Power of Choice in Gaming - “Vampyr”
“People will always believe in monsters. It’s easier than accepting their own darkness. We can all be monsters.”
No spoilers for Vampyr.
I believe it’s safe to say that we all hate the illusion of choice. Even more so when it comes to video games. Which is why my mind has been filled with thoughts about Vampyr.
Vampyr’s story begins with Johnathan Reid, (voiced by Anthony Howell) a renowned blood specialist, returning home from World War I to be met by two ill fates. The first, the Spanish Flu that is ravaging London. The second, being bit by a man, then being thrown in a mass grave.
Mary, (voiced by Rebecca Gethings) Johnathan’s sister, heard he was back in town and went looking for him. When she couldn’t find him, she went to the mass graves site, hoping to find him working at best or dead at worst. She finds him in a worse state than she could imagine.
Johnathon, shambling out of the hole is suffering of thirst when she embraces him. And he embraces her. Teeth to her neck, he drains the life out of the first person he could find. Only finding out who it was after the deed had been done. Having just killed his sister, Johnathan must flee from a group of militants who just saw what transpired.
To conclude our synopsis, a few more events transpire in the story, leading us to the real beginning of this game and this analysis. Johnathan at this point in the story is hired to attend to Pembooke Hospital as the hospital lead night doctor.
Johnathan is faced with a difficult decision. He’s a vampire now and needs blood to get stronger. A strength he will need to conquer the cities vampire hunters, discover the truths behind him being turned, and curing the Spanish Flu. However, he is still bound by his Hippocratic oath.
It is here that we make the decisions for the good doctor, to be lead by morality or be lured in by the temptations of power.
Let’s begin with the game mechanics that drive the choices we will make in this game.
Blood Quality
Each citizen of London, patient, and staff member of the hospital have a certain level of blood quality. Blood quality is an important mechanic because blood is what gives Johnathan the ability to enhance his vampire powers, to level up, to get stronger. As he learns more about the people of London, their blood quality increases, providing more experience to enhance his abilities.
Difficulty
To make this temptation even worse, this game is by no means easy. It takes a Souls-like approach to its difficulty and it only becomes harder as the game goes on. If you chose not to feed upon the people of London, you will be left with a very minimal skill set to rely on. Making each loading screen upon death a moment to sit there and contemplate what harm just a little bite could do.
Sickness
Consuming the citizens of London is not the only way to level up. You can gain experience through combat. So, you’re probably thinking “Well, if I want to be ‘the good doctor’ and not consume anyone, I can just grind out the enemies and gain experience.” And that’s true, you can do that… for a time.
To level up, you must sleep and spending your experience on even a single ability progresses the game a day forward in time. In this time, diseases will spread from citizen to citizen. This does a few things.
If they weren’t sick the day before, they will have the first level of that sickness. Anyone that was sick will have their sickness advanced to the next level. Crafting the cure for the first level of disease is slightly easier, it only needs fairly common materials and a few rarer ones. However, if you are stuck in the early parts of the game, those rarer materials will be hard to come by, if at all.
Sometimes, they can even come down with an illness you don’t have the ability to craft the cure for. You have to find the recipe for that sickness in later parts of the game.
If you allow any individuals sickness to advance too far, they will die. You must be able to craft the cures.
To make things even more pressing, citizens that are sick have reduced blood quality. Meaning that even if you do give up and decide to feed, you will have diminished returns on experience.
Mesmerize
In order to feed on each citizen, you must be at their mesmerization level. A level that only improves with story progression. If you are not at their level and they are sick, you risk that citizen dying and you not receiving any experience from them anyway. This system also works hand in hand with blood quality. A lot of the lower quality citizens have lower mesmerization levels. So, even if you do feed, you still won’t get a lot of experience, even less so if they are sick.
Social Circles
Not everyone you will meet in this game is a great person, some people are pretty despicable. You, the player, will be fighting your own temptations from feeding on them if you want to save everyone. To a degree, you may even feel that you may cast judgement upon them. You will start to feel like you can just feed upon all the terrible people and leave the good people.
Except these actions will also have consequences. Feeding on bad people may lead to unfortunate circumstances for the good people that were in that persons life.
It may lead to them becoming sick, them dying, or something much worse.
District Stability
To capstone all of this: as citizens become more sick, as they die, or as they are fed upon, the district becomes less stable. If you allow this stability to drop enough, the whole district will become hostile and every citizen will die. Preventing you from saving them as well as feeding on them.
The Power of Choice
Now that we’ve covered the mechanics, let’s talk about what I love about Vampyr, the power of choice.
Your ending in Vampyr as you would imagine is completely determinate on the amount of people who are alive by the end of the game. The best ending comes from allowing no one to die. Which may feel like it’s in opposition to this analysis’ whole theme, choice. It may feel like it’s an illusion of choice. If you feel that way, you are correct.
“If I want the good ending, if I want to be good, then every single citizen in this game must live. There’s not a single decision I can make for any of them, I can’t kill them, I can’t allow them to die.”
But is that not a choice itself? Are you not deciding that you want the good ending? Well, if you are, I guess that murderer, that abuser, that cheater, that liar, every despicable character must not die by your actions or your inaction. That’s the choice you’ve made.
Maybe the choice you’ve made is to take your vengeance out only on those you believe deserve it. You won’t get the best ending, but it’s still the choice you’ve made.
Or maybe, you’ve entered such a dark place that nobody is deserving of your grace and all you want is power. So, you feed on everyone, satiating your thirst for power. That is the choice you’ve made.
The beauty of Vampyr isn’t that it’s some masterful action RPG that has the best writing on the planet and doesn’t railroad its story or ending. The beauty of Vampyr isn’t the choices you make in the game, it’s the choices you make outside of it.
Vampyr is the illusion of choice. However, at the end of its narrative, the only thing you will have to look back on is the choices you’ve made outside of the game that lead to your actions within it.
So, What Did You Do?
I admittedly have not been in a great place recently. Between worldly affairs, the stressors that come with moving, and a sprinkling of personal decision, my mental health has been a bit wonky.
I knew a lot about this games mechanics from previous attempts to play it. I never finished the game until this most recent playthrough. But I knew what the game was and how it worked.
And I knew at this point in my life, I needed something to take out all my bad thoughts on, but in a constructive way.
My Jonathan Reid became consumed with power. The moment I maxed out the blood quality on my first citizen, I fed on them. I fed on everyone I could at my current mesmerization level the moment I maxed out their blood quality and cured their sicknesses. And I kept doing this until there was no one left. I fed upon my friends in the game. I fed upon people that were upstanding citizens. I fed on everyone.
I then leveled up and got these incredibly powerful abilities that I would then abuse on whatever enemies had the nerve to challenge me.
And it felt good and I felt strong, I felt like I had taken back control over the monsters in my life by becoming one in a video game. And as the credits rolled, I felt empty. Not from the usual hollowness you get when something you enjoyed ends.
I felt empty because I try to be a good person in games and in life. My first playthrough of a game is usually the good ending, but this time, it wasn’t. I sat there with my decisions, watching names on a screen, wishing I had done things differently, in game. In life.
Playing Vampyr the way I did, when I did was an eye opener to just how much poison I was harboring and I’m glad I was able to release it in this way.
I plan to do another playthrough of Vampyr, but this time, I am deciding to do things right. It may be hard and I might get frustrated, but I feel I owe it to this game for helping me collect myself during a hard time.
Reader, the greatest lesson Vampyr has to teach you is the power of choice, to fight of the tempting allure of power, and to be weary of the fact that killing is easier than healing.