Who doesn't love a good vampire? But, the fanged creatures can be notoriously difficult to get right when it comes to video games, let alone playing one yourself. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong doesn't get everything right, but in adapting the '90s tabletop RPG's penchant for intrigue and politicking rather than combat (the flipside being an issue in our Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 review), it nails a juicy, claret-running formula that my fangs are itching for a second taste of. Swansong, at times, plays like a Vampire Hitman.
Of the game's three playable characters, Galeb Bazory has a few things in common with Hitman's Agent 47. Both are the strong silent type, men of action who get the job done even against seemingly impossible odds, and even have mysterious pasts throughout which they have both carried out a huge number of assassinations. While all three characters in Swansong are sent by the vampire Prince into some pretty dangerous situations to deal with an attack from the Second Inquisition, Galeb's missions are the most deadly, and he just has to roll up his sleeves, then roll his eyes, and roll with the circumstances to doggedly dismantle the vampire hunter threat. How? By getting a bit Hitman with it.
Tactical vampire action
The Second Inquisition branch you deal with through Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong comes from the Society of St. Leopold, who are leading a religious crusade to burn out the vampire presence in Boston. With the location of the Inquisition operating base found, Galeb is sent in to infiltrate it during Scene Six. It's the most sprawling and ambitious mission in the game, and one where I really get a taste for how Vampire: The Masquerade could handle a greater focus on espionage.
On the backfoot, with some of his vampiric skills negated by mysterious Second Inquisition technology, Galeb must infiltrate slowly and carefully – getting his claws on security passes to open up more sections of the underground base to locate its leader, while burning through his limited blood powers to convincingly blend in as a fellow agent. An option to try to brute force your way through this level can even result in an early failure, skipping the section entirely but with some less than ideal consequences.
The branch's leader can only be located with one of three commander's special identity chips, each presiding over a wing of the base. There's an archivist of ancient tomes, a surgeon who cuts up supernatural bodies to try to better understand them, and a soldier who tests out vicious weapons in a shooting range. Worming your way between each, you get a better idea of the relationships between the base's elites, what each department is doing, and get to explore a bit deeper. You can, of course, inflict several ironic deaths and punishments in the process. It's extremely satisfying to quietly use vampire wiles to work through the base, feeding in quiet corners, unravelling hidden plans, and being a master of darkness.
It still manages to evoke a terrific sense of social (albeit superpowered) stealth.
Don't get me wrong, there's no way Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong's best level feels as slick as Hitman proper. It's all a bit too mechanical, a bit too fixed, but it is a wonderful showpiece for how quiet vampire infiltration could conceivably flourish, and it still manages to evoke a terrific sense of social (albeit superpowered) stealth. It's not the only time the Swansong plays in this space, either.
Galeb's opening mission is also electric, having him infiltrate an active crime scene to extract an asset too rich in vampire society knowledge to fall into human hands (lest the titular masquerade be broken). Calmly strutting in and using his Ventrue vampire clan powers to dominate the wills of the police force and pass himself off as an FBI investigator, he's able to run rings around the cops while commanding his way through the crime scene.
Similarly, one of Leysha's earlier missions has her infiltrating a crime scene as well, instead using her Malkavian vampire clan powers of deception to create illusory uniforms or fully duplicate identities to move through levels of security, from simple police officers to forensics. Also target-based, she has to discover where a fellow vampire went and ideally escape with her, meaning she has to stealthily follow threads of visions to unravel the events that happened. Swansong is mostly focused on putting together a delightfully compelling narrative RPG experience, but the bones are definitely in place for more social stealthing as well – I'd love to see this format revisited and expanded upon.
As a tabletop roleplaying game, there's a lot of different ways to play Vampire: The Masquerade, but with one of the core principles being upholding the secrecy of vampire society, it's always felt best to me when operating from the shadows. There's a lot of different ways to do that, of course – especially when it comes to adapting the setting for video games.
Personally, I've spent many hours crouch-walking through air ducts or silvertonguing my way through whatever I can in the classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, before suffering my way through its combat-heavy final hours. Likewise, the excellent text RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Night Road was a thrill when I was using my wits to complete each courier job, and in Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice, in VR, stalking the Venetian rooftops before my Dishonored-like stealth kills is incredibly satisfying when my glasses aren't fogging up.
Which does mean that purely action approaches just don't fit the bill as far as I'm concerned, and can result in some pretty rough experiences. I've got a soft spot for Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, but bashing through legions of foes in Diablo-like dungeons is as bizarre a choice now as it was then. So too am I baffled by Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 ridding itself of the original's admittedly clunky immersive sim DNA to go for a more linear combat-centric adventure (meaning you'd even stealth through some areas just to be told you can't progress until enemies in the area have been defeated).
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong definitely isn't perfect, but its real dedication to translating the TTRPG's rules, tone, and objective variety into a video game is admirable, and creates some seriously great social stealth scenarios in the process. VTM is a rich world that still has a lot of possibilities, but that doesn't mean devs working with the series need to go completely back to the drawing board. As far as I'm concerned, the blueprints for making the Vampire Hitman of my dreams are already there – I just hope they don't remain relegated to the shadows.
