Hunt. Stalk. Feed.

Vampires aren’t the focus of as many videogames as you would think they’d be.
Even today, when the myriad of places Vampires traditionally liked to hang out (we’re thinking gothic castles and turn of the century metropolises) can be created even easier than ever, the games about being a Vampire are infrequent.

Bloodborne, a game the uses the word Vampire not a single time but is filled with thematic elements and imagery borrowed from their folklore is probably the closest modern consoles have gotten to a proper Vampire Game.

Vampyr was something that immediately became a bright red dot on my radar as soon as I’d heard of it.
A story-driven roleplaying game from the makers of Remember Me and Life is Strange about a medical doctor-turned-vampire who lives in a fictionalized World War I era London.

Don’t accuse me of being the person that played all of Vampire: The Masquerade in middle school. Similarly, I’m not that person that read all of the meandering psychedelia that is Alan Moore’s From Hell when I was dumb and impressionable.

Maybe my fascination with the undead runs deeper than just wanting a vampire game that takes place in a grimy turn of the century London. Maybe I wanted to cavort through the streets of town, stalking prey and beguiling the needy with my charms.

Vampyr is all of the things I just described, but it’s also an action game. Even though I find the brand of combat the game uses pretty inoffensive, I find it interesting that it was included. Without them, Vampyr would be no less violent.

Feeding on people Is how you become stronger in Vampyr. To get the most out of someone, you need to make sure they’re of sound body and mind, something very few characters in the game are. You’ll use both your wits and your ability to place people in a glamour to learn more about them, netting you more of that sweet sweet experience.

All of your relationships are haunted by violence. It hangs over them, filling every conversation with a certain tension and dread (if you’re willing to pay attention). You’ll learn about the things that keep people up at night, the ways they’ve hurt other people or been hurt by them. Often, you’ll find yourself using that information against them.

All relationships in Vampyr come with a choice, one of life or death. Ultimately, if you choose to feed on someone it means that you kill them. There’s no way around it: if you want to be stronger, the best and most direct way is by grooming someone to be the perfect meal.

Vampire stories have a very long history of a type of this carnal bloodletting being used as a metaphor for sex. As far back even as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and then maybe further into folklore and myth.

Throughout fiction, vampires have often been older men who tricked younger women into getting close enough to become their victims. Dracula has a predatory relationship with his sisters as well as the young Mina, and those sorts of relationships extend into realms like Anne Rice’s trash Vampire fuck-me books and is even used in both Vampire Hunter D movies. In a way – Vampires sort of have cultural appeal because they’re connected to a desire to have power over others.

What does all this mean for Vampyr? Johnathan Reid, the player character, is not just a creature of the night – he must also act as a physician. London is plagued by a disease, one that the player character is introduced just as he becomes a victim of it. Dr. Johnathan Reid stumbles towards his first victim – a woman – and all we know immediately is that his curse has become ours.

That very first example of violence doesn’t come in a combat tutorial. As we stumble towards our first victim, how to feed is explained. Johnathan takes the life of his dear sister before we know anything about her. Is that enough to make me sick? Probably not.

If everything violent in the world was as clear cut as a throat torn out with fangs, we’d live in a much safer place. Unfortunately, more often than not the things that hurt us the most are rarely physical, and just as capable of making us feel weak and afraid. Dr. Reid may have an assortment of guns and knives at his disposal, but his real weapon is how he can truly prey on people.

Everywhere you look, that predator and prey relationship sleeps beneath the surface. Even among the normal people Dr. Reid is surrounded by, people are willing to exploit others around them just so they don’t become victims first. Vampyr’s conceit becomes not one of choosing who is truly corrupt and worth feeding on – but who isn’t?

Dr. Reid can force people to part with their deepest secrets, and those confessions often come with new realizations for the player. Will this new piece of information be the one that makes you see someone only as a worthy meal? You can tell yourself they deserve it, but you weren’t chosen, you got sick with your gift.

You have to be okay with all of this to really get why Vampyr works as well as it does. It manages to take these desperate broken characters, and willing to play with the ways they rely on you. Some of them are ultimately too broken to be redeemed, but isn’t the fun in having power sometimes choosing to use it on the ones that can?

Vampyr will make you grapple with that question over and over again. Sometimes, it’ll do it in ways that can make you profoundly uncomfortable – but only if you really let it. It is still an action game at the end of the day, but it is one where most of the blood comes from people that you really get to know and understand.

Vampyr will ask you to hurt people that think they’re close to you, and then ask you if they were really that close after all.

This article is part of a series about the videogame Vampyr being written through September/October.