Vampyr - Interview with Developers

WP: In 2017 the game was delayed due to ‘technical issues’. Are you able to expand on that at all? How much of a benefit has the extra development time been?

SB: This delay allowed us enough time to finish up the polishing and balancing phase, much needed for a game of Vampyr’s scope.

WP: Both of your previous games featured female leads, was there a particular reason for going with a male lead in Vampyr?

SB: Yes. It was illegal at the time for a woman to be a doctor in England. Since our main character was an English surgeon and blood transfusion specialist who just came back from the war, he had to be male.

WP: From a writing perspective, what are the major differences in writing for a male lead as opposed to a female lead? If any.

SB: I don’t see any major difference. In a narrative game, consistency is the key feature to create an interesting character: consistency of flaws, attitudes and psychological traits. Otherwise you are just creating cliché or archetypal characters, and that’s almost never a good option for a lead. Thus, when you write down the character sheet of a hero or heroine, it is less a question of gender than a question of inner coherence and resonance.

WP: We see that Reid is conflicted between his desire for blood and his upholding of the Hippocratic Oath, so as a player we get to choose whether to do no harm or do a lot of harm. What are the benefits of playing as a saviour versus playing as a sinner? Is one playstyle harder than the other or do they both offer balanced rewards?

SB: Due to one of our core gameplay mechanics, it will be far more difficult to play as a compassionate vampire. To incentivise the player to take lives, the largest source of XP comes from the blood of London’s citizens. This means if you want to level up quickly and more easily defeat your enemies, the game incites you to drink blood. However, when you do this, you alter the delicate balance of London’s districts, already made fragile by the epidemic – you may even lose an entire district of the game (since everybody died, you lose the merchants, the secondary quests, etc.) if you kill too many people, too quickly.

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WP: Both of your previous games featured female leads, was there a particular reason for going with a male lead in Vampyr?
SB:*Yes. It was illegal at the time for a woman to be a doctor in England. Since our main character was an English surgeon and blood transfusion specialist who just came back from the war, he had to be male.

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Even if of a different nature and structure, many decisions made by the player through dialogues will have consequences on the main storyline. Another major pool of consequences is linked to the NPCs the player chooses to spare and those he chooses to sacrifice. And, contrary to LIS, there is no rewind in Vampyr. All decisions are final.
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it takes about 20 hours to finish Vampyr’s main storyline, and about 30 hours if a player spends time achieving the secondary quests, gathering the collectibles, and finding all the hidden secrets of the game.

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We also did a lot of research into clothes, hairstyles (we’ve read some comments about the “hipster” hairstyle of the Hero

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Ripper said:

I read that as 20 hours for the main quest, and 30 hours for main quest plus side content - not 50 hours total.

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