How do you make vampires feel menacing again? For game developer Big Bad Wolf, the answer was to make the living dead responsible for everything wrong with our world. In an age where the lines between conspiracy and reality are increasingly blurred, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong makes things reassuringly explicable. Despite all our species’ posturing, it turns out, an ancient council of vampires has been quietly pulling the strings for millennia. Slavery? A vampiric plan. Genocide? Vampires have profited from it, time and time again. In other words, what’s truly terrifying about these vampires is that they aren’t feral beasts, they’re the world’s elite – and you’re utterly powerless to stop them.
This refreshingly grownup vampire game uses this murky world of conspiracy and politics as its basis. Unlike the hugely male-dominated Dungeons and Dragons scene, Vampire: The Masquerade’s dicey adventures attracts players in their 30s and 40s, of whom 40% are women. Handed the keys to the cult classic tabletop game, this French developer’s upcoming adaptation feels suave, sophisticated and slightly erotic, set in a darkly glamorous fictional Boston.
