Vampyr - Encouraging Evil Choices

Nyx

Nyx

Goddess of the Night
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In their upcoming title Dontnod wants to encourage evil choices but not without implications. Feeding will make you stronger, but you'll have to deal with consequences and moral decisions. Kotaku goes into more detail on how dontnod's Vampyr wants the decision to be more than just a simple choice.

As players explore early 20th century London and engage in the game's central conflict of reluctant vampire vs. vampire hunters and monsters, they'll be able to learn more about the civilians around them. Reid is a former doctor, and the idea is that he doesn't want to give in to his thirst for blood, but the reward for doing so will just be so tempting. Kill too many civilians, though, and the districts of London will plunge into chaos. The developers want you to tempt you to be the bad guy, but they don't really want you to go too far.



By gathering clues about the civilians, players may find the occasional justification for the next person they take out. "You could discover that someone who seems to be very gentle is beating his wife," Beauverger said. Then again: "You could discover that someone who seems to be a very shady character used his money to help his poor in the streets."
Click to expand...



More information.
 
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On a personal note, I hope the protagonist will have some relation to most of these characters like in Life is Strange. No matter how much implications there is from killing someone it won't hit the player on a personal level unless you feel some connection to that NPC or the ones affected by it. That emotional connection is just some of what made LiS great and I'm a little worried this won't be the case in Vampyr.
 
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I'm just glad there's going to be a viable evil path. I didn't want to listen to my doctor agonizing over every death as I feed on half of London. Make it hard for me to do that? Fine. Just don't make it feel out of place.
 
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They'll need some good dialogue writing here( which is pretty solid so far from their games...Nillin rocked), without turning this into some greek tragedy. "Evil" is usually poorly done in all video games...usually thrown in for the sake of "variance".
Playing as a female also helps, in my case. :p
 
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I've been hoping to roleplay a vigilante vampire who only feeds on bad people. Sounds like that may be an option so that's cool. Pure evil gets boring but "evil" with a sort of code / justification behind should be interesting to play.
 
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I'm not sure how are they encouraging us to be evil?

Maybe, if we're evil we don't get:
Bella+Twilight+Eclipse.jpg

In such case, I'll be utterly evil!
 
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You get that however you're playing as a vampire. Chicks love vampires. :p
 
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joxer said:
I'm not sure how are they encouraging us to be evil?
Click to expand...

The idea is that the only way to make your character stronger is by feeding on humans. You can feed on rats but that won't give any experience. Feeding kills so hence evil. It has implications on the world around but feeding on a human at some point in the game for most people will be a must because the game will be very difficult to complete without.
 
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I think that Dontnod can make hard and emotional decisions, although, if there will be multiple endings I don't want to choose them like in LiS.
 
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Only 50 NPCs to feed from? That seems like a low number.
Must drink MOAR blood! :devil:
 
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I think it is a very interesting idea to introduce such a level of moral implications as core part of the game play. But I also think that it is very hard to pull off well. After all, most people tend to prefer to play good and a traditionally fundamental part of an RPG is to progress in ether levels or skills. I think it might backfire if playing good would lead to "levelling stagnation".

Then again, I doubt that they haven't thought this through so I do expect a "rewarding" playthrough if playing good. I am certainly looking forward to this game. I wonder whether it will be able to rival VtM:B :).

I didn't know that they are the developers of Life is Strange. Seems to be the complete opposite in terms of theme and story subject.
 
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Nice, i'm liking this.

Humans NPCs have generally been nothing more than enemies or meaningless cattle in vampire games, this is a good idea.

I was once the white knight in all games. I spent every game doing all the right things, doing the best responses, always 100% Lawful Good on everything. Then, i played the "evil" Closed Fist path on Jade Empire, and it turned me on to the Dark Side.

It can be pretty satisfying to start picking the "snarky" responses ;)
 
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