-Consequences are a big deal in Vampyr, just as they were in Dontnod’s previous game, Life Is Strange. But where once there was teen high-school angst, now the First World War has barely finished and the city of London is experiencing one of the worst pandemics in human history, the Spanish Flu of 1918. And there’s another disease wreaking havoc through the streets of London, one that has conveniently enough turned protagonist Jonathan Reid into a vampire. As the player, that means you’ll need to feed to stay alive. However, picking who to feed on in a city already beset by sickness will leave its mark on the various communities and factions of London.
-“This is the golden rule: you can take the life of everybody in the game, there is no exception, even if it is your own family,” explains narrative director Stéphane Beauverger. “The second important rule is that there are always consequences, there is no free kill. So each time you kill someone, even of a very small level, you will impact the life of people who knew the victim.”
-Taking out a thug could save the life of someone he intended to murder, but it will also have an impact on the thug’s son. Players can immerse themselves in that community in order to determine the rippling effect of each of their kills, or they can blindly feed on whoever takes their fancy.
-“That's just the small level, just the family and the relatives of the victim, but at every second of the game there is a dynamic based on the average health of each district of London - if you kill too many people, if you take just one life, of someone who doesn't seem important or who has no family or no relatives at all, the health condition will go below the critical status and you will lose the entire district.” And when you lose a district, you lose everyone in it: “even the people who were very healthy and you were not aiming to kill, they will be turned into creatures because you went one step too far. There are always consequences.”
