New Vampyr dev diary is all about saving and killing citizens

Another episode of "Dontnod presents Vampyr," an aptly titled series of dev diaries exploring the studio's upcoming vampire action-RPG, is out today. The third episode, "Human After All," looks at the NPCs of Vampyr's London, and how protagonist Jonathan's treatment of them affects the game's story and RPG systems.

"The most effective way to get stronger is by killing and feeding on the various citizens living within the game’s four districts," Dontnod says. "Players are able to increase the XP from each citizen by curing their illnesses and gaining more insight into their lives and emotions – but the price can be immense."

Dontnod says every NPC in Vampyr was individually crafted. They have personalities and dreams and fears—and, critically, blood flowing through their veins. As Jonathan, players can befriend or betray them as they please. Whenever you kill a character, their final thoughts are transmitted to you, narrative director Stephane Beauverger explains. The better you know them, the more their demise impacts you—doubly so if you've also killed people they know.

Vampyr's moments of death sound like an interesting way to game-ify loss, and they dovetail neatly with its different districts, which were detailed in last week's dev diary. If you kill too many citizens in a single district, it's liable to be evacuated and fall into disrepair, dramatically affecting the lives of everyone there, including you.

Vampyr is expected to release this spring.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.