Vampyr, Life is Strange developer Dontnod's vampire RPG, will release on June 5, 2018, the studio announced today. After being pushed back to spring 2018 last September, the updated release date was revealed in the latest and final installment of "Dontnod Presents Vampyr," a series of deep-dive dev diaries exploring Vampyr's themes and inspirations.
The final diary, titled "Stories from the Dark," is more nebulous than previous episodes and looks at the challenges and opportunities unique to videogame storytelling. "What does it mean to stage a scene where the audience is the main character?" asks game director Philippe Moreau, alluding to the closeness of the theater and the agency of games. This one doesn't tell us as much about Vampyr as previous episodes, but it's still filled with interesting conversations. Give it a watch:
The first episode of the series looked closely at protagonist Jonathan Reid; the second, Vampyr's environment and sound design; and the third, how Jonathan can save or kill citizens to affect the story. I'm partial to the third myself, in which Dontnod explains how Jonathan can feed on citizens to strengthen his abilities and improve the potency of each feeding by getting to know his prey beforehand, which sounds like a cool, bittersweet way to mix Vampyr's RPG and moral choice systems.
