I did plan to include travel to other locations around 19th century Europe as part of the story, but most of it would have been set in and around London.
There is a slides teaser and some images on their site:
I have to say they do capture almost EXACTLY the kind of look and feel I would have wanted, just a slightly different time-period.
Another (unfinished) project which came close to achieving the kind of atmosphere was CCP’s World of Darkness MMO (though that was set in modern times and an MMO, so completely different genre and setting)
I was thinking of Arkham-style stealth-based game-play; you stalk a group of thugs and pick them off until you recharge enough. That means you would have mostly stealth related mechanics. It’s difficult to tell what kind of game-play exactly Vampyr is going for.
I will actually be curious to see what affect this project has on whatever game Paradox Interactive decides to make with the World of Darkness license. I’ve already read an article comparing Vampyr to the failed MMORPG from CCP, and the whole idea of loosing blood by using vampiric powers sounds a lot like how things worked in Bloodlines.
The problem with “originality” when it comes to vampire stories is that it often is hard to make work, Twilight tried to be “original” but was not well received precisely because it did not conform to the Gothic stereotypes so much vampire fiction before it had. Many of the cliches associated with vampire stories; Byronic heroes, dark streets, religious overtones, Gothic imagery… all just work. People often want to tell vampire stories because they want to paint on exactly that kind of canvas, they don’t want to completely overhaul and revolutionize the genre, rather just tell a story with an aesthetic theme that has been nicely developed and proven to work over many years of story telling.
I don’t want to have to play with the formula too much, because the formula is sound, I just want to tell my own story with it and add my own twists. My worry is that gamers wont understand and crucify me for making a “Vampyr clone” when Vampyr itself is “cloning” other elements of a long-developed genre where “cloning” is what made said genre what it is today.
