STACK #164 June 2018

GAMES FEATURE

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At Vampyr 's core is the moral dilemma of a doctor that becomes a vampire – how can you possibly do no harm with a thirst for blood surging within you? Words Alesha Kolbe monsters Here there be

A s a doctor, you have a sworn oath to do no harm. As a vampire – well, in order to survive you must feast on blood. This moral dilemma is at the heart of Vampyr , the latest from DONTNOD studios, creators of Life is Strange . We threw a few questions at Stephane Beauverger, narrative director on the title, to find out what we can expect from the new game. Vampyr follows the story

Stephane Beauverger Narrative Director

of Jonathan Reid, a practising doctor who must come to terms with his new affliction: vampirism. Torn between his Hippocratic Oath to serve the people and his thirst for blood, Jonathan must struggle to find his way in the plague-ravaged city of London, England. According to Beauverger, the game has been in development for three and a half years, and the team decided on vampires because they are ”among the coolest monsters to play, and there are already too many games about zombies.” Right from the beginning of development, the team wanted the moral dilemma surrounding the protagonist’s profession and his thirst for blood to be the driving force behind the story.

symbol of dualism for us. Plus, by giving the main character a strong scientific background, it was even more interesting to put him in the unpleasant situation of discovering that darkness exists, supernatural creatures too, and that the challenging concept of doomed immortality may be something he has to wrap his mind around.” Beauverger notes that DONTNOD had more than one reason for setting the game after the outbreak of the Spanish Flu at the beginning of the 20th Century. ”First of all, we wanted an era when science is making huge progress, when people believed

You could say that often the question will be: who will I kill and who will I spare?

”Since we wanted to approach the theme of the vampire through the prism of duality and moral challenge, to create a vampire doctor who has vowed to save lives and is now compelled to take them was a perfect

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JUNE 2018

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