I had been keeping on eye on VtM: Swansong for a while, both because it’s another game in the Vampire: the Masquerade universe & it was developed by Big Bad Wolf Games, who are also responsible for The Council. I caught it for sale on PS4 and decided to give it a go.

If you played The Council, you’ll automatically notice all of the gameplay trappings that were carried over to Swansong. This is an RPG all about dialogue. The only combat in Swansong is wars of words. You have skills that make you more astute in conversations like education and investigation. Others help in your investigation, like security or hacking. Then there’s your general charisma skills like persuasion, intimidation, and psychological. All of these skills you can spec into have their roots in The Council. The confrontation conversations return too. How well you debate can net you more information or turn a character against you. There’s also a hacking mini game where you have to hunt for a password hidden in the world. I enjoy those style of mini games vs just having a “hack” skill.

From the Masquerade universe, there’s your vampire powers. These show up a little more directly in gameplay compared to the dialogue traits. Starting off with demon powers benefits Big Bad Wolf vs their last game where they feel shoed horned into the last chapter. You play as three different vampires through the game, each with their own powers. One has the ability to move freaky fast, the other can disguise themselves Hitman-style, and the final guy just has an iron will. You gain points as you play through each chapter, but you’ll never be able to completely max out every stat on every character. I do find splitting your skill tree between three characters to be a weaker point of the game. The quantity over quality keeps their unique powers from getting developed beyond the surface level. And I felt I couldn’t experiment too much with how I leveled up my disciplines. In some levels, to get the best outcome you had to invest in certain levels of a particular discipline. There were a few levels I had to replay, because the string of events to get the best outcome was very particular & you couldn’t deviate from that path.

As a vampire you must feed to satisfy your hunger meter. You get traits for feeding properly that gives you more hunger points to use. There’s one trait that gives you two points if you don’t feed at all, which given how often you’ll need to use your blood powers, that’s a near impossible task, but I tried. There’s also context specific traits that I enjoyed. These you get from handling a conversation a certain way or solving a puzzle in the world.

Having three characters also keeps any of them from getting strong character development. There’s Galeb, who is the oldest vampire in Boston and is being called to his “retirement”, but before he goes he wants to right his biggest wrong. He’s very traditionalist and loyal to a fault. In contrast to him is Emem, a vampire who was turned in the 1920s and embodies that rebellious flapper spirit. She avoids the vampire court politics and keeps to herself and her clubs. The final player character is Leysha, she’s an “insane” vampire who can vaguely predict the future that travels around with her vampire daughter. She gets the most story development of the three. Really, every character you come across is a bit one-note. There’s the vampire who just cares about money and business, there’s the crazy ex, the icy ruler, & the high-pitched whiny child. I think the biggest culprit is, unlike The Council, Swansong sees you traveling all over Boston. You are constantly meeting new people while older characters get put on the sidelines. With The Council locking you down in one mansion, you met a set amount of characters and they developed as your relationship with them ebbed & flowed throughout the night.

I think having Swansong focus more on the vampire prince’s Court and how they politic their way out of the fiasco that kicks the game off would benefit the story. It starts off strong with everyone worried about a party meant to unite two vampire clans that went south. You investigate the aftermath & meet with the other clan’s leader. The start of a good mystery is set up, then the game moves from the 1st act to the 3rd act. The rival clan I expected to play a bigger role just fall off the earth and one of the vampire councilmembers is all but irrelevant. You make some meaningful choices in regards to both that you never really see expounded upon. After visiting a variety of locations, you spend the last hour or so trudging around an underground, concrete, bunker, a far cry from the trendy clubs and swanky apartments. It dragged out the pacing, but still made the story feel short. I think a second set of levels between the introduction to the mystery and the conclusion would’ve helped the pacing.

With any game set in the Masquerade universe it’s hard not to compare it to Troika’s Bloodlines. Obviously, Swansong is not an RPG. There’s no open world or combat. Which that’s fine, Swansong can still be engaging, and Bloodlines’ combat wasn’t great to begin with. It is interesting to see a different take on the source material. With the source material, there’s going to be similarities, like all the vampires being a bit angsty & pretentious & a strong focus on urban living. But Boston is not really a character in this game as LA was in Bloodlines. You’d be forgiven forgetting Swansong’s set in Boston. Bloodlines focused on the seedy side of night life & the sleazy people awake at that time. With an open world it was easier for them to flesh out the city, Swansong stays pretty close to high society vampires. It's also neat to compare the time periods each game capture. Bloodlines’ early 2000s edge with leather trench coats vs. Swansong’s late 2010s trendy hipsters. In both games, it’s surprising how vampires manage to remain hidden when at least half the humans you meet are in the know. I was pleasantly surprised Swansong avoided any references to Bloodline. It would’ve been easy to throw an Easter egg in there, unless they weren’t allowed to.

Swansong gives you a lot of technical data on vampire through the use of a codex. It lets you read up on all the vampiric terms getting dropped during conversations & keeps dialogue tight by removing the RPGish “What is {blank}?” questions, which would be odd for a seasoned vampire to be asking. You unlock more entries through the night, but I was in the dark about the Beckoning for longer than I cared to be. And while you learn about the nuts and bolts of vampire society, the game lacks the usual social commentary associated with vampires, like sexuality & romance. Part of Emem’s story is about dealing with an ex-lover and there’s a lesbian sex scene, but it all feels very clinical. There’s more about Leysha’s mother daughter relationship than anything. It does avoid being derivative but doesn’t feel “vampirey”.

As I played through the story there was a feeling of “the vampires are only the good guys here because they are the main characters." As a fellow human being, I started to relate more with the humans. The vampires go on about how they’re being persecuted, overlooking the fact that on top of feeding off humans, they’ve been kidnapping people and experimenting on them. When I thought on it more I decided that, while the vampires are in the wrong, it was interesting to play a story from their side and hear how they rationalize their stance.

All in all, the game ends and really only about 2 of your choices mattered for the very short end screen. If you liked The Council, you’ll like it. This is very much more Council. It improves on certain parts of that but does others worse. If you are thinking it’ll be more like Bloodlines, you’ll have a bad time. The world is full of one-note characters and the story feels rushed. If you enjoy the lore of The Masquerade universe, you will enjoy the politicking, but it never quite hits it’s stride. That seems to be an unfortunate trend for Big Bad Wolf, games that are just off the mark of being great.