Being a vampire is a pretty raw deal... or so the vamps inform us when they are not having freaky gothic sex, shapeshifting into wolves, enjoying the slimming effects of a uniquely low-carb diet, or enduring through marvellous future epochs we foolish cattle can only dream of.
I find most stories about vampirism tend to do a poor job of convincing me that vampirism is to be avoided. "Immortality is no gift, but a curse," breathe the bloodsuckers, like parents telling kids that staying up late only makes you tired in the morning, and I think: OK, so you're definitely going to outlive everybody you've ever loved, but also, 1) you've got marble hard abs, and 2) you're going to be knocking around when generations to come finally put a stake through capitalism and roll out UBI.
Within videogames, especially, the downsides tend to skulk on the other side of the old ludonarrative portcullis. In the opening act of beWitchering RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, for example, main character Coen becomes a vampire and is very cross about this. He spends several dialogue sequences carping and moaning. I nodded sympathetically throughout, then switched to the skills menu and browsed a few ability preview clips. Coen can teleport now. He can walk up walls. Given a few unlock points, Coen can slow time and make people who annoy him boil from the inside.
Coen doesn't even have to worry about half the traditional vampire debuff menu, including death by sunlight. He's a Hovis Best Of Both knock-off, not a true vampire, so he gets to spend the day as a regular Jon Harker, without any grotty fingernail extensions to spoil his attempts at mingling. I listened to Coen whine about his inner corruption for another couple of minutes, and then I made him go jump in the river. Screw you, Coen. I've got plenty of inner corruption, myself, just not the kind that gives me a sultry pallor while letting me turn attacking knights into thralls.
I'm sure the downsides of vampirism grow more pressing over the course of the game (here's Mark's review). For one thing, Coen has to keep his vampire health bar topped up with fresh haemo to avoid losing control in conversation. Even so, the opening hours have made me realise that what I really want, right now, isn't a vampire power fantasy but a true vampire survival sim, in which all the legendary drawbacks of the neck-biter lifestyle are permitted to spread and swell like toadstools on burial mounds.
I want to play a vampire game in which I am a fearful, feral cadaver, living on the periphery and in the gutter, alone and at a decided disadvantage in a universe of paranoid smallfolk. Witness me quiver, caught between the prongs of my gnawing appetite and the hateful, hateful sun. I want to be a miserable gangrel creature - weird and nasty enough to overpower a single alerted villager, possibly, but helpless before a torch-wielding mob.
I want solutions to the challenges of vampirism that don't involve outright conflict, because there are so many things that can harm, thwart or dispel me: garlic, crucifixes, silver, running water, holy water, scripture, church bells, thresholds I'm not invited to cross. Have you ever looked up a halfway comprehensive list of the plants that damage or deter vampires, according to folklore and superstition from across the globe? Apparently, vampires are vulnerable to juniper berries. Walking through any remotely verdant area must feel like tapdancing on landmines.
Supernatural force alone cannot help me navigate this sandbox. Nor can straightforward real-time combat mechanics. If I am to become powerful, raising my keep on the mountainside or spreading my miasma through the catacombs, it must be through bitter effort and canny misdirection, not a cycle of moderately guilt-ridden clawing, draining and levelling up. I must become a being of strategy, above all.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/blood-of-dawnwalkers-troubled-power-fantasy-has-me-yearning-for-a-more-desperate-systemic-vampire-survival-sim
