I've played Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong. And I have to say, I don't understand why so much bullshit and terrible criticism from the fans. Is there stuff to criticise? Yes. Is that catastrophic? Nah, it’s meh, in any case. Because since the beginning we know it's not Vampire: The Masquerade – bloodlines 2. Why do they put all the expectations of that game in this one? [And let's be honest, with all the troubles that vtmb2 has been sustaining for years, I hardly believe it will be a good game. At most, it will be decent and entertaining but don't ask much from that.]
I've read about people saying Swansong is merely a marketing thing: just a game developed to sell stuff. And I partially agree with that; that's usually what companies do with games that belong to a long, old, famous franchise. This is not the first company doing it, so what are these people talking about?
Now, is it done wrongly? I don't think so. The game is “decent”, has a nice mystery management, conspiracy shit that only Camarilla can craft, and acceptable characters. It is not a perfect game by any means, no character will steal your heart, or nothing in this game will impact you deeply. But it's entertaining if you like games like Sherlock Holmes and you have a good amount of lore incorporated already. Players who know nothing about World of the Darkness will feel this game as a torture, though.
[Below, some light spoilers]
Pros
It has a nice narrative: they present a story that so far, I never played before: a Red Code; meaning that the Masquerade has been breached, and Vampires in Boston have been discovered by humans. You play three main characters that are sent by the prince to investigate and assess the situation.
The story is a decent, long investigation about what's happening with the breach, how many of the camarilla fell already, who is the responsible behind all this, etc. You have many characters that, like good Camarilla members, have secrets you need to reveal by finding hidden documents and scratching information out of NPCs. There is no combat, which is a really good feature since it's pretty common to have wonky and stuck combat gameplay in these games. So there is no waste of time in useless fights. It's true that maybe the first chapters are slower than they should be, but it's not terrible in my opinion.
It keeps loyal to a lot of lore of the franchise, plus incorporates concepts that I was not aware of, like the Beckoning, which it was not a lore-thing for European vampires until now [before 5th edition, it was an effect that mostly affected Middle-East vampires]
It has an unusual refreshing main character: a black lesbian woman, who is a Toreador. This game also shows, in some NPCs, realistic body shapes and a good amount of non-white characters as important NPCs, not just “background”. I think that for this reason, and for the design of Emen, this game has been criticised as “swj-bullshit”
Cons
I always complain that most games are always set in USA or Europe, making them extremely boring in terms of settings. This game is not different. I still want more urban/historical fantasy games set in the other continents: Africa, America [the true america: the continent], and Asia. There is soooo much rich folklore, political issues, and shit going on in these places, that allow to create games with more engaging settings, and not the usual boring ones: NY, Boston, Some place in Britain, some place in France, and that's all. I'm so, so bored of the same settings over and over again.
You play three default main characters: Emem [Toreador], Leysha [Malkavian], and Galeb [Venture]. I was a bit disappointed of not having the chance to play my own characters, or pick the clan I like to play. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter much, the game doesn’t make a good job about how a char is affected by belonging to a particular clan.
It doesn't matter how you specialise the three main characters [some of them more into persuasion, others into psychology, etc], there is no real difference between them if they have the same skills maxed out. Like, they could be perfectly interchangeable, and that makes them a bit homogeneous to one another. In fact, their powers are pretty flat, and this is an issue I comment on the next item.
In my opinion, the game does a terrible job in showing how the characters have to deal with their clan weaknesses. The three of them feel like thin-blood, not real vampires. The Toreador one never feels nothing towards beauty or ugliness, the Malkavian one is so free of madness and deliriums. There is a reason in this game for that to happen, but even if you choose not to follow that path, your malkavian “gift” is super diluted. And the Venture one has such depreciation for material things and power...that, for a fan of Vampire: the masquerade, feels super weird. Sure, we can say all these aspects belong to their own personality, it’s what makes them different from the rest of the vampires, so it can be overlooked, but still....
Animation is bad. It has improved over the patches, but it's still bad. Characters are stiff, hands barely move, facial expressions are not well done. The worst is when a character is furious, screaming, completely out of control, and their face is barely a soft frown. Screaming in despair is a small gesture of parting lips. Those details, especially when they are done with cinematic shoots, make the scene look weird.
There is no personal horror for the characters. They are a bit stiff, in more than just the animation. You don't see their humanity struggling with the Beast, which is usually an essential mark in this franchise. I would point out this as one of the biggest cons of the game. It lacks that side in the character development.
The puzzles are a bit repetitive: it's most of the time to find some documents with a code to open a secret compartment somewhere, or open a safe. Sometimes the codes are big numbers on a photo framed in front of you, which makes you laugh. “Man, that's not how you hide codes....”
Honestly, is it me or Galeb is designed as Johnatan Reid, the main character in Vampyr?
Terrible con in my opinion: there are almost no gangrels. Man, this is outrageous! Anarchs are just a small part of the game, and they are so bland and lack personality. There is only one gangrel NPC, an old lady motorbiker [i love that design!], but you only have seconds of interaction with her. I know that by 5th Edition, if I didn't get it wrongly, most Gangrels are now away from cities, and those who remained are part of Sabbath groups, so... yes, the game is 100% focused on the Camarilla, so it makes sense we don't see brujahs or gangrels much.
Social Justice bullshit?
Another common criticism I've read online about this game is that it has infuriated a lot of bro-gamers because of Emen. They claim she is a kind of sjw character. And I'm not sure what game they have been playing. Yes, Emen is a lesbian or bi [to me, it's not clear] black woman, but she is a vampire. By lore, Vampires are not exactly sjw. Their vampiric nature has twisted a lot their personality, there is little humanity in them, and those who fight against the Beast and try to keep it in its place as much as possible, still have really fucked-up sides [The iconic character in the franchise is Beckett, who in many books has reached big levels of “predator” nature despite fighting a lot to keep his humanity, turning him into a character that looks like walking his path to Golconda]. So, to me is super weird to read this criticism.
Still I can see the strategy that the company did in this game, and this is why I said early that I partially agree with the criticism that this game was just made to sell: we have three default characters that fill 3 kinds of the most usual characters that gamers play: Toreador and Malkavian. Some gamers criticise that Emen is an empowered black lesbian vampire, which is certainly a character that will attract some minorities to this game. It follows Leysha, the malkavian. Lore-wise, malkavians have always been related to “real life” mental illnesses, so there are many players that embrace this clan for that kind of identification, and finally, we have Galeb, which is basically what all bro-gamers want in their game: a hardcore man, successful, powerful, smart as fuck, mind controller, stoic, but that deep inside has emotions he bottles up. He is also a badass a la terminator [and I'm not exaggerating, since his last episode, to me, feels a bit of a tribute to terminator 2]. His design is also super basic, the standard image you find in stock images when you search for “successful man”. Which is the face of a successful white businessman. I guess it’s okay, he is, after all, a Venture. But when I saw him for the first time I could not help but think of Johnathan Reid, the main character of Vampyr. Was the company trying to catch the audience that also liked Vampyr? Even though that game didn’t do that well.
I'm not going to lie, this combination of main characters makes me laugh, because it's pretty obvious to me they were perfectly designed to sell and catch the highest and most varied amount of audience they can. For a company, it's a smart move; it's why game statistics in online platforms are a hell : they provide the statistical information to craft games for the majority: Games to sell, not games to tell daring stories anymore.
Do I deeply complain about these chars? No, not really. I like Leysha, even though she doesn't even remotely feel Malkavian in comparison with the big malkavian mess you played in Bloodlines. But it’s fine, not all Malkavians are so disconnected from reality. Emen is nice too, although her toreador skills are non-existent, in comparison how toreadors are depicted in lore. Galeb to me is a good laugh, because he is a Venture who is offended by his childe who uses a lot of nasty tricks to amass money and power. Like... you are a Venture, dude, you should be feeling the pleasure of that control all over third world countries, not thinking your childe is _evil_ for that. Galeb suffers a lot from the syndrome of “standard white main char who has endured a lot of manpain but he is soft inside but reinforces his cruel face: “we are predators””, which is so weird for a Venture. Like I said, I feel that these characters are more thin-blood than real vampires of their clans. If anything, the game does a bad job in showing how the characters have to deal with their clan's weaknesses.
It's hard to follow the lore
Another criticism I saw frequently was that new players can't follow the lore. And yes, the game starts right there with tons of lore concepts being said one after the other. I'm not sure if a game that belongs to such an old franchise should be repeating itself over and over for new players. That makes the introductions boring for the old players. The way the game fixed this is via Codex. It's a bit funny to see that, as the characters speak in the first moments of the game, you have like 15 codex entries popping out right there. Honestly, I don't think it can be fixed in another way. New players need to read a lot, that's for sure. And still yet, all that reading is quite dense, so the concepts will still be messed up along the game. But I think there is little to criticise there... it's the nature of games with broad old lore.
Conclusion: for new players who have no idea about the lore of World of Darkness, it will be a nightmarish game. For people who have been following the lore, it will be an entertaining game with some lore-flaws, but nothing that cannot be considered a quirk from the characters if you still want to enjoy the mystery of the narration. Nothing will strike you deeply and shake you, though. It’s a meh game, with nice nostalgic lore if you like WoD, that will entertain you for a while, nothing more.
