Don't Nod

Vampyr celebrates last week’s launch and positive reception with stirring Accolade Trailer

Vampyr, the narrative-driven action-RPG set in 1918 London, is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC! Today, join DONTNOD Entertainment and Focus Home Interactive in celebrating Vampyr’s strong reception from players and critics alike with the stirring Accolade Trailer.

In Vampyr you play as Dr. Jonathan Reid, a famous surgeon and blood transfusion specialist freshly turned into a vampire after arriving back in his home city of London following the Great War. A man of logic and science, Reid’s firm beliefs are turned inside-out upon awakening to a once-hidden world of secret societies, ungodly creatures and ancient orders set upon ending his existence. All the while, London’s population crumbles under the pressure of a terrible disease – and Dr. Reid may be the city’s last hope to stop it.

Every one of Vampyr’s citizens is part of an interconnected social web, and the fate of one citizen in a social circle will impact all the others, as well as the direction of the narrative. Each citizen has their own story, life and personal goals, some will ask you for help, some will agree to sell you rare items – and every last one can be spared or sacrificed in Reid’s quest. Reid is a vampire, and the fastest way to evolve and unlock new supernatural abilities for combat is by drinking the blood of the living. In Vampyr, it’s not “Do I kill?” but “Who do I kill?”. Deadly encounters plague the doctor’s journey, and each citizen offers a tempting source of power… but there will be consequences.

Each of the four main districts have health status linked with the number of living, dead and sick citizens. By feeding sparingly and keeping the populace healthy with crafted medicines, balance can be maintained. However, if the health gauge drops too low, the district will be lost to supernatural creatures along with every quest, shop and citizen that once lived there. If every district of London falls, the game can still be played to completion, though with an outcome that suits such recklessness.

Your actions will save or doom London.

Vampyr is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Order the game at http://vampyr-game.com/

In Vampyr, the greatest source of XP to learn and enhance abilities comes from the blood of London’s citizens, who Dr. Jonathan Reid has set out to save from the epidemic sweeping through the city. The question is less “Do I kill?” than “Who do I kill?” Investigating citizens’ lives will allow Reid to decide who is more ‘deserving’ of sacrifice – or he can simply give in to his hunger and treat the mortals as blood bags. Either way, killing certain citizens will have a greater impact on the local ecosystem than others, while simply killing too many may cause an entire district to collapse.

After draining the blood of his victims, Reid can learn and evolve powerful combat abilities. Close combat abilities allow Reid to close gaps quickly, pouncing from afar before slashing with deadly claws, while others such as Bloodspear allow him to deal damage from a distance. At the higher levels of power, some abilities are feared by even the vampires themselves. Abyss allows Reid to unleash the shadows from within, while Rage targets and strikes entire groups of enemies with a terrible fury. Learning and evolving these abilities will aid in the doctor’s quest to save London – but at what cost?

Vampyr releases June 5 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Preorders are now available at http://vampyr-game.com/

Website: http://www.vampyr-game.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/VampyrGame Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/VampyrGame Song: "Devil" by Ida Maria (https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/katla/id440058625) – Facebook page of Ida Maria: https://www.facebook.com/IdaMaria/

Journey into 1918 London with the Ascalon Club in Vampyr’s bumper E3 trailer

Fly through the streets as imagined by DONTNOD Entertainment, in the bumper E3 trailer for their upcoming narrative driven action-RPG Vampyr. Witness deep into the heart of a flu-stricken London, where secret societies operate in the shadows.

Accompanied by the rock song Devil by DA MARIA, set out on an exciting journey with an uncut sequence shot throughout the city’s dark alleys, deadly underground passages and corrupt neighbourhoods and get a first glimpse at The Ascalon Club, a society formed from the richest vampires, unbeknownst to the mortals.

You are Dr. Jonathan Reid, a famous surgeon home from the Great War and recently turned into a vampire against your own will. As a doctor, you have taken an oath to save lives and take care of the sick. As a vampire, you are cursed to hunt those you vowed to heal.

To survive against deadly foes roaming the streets – vampire hunters, undead Skal and other monstrosities – you will need to choose which civilians to feed on, so you can grow stronger and evolve your vampiric abilities. Use your unholy powers to manipulate and delve into the lives of those around you – but be prepared to live with the consequences of your actions. A web of interconnected citizens with unique lives and relationships react to your decisions, and killing just one may cause the downfall of an entire city district. Your actions will save or doom London.

Vampyr releases November 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Preorders are now open.

We also revealed a key piece of information that many of you have been waiting some time for now - we can indeed confirm that the original Life is Strange team at DONTNOD are working on a brand new Life is Strange game. We can’t wait to tell you all about it when the time is right, but for now we are hard at work ensuring it is the very best game we can create. We’re really thankful for your patience thus far and ask for a bit more time. The new game will not be at E3 in June this year but we will be watching the show alongside you all and wish everyone good luck!SOURCE

One interesting question we want the player to ask themselves is, ‘Who am I going to kill and who am I going to spare?’ We have created a wide variety of citizen archetypes, very different archetypes, so you can really decide to play the game like Dexter, as he would do in the TV show. Or you can decide to do it the other way, be like Jack the Ripper and take lives and just feed and be in full possession of your supernatural skills. You can navigate between these two extreme paths. There is no good or bad decision. We don’t want to influence you on your moral choices. It’s really up to you how you want to experience the game.

Dontnod insists that Reid has a rational mind despite his struggles and background. He will make use of his training as a soldier and doctor at a time (London, 1918) when a lot of “scientific progress and discoveries” were made. “It was really, I would say, the first time that science could challenge religion and mysticism in a sense that science could provide answers that religion would never have been able to,” explained Moreau.

What motivates you to take a life or spare it you’ll find out when the game launches in Q4 this year.

It has been roughly two years since Dontnod Entertainment (under the publishing of Square-Enix) gifted us with, arguably, one of the best welcomed titles in 2015. Life is Strange told us the story of Max Caulfield, who suddenly finds herself with the power to rewind time. A plot in 5 episodes scattered throughout the year with cliffhangers, meaningful decision-making, bold narrative and generally compelling performance and voice acting.

Following the success of the first season, it is to be expected that a second one will follow, and a German news site states that something’s being cooked up at Dontnot. The piece specifies that, on a visit to the Dontnod Entertainment studio, only part of it was reachable, with some areas being off-limits. This clearly gives the impression that they are working on something other than Vampyr, their upcoming title.

The catch here is that there is nothing that leads to assuming that the project at hand may be LiS’s second season other than the fact that it would be the most logical course of action for Dontnod at the moment. Thus, the rumor above should be taken with a pinch of salt, just in case. If true, the game may well be one of Square-Enix’s aces at E3 2017, but for now we’ll have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

Vampyr is being developed by French team Dontnod Entertainment, previously known for Remember Me and Life is Strange. It’s an Action RPG set in London’s early 20th century, right in the middle of the Spanish flu outbreak.

As suggested by the game’s title, players will take the role of a doctor that’s recently been turned into a vampire. This is by far Vampyr’s most interesting trait, with Dontnod trying to showcase the dual nature of protagonist Jonathan Reid: on one hand, the doctor with an impulse to help and heal; on the other hand, a vicious killer that needs blood to sustain himself.

Players will be able to choose whether to kill NPCs without regret for human life or to spare them, albeit at the cost of a vastly underdeveloped character in terms of abilities (since experience is largely gained from kills). The actions will heavily shape the environments and the story. For more about it, including the estimated longevity, check our previous preview from Gamescom 2016.

Call of Cthulhu is being developed by another French team, Cyanide, which you might know for Blood Bowl, Styx and the freshly announced Werewolf: The Apocalypse. We recently got a first look at this RPG/Investigation game in action when Focus Home released the ‘Depths of Madness’ trailer.

Protagonist Edward Pierce is a private detective who has been sent on a mission to Darkwater Island, Boston. He will have to discover the truth behind the death of an acclaimed artist and her family. As customary for a game called Call of Cthulhu, the developers already prefaced that gamers will eventually doubt everything they see as they get closer to the truth and will have to mind their own sanity.

Lead writer Stéphane Beauverger says “deception and tragedy” are the hallmarks of Dr. Reid’s tale, as inspired by gothic horror and classic vampire tropes. “Since we wanted to go back to the root of the vampire figure – as determined by gothic books like Dracula or Carmilla – we really focused on a storyline that shows that aspect of the classic vampire: a deceiver, who manipulates his preys by lying about his true nature, but also a tragic figure forced to kill and – sometimes reluctantly – forced to take lives.”

In this way, a player’s choice of whether to play a brutal vampire or a gentle monster who refuses to prey on the weak is intricately linked to Vampyr’s narrative. “Jonathan Reid is a helpful doctor and a killing monster, he is a rational physician and a supernatural creature, he can heal and kill. To try to understand what is a vampire, from a scientific point of view, will be an important part of his investigation throughout the game,” said Beauverger.

A chaotic confluence of post-war malaise and deadly Spanish flu underpin Dr. Reid’s story as he struggles between his humanity and the monster he is becoming. Beauverger knew that the setting had to provide organic opportunities for Dr. Reid to support both sides of his identity.

“First of all, because of the epidemic, the city of London is completely disorganised and no one will raise an eyebrow about one more dead body found in the streets (very convenient for a vampire who regularly has to feed and kill),” said Beauverger. “Second, it gives the Hero the opportunity to use his medical skills to help and heal the sick in the city, thus showing his human side. Finally, the beginning of the twentieth century was a wonderful era with so many fundamental scientific discoveries, a true age of wonder, and it was really interesting to add some supernatural threats in this fragile age of reason.”

Art director Grégori Szucs added, “There’s a lot of disease-related things in Vampyr, and our concept artists team really dug deep and came up with some truly revolting visuals that we had to shelve.” (Fingers crossed for a putrid artbook?)

In addition to navigating his own personal highway to hell, Dr. Reid will have to maneuver around the perilous world of London’s immortals.

“The Hero is a newborn vampire who has no clue of the etiquette and social rules between the immortals,” Beauverger explained. “Jonathan has no clue about who is his Maker, but it has to be one of the vampires he will meet during the game. Who made him a vampire? And why? The vampires, as immortal creatures, tend to all have political agendas. To progress in his search for truth, the Hero (and the player) will have to deal with some powerful immortals who will rarely offer their help without asking for allegiance first.”

Major inspirations for the game’s mood and characters, apart from historical references, include “ Casualty 1900s, The Knick for all things medical. Peaky Blinders of course and Phil Hale’s paintings and their haunting mood and nervously chiselled figures,” stated Szucs. To make the look of important characters feel both striking and period, the art team used “a slightly more modern ‘cut’ on a traditional costume with traditional fabric.”

As for London itself, the art team went to some lengths to ensure that their representation of the city was believable but emphasized the gothic feel of the gameplay environments over pinpoint accuracy.

According to Szucs, “We used as many historical references as we could find to get the right feel. Vampyr is an uchronia, a ‘what if’ take on 1918’s London, so it was important to ground it in reality and get things like architecture and street topology right to have that believable base and go from there where the story takes us. But at no point does it try to be a 1:1 replica. We will add emphasis where needed if a particular building need to feel more ominous or gothic for instance.”

One important question: does the rest of London know about these sophisticated killer immortals in their midst? If they don’t, does the player have the chance to break the masquerade and reveal the faces of these undying murderers?

Generally, said Beauverger, the great vampiric secret stays a secret. “Most of the time, it occurs when the player decided to kill someone – and it is generally too late for his victim, who will not be in position of revealing Jonathan’s true nature to anyone.”

However, “as a golden rule, the Hero tries to maintain the illusion that he is a doctor – that’s so useful to enter any house, especially during an epidemic. In the game, only a few humans are aware of the existence of the vampires and most of those have sworn to destroy those creatures. They are members of a secret society of vampire hunters called the ‘Guard of Priwen’, and they will constantly try to track down the Hero and destroy him. More rarely, the Hero may encounter people who will ask to be turned into vampires, or people who are aware of his true nature but will not care about that. How the Hero will respond to those persons is left entirely to the player’s decision.”

The inhabitants of London are much more than mere meat for the grinder, however. All the inhabitants, or Citizens, of London have a story and each death will have some measure of local impact. “We tried to create characters who would give hints about the social, economic, political situation in England at the time,” said Beauverger. “Some are good, some are bad, some are secretly evil, most of them have goals and are struggling in a ravaged city.”

While most Citizens have a smaller impact, some are tagged as “community pillars” whose death will “impact the main storyline.” But even the tiniest death will have an effect on London.

“It is important to remember this: each death, even of most insignificant character, will have impact on the ‘health score’ of a district (London is divided in various districts in the game). If the player kills too many people – if he does not control his hunger - the health status may go critical and the player may lose an entire district even if he did not kill a community pillar,” said Beauverger. “If such a thing happens, all the district’s Citizens spared by the Hero will be lost: they will turn into vampires themselves (in fact, a lesser species of vampires we call ‘Skal’).”

Each neighborhood “has its own architecture and mood and social classes and communities,” said Szucs. “The situations, the people and their motivations you will encounter in each will vary wildly. While the night and the fog will always be present as you roam around the streets of London, choice of color in the scenery, lighting strategies and grading variations will try to reinforce the core mood we associated with each area. For example the more pauper and sick areas with less access to electric lights might have lots of very warm colors clashing with dark greenish wallpapers versus the brighter wealthier abode of the City.”

According to Szucs, the lighting is critical to conveying the moody ambiance of Vampyr . “Working with UE4 physically based rendering engine and post-processes to covers some other optical phenomena or artifacts, you can drop a bland white cube in the middle of the street and that cube will look greeeeeaaaat,” said Szucs.

Ultimately, Dr. Reid is a vampire, and not even his best intentions or the strictest possible moral compass may save him: “he is a doomed, gothic and tragic figure,” said Beauverger.

Will you be exploring the terror and tragedy of Dr. Reid’s plague-ridden London? Can you find it in yourself to value your humanity over your own unnatural powers? Vampyr comes out sometime in 2017 and we’ll let you know all about it when it does. Feel free to discuss Vampyr in our comments section below.

Embrace the legend in Vampyr, coming 2017 to PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

During the autumn of 1918 lives are being hemorrhaged both at home and abroad. Across the ocean, World War One rages. The Spanish flu pandemic has infected London and people drop like flies from a disease which kills in less than a day. Death walks the streets, and Vampyr’s protagonist Jonathan Reid is right behind him.

Reid returns from the war a changed man. He’s still a brilliant physician, but somehow he’s been turned into a vampire, consigned to the night and able to wield supernatural powers. Upon his return to London he’s confronted with the complications which come from having spent his adult years as a doctor, yet now he’s also bound to feed on people to survive, even though he’s able to cure the Spanish flu coursing through London. Beauverger knows that when vampires are depicted as an enemy they can easily be “monstrous and evil to give the players a reason to confront and destroy them”. But with Reid as the main character Beauverger wants us to see that vampires have a “human side” and can “express doubts” about their condition and the acts it forces them to commit.

Dontnod was advised by multiple publishers to change the gender of Nilin, Remember Me's main character, on the grounds that it would prevent the game from finding an audience. In an interview at the time of the game's release, creative director Jean-Maxime Moris described being turned away by publishers because Nilin was a woman. "We had people tell us, 'You can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game,'" he recalled. "'That's going to feel awkward.'"

Things have changed, for Dontnod and the industry at large. The studio's next game, Life is Strange, an episodic series with female characters at the heart of its story once again, was a major commercial success, sparking a conversation around the kind of stories that games could - and perhaps should - be telling in the process.

"It doesn't matter really any more," says Oskar Guilbert, CEO of Dontnod, when I ask him about how the industry's perception of female characters has changed since Remember Me. "What we see now - even in the movies - is that female main characters are more and more present. There are not as many questions. We have more freedom now. Perhaps we contributed towards this freedom in a small way.

"It's great that the industry is moving in this direction, but I think it's also very, very normal. I mean, half of us [people] are women. It's normal to have that same proportion in games."

Get the details below.

Vampyr, the new action RPG from acclaimed game-development studio Dontnod, explores combat on the flu-ridden streets of 1918’s London. All manner of dangers prowl London during a bout of the lethal Spanish Flu. From Vampire hunters to mutated abominations, Jonathan Reid will face foes as well as friends on his mission to discover the truth behind his new affliction.

Armed with an array of conventional melee and ranged weaponry, attack and dodge foes to fill up Jonathan’s Blood Gauge, required to unleash powerful vampire attacks. From impaling enemies on a spike, to draining them of blood at a distance, as Jonathan’s Blood Gauge fills during a combat situation, his Vampire affliction will start to overtake his more human side, unleashing destructive spells and abilities against those who try to stop him.

A non-linear skill tree will unlock through experience gained new, more powerful attacks and abilities. Jonathan is able to equip these abilities in any order, effectively allowing players to create their own archetypes to match their play-styles. Play aggressively and deal greater damage, or more securely, focusing on crowd-control and keeping enemies at bay. Skills can be evolved two different ways, for example, Spring, a skill that allows you to rush instantly to a distant enemy, can be developed to either deal area-of-effect damage or grant temporary invincibility. The choice is yours.

Combat difficulty can be affected by player actions out of combat. Feeding on civilians provides a huge XP boost, which will make combat situations easier – but that comes with caveats; an increased danger on the streets, and narrative consequences for the world’s citizens, to name a few. Full brawls are not the only options open to Doctor Reid, he can also stalk his prey, or even utilize his vampire speed and agility to avoid combat entirely.

Players will have to investigate who to feed from, and who to spare, conscious of their need to increase their strength. Jonathan’s Vampire impulses will always be working against his human side.

Vampyr is due out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2017.

There are games such as The Elder Scrolls where you can contract vampirism, and then role-play out your days as a sun-shy sneak, and getting hefty nocturnal bonuses, but playing as a vampire and only a vampire? Not for a darn good while, if you want to count the Castlevania Lord of Shadows games. Vampires are often the enemies in games, not so often are they the protagonists. Vampirism in this form in games is usually just a tacked-on experience, something to supplement or play around with until you get bored, but it isn't the main mechanic of the game.

It's time to reclaim vampires back from the twinkly world of Twilight and drag them screaming and hissing back into the darkness where they belong.

The success of its episodic drama Life is Strange may have drawn favourable comparisons with fellow story-focused studio Telltale Games, but Dontnod Entertainment doesn’t plan to simply follow the Walking Dead dev’s footsteps into the world of licences.

That’s the vow from Dontnod CEO and co-founder Oskar Guilbert, who told Develop that despite Life is Strange’s noted similarities to Telltale’s work – namely a preference for episodic narratives and strong ties to pop culture – the developer didn’t want to delve into adapting other companies’ IP as Telltale has done with series including The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Wolf Among Us, Minecraft, Batman and Marvel.

“No, no, no, we don't want to do that,” he retorted. “We want to create our own IPs.”

However, Guilbert admitted that the dev, which is currently working on original title Vampyr, might be open to partnering with an existing TV, film or literary franchise – if the right offer came up.

“Maybe in the future, I don't know, who knows?” he continued. “Maybe if we see something really interesting, an IP we really want to develop, then yes. But no, we see ourselves like maybe IP creators.

Each time we try to create a new game we want to first create a universe. This is the first time we went to the Gothic atmosphere. After sci-fi we wanted to go to a more classic universe genre. We are about asking tough questions and putting the player in front of strong, difficult moral choices. And the setting lent itself to those kind of tough questions.

The decision making forms a very strong part of Vampyr as anyone in the game can be feasted on. Can you tell us about some of the consequences this can have on the overall story? On the overall story no because that would be giving you a major spoiler. But what I can assure you is that you will have to make your decision on two different levels. You will be frequently asked to make a choice – a major killing choice. This will have a big influence on the main storyline. On a smaller level you can decide to kill any civilian in the game. Each time you take a life it will have impacted somehow in London’s ecosystem, on the friends, on the family members of the deceased.

The theme of duality is interesting, especially when it determines one’s eventual fate. How do you approach that balance of humanity and vampirism from a gameplay perspective while still presenting plenty of choice?'
We are trying to give incentives to the player. It’s easy to take life and reap strong rewards from it. As you progress through the city you will see the consequences of your choices. While you grow stronger the city might be getting weaker. It’s about balance.

If you’re new to Life is Strange, or are in the mood to play it again, don’t forget that as of last week, you can get Episode One entirely for free on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Steam (PC/Mac/Linux), PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

BURBANK, Calif., July 27, 2016 – Legendary Digital Studios and Square Enix will join forces on the development of a digital series based on the critically acclaimed, multi award-winning video game, Life Is Strange™, it was announced today by Greg Siegel, Senior Vice President of Development and Production for Legendary Digital Studios. The project will be developed and produced in conjunction with Dmitri Johnson and Dan Jevons of dj2 Entertainment who recently produced the upcoming film Sonic the Hedgehog for Sony Pictures. Life is Strange™ was brought into Legendary by Cory Lanier who will oversee the project with Siegel.

Life Is Strange™ follows the story of photography enthusiast Max Caulfield, a high-school senior who discovers she can rewind time while saving her best friend Chloe Price. The pair soon find themselves investigating the mysterious disappearance of fellow student Rachel Amber, which uncovers a dark side to life in Arcadia Bay. In addition to winning the BAFTA for Best Story, the Peabody Award, the Golden Joystick’s Performance of the Year and The Game Awards’ Games for Impact Award, Life Is Strange™ has garnered over 75 Game of the Year awards and listings.

“Life is Strange™ is one of those rare properties that combines incredibly developed characters and storylines with deeply engaging gameplay,” said Siegel. “It lends itself perfectly to live-action imaginings. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Square Enix, DONTDOD Entertainment and dj2 to bring the world of Arcadia Bay to life in an exciting new way.”

“We’re proud and excited to be working alongside Legendary to realise a new version of Arcadia Bay and Blackwell Academy complete with our rich cast of realistic, believable characters and memorable events,” said Jon Brooke, VP Brand and European Marketing at Square Enix. “Now that the first episode of the Life is Strange™ game is free to download on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Mac and PC, there’s never been a better time to play or to introduce a friend to the beautiful world of Arcadia Bay”.

To celebrate, there’s a brand new trailer showing Max and Chloe in action available now. Check it out here.

Legendary Digital Studios, Square Enix and dj2 are currently meeting with potential writers for the series adaptation.