strange, also it may have a lot of time spent speaking with NPCs for fans of action-oriented games, but because somebody that enjoys both, I liked the mix. While it's rarely too difficult to figure out the entire story of an NPC-just make sure to talk to everyone-those stories spun an internet of their own lives and dramas happening in the claustrophobic, smoky, plague-ridden streets based in london. Even through a few of the game's wonkiness and some combat frustrations, I always pushed forward to begin to see the conclusion of the story-the mystery surrounding Dr. Reid's creator, the Spanish Influenza, the machinations of the vampires, and also the strategies of the blood that ties them all. Irrrve never desired to stop understanding how it all ended.
