Atmosphere and suspense can carry a story a long way. The right setup, premise, mystery, and a sprinkle of urgency can engage you even if you have no idea what’s going on. While visiting other head vampires a Code Red alert is sounded, sending the extravagant and modern vampire HQ into lockdown. Across town, another gathering has been attacked, and the brethren there have been slain, sending the community into a frenzy in an instant. In order to figure out what’s happening and ensure no one else dies, none can leave the HQ until the situation is resolved. Even if you’ve never played Vampire: The Masquerade, you’ll find it hard to ignore this introduction to the world in Swansong.
Emem is a former jazz diva and current century-old vampire belonging to the Toreador clan, Galeb is from clan Ventrue and carries out the Prince’s orders, and Leysha is a Malkavian investigator. You’ll play as all three over the course of the game, with each new perspective adding layers to the story. Emem is fierce and loyal, though not necessarily to the new Prince Hazel Iversen (if you decide not to be), while Galeb seems almost unable to upset the Prince. The same goes for Leysha, whose ability to blend into the shadows and see premonitions makes her the ideal investigator in any situation. Between Emem, Galeb, and Leysha, we essentially have characters that can use their wiles to seduce, interrogate, and investigate, respectively, and that’s the perfect set of skills to solve a mystery.
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Prince Hazel Iversen is the one in control here. Away from the dank caves and Gothic castles that vampires traditionally inhabit, she lords over the rest of the vampire world from a modern Boston high-rise. Here the Camarilla Prince gives orders to other vampires, regardless of their clan, and any disobedience is not tolerated – something to keep in mind when you’re tempted into disobeying her in the near future.
If you want an intense fight between vampire clans, Swansong is not that – you want Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt instead. The main conflict here happens in conversations, trying to pry valuable information from other characters. To make the conversations go beyond a simple list of text you can click through, many dialogue options are only available to you if you’ve been investing in the correct skills and stats. Even then your skills aren’t guaranteed to work and use up your supply of Willpower.
You can use more Willpower points while attempting to use a skill in order to increase your odds of success – but, for some absurd reason, the characters you’re talking to can also do that, so if you throw Willpower points at a dialogue option, whoever you’re talking to can just use a bunch of their own and completely negate your efforts. Believe it or not, that’s not fun or satisfying – it just feels like a punishment for using the tools the game gives you. You also have to balance a Hunger Gauge, represented by purple drops of blood on your HUD. If the gauge gets too low, you’ll get hungry, and also won’t be able to use your abilities freely. You can find a mortal Vessel and feed on them a bit to top-up, but overdoing it can kill mortals, and make you a suspicious target.
This is where Swansong starts to fall apart. It has set up an in-game economy made up of Willpower and Hunger Gauge points for you to measure and keep track of while conversing, but all of it feels entirely optional. Before taking control of your character you’re given the option to upgrade their abilities and spend points to enhance skills, such as intimidation or persuasion. If you spend these points like a fool – which is totally within your right – then you won’t get access to many dialogue options. In fact, you’re entirely unlikely to see many of them unless you play through scenarios multiple times, with precise stat point spending to get the results you want. After picking pre-built stat layouts I found that a vast majority of dialogue options in almost every conversation were greyed out, not meant for my eyes unless I built my character correctly.
Of course, you can still progress if you didn’t pay attention to your stat spread, but when the game is so linear that’s part of the problem. There are absolutely things I didn’t find, conversations I didn’t have, items I couldn’t locate – but when the game leads you by the hand to an ending of some kind regardless, I’m not sure it matters. Whatever ending you might bear witness to, only those who truly adore the World of Darkness universe are likely to play again and see these hidden features.
The team at Big Bad Wolf has done an amazing job of making the Boston HQ and vampire culture feel real, overbearing, and inescapable; as if the rules of the vampire society restrict every movement Emem, Galeb, and Leysha make. But for a game all about conversing with people, it’s frustratingly dull when doing that. Voice acting is mostly good, but facial animations are more distracting than convincing, and the annoying Willpower/Hunger Gauge meters you track while playing just end up feeling like a hurdle instead of an active game mechanic. When not chatting you’ll be engaging in some mild espionage or following a scent trail – typical investigation game stuff, but all given even less attention than the dialogue.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong should’ve essentially been an Ace Attorney game. Instead of uncovering a mystery though, it often feels more like a scavenger hunt where you find bits of information and drag them back to Prince Iversen in hopes that they will, eventually, come together and actually make sense. While the World of Darkness universe manages to set itself apart from other vampire stories, Swansong feels distinctly by-the-books. It’s a solid investigation that manages to unfortunately outstay its welcome.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
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