One gears towards Victorian terror and the other brings us to the future. Vampyr and The Surge are two RPG titles coming next year. Check them out!
Focus Home Entertainment is betting strong for the RPG genre lately. One quick look over their portfolio shows the plethora of games that are about to come in the near future. If the other day we talked about how Call of Cthulhu has been confirmed for next year, we may as well talk today about two other interesting games in the pipeline: Vampyr and The Surge. The first one is developed by Dontnod Entertainment (aka the genius minds behind Life is Strange) while The Surge comes directly from the German studio Deck 13, responsible for Lords of the Fallen.
Both games share a similar genre and year of release although their ambiance proposals are quite different. The former is set in the dark London of the early 20th century while the latter looks clearly sci-fi in nature. Another thing they have in common: they both look absolutely gorgeous!
Yesterday, we got to see some new concept art concerning both games, which will suffice to keep our appetite awake as we receive more information in the following months.
Vampyr: The New Game from the Creators of Life is Strange
Dontnod Entertainment are changing themes and scope big time. Their next creation will be a role-playing adventure powered by the wonders of Unreal Engine 4. From the title we can guess the status quo or identity of the protagonist, Jonatahan E. Reid. Yes, he is a blood sucker and yes, he certainly has some vampiric lust of his own, which seems to be the central mechanic of the game. The story will be set in early 20th century Britain, a country ravaged by the Spanish flu and beating with disease.
Jonathan will be a sort of messenger or mercenary, completing missions and surviving the darkness of the city on his own. Eventually he will get hungry and we will need to go hunting with him, using the powers at our disposal. This includes interaction with the victims (to the point of changing their habits or wait for them in an empty street…), doses of seduction or just plain real-time combat. The game will also offer a deep crafting system that will enable us to craft and improve tools and also an assortment of weapons.
On top of that, Dontnod Entertainment is promising an immersive story where our actions will have consequences that will shape the world surrounding us. If they manage to follow what they already accomplished with the time-travel adventure presented in Life is Strange, is fair to expect good quality from Vampyr’s narrative side. Even if the topic of vampires in video games is not precisely new…
Vampyr is coming in 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
The Surge: Surfing a Heavily Dystopian Future
It has been already more than half a year since Deck 13 announced during Gamescom their new project. Back then they only confirmed the title and logo, the main story behind those and some art snippets here and there. After that they went back to development and kept the silence. This week we got to see new pictures of what looks like the main character.
The world of the game will offer a very grim vision of the world. The folks at Deck 13 follow the same approach of decay applied to society that Vampyr is also taking but they carry it into the future. The Earth is touching the end of its life and the ones who remain in the overpopulated cities must work to survive as social programs become saturated by an aging population and increasing environmental diseases. Sheltered by their exoskeletons, the workers of this new age are the last remnants of a civilization that seems doomed but still keeps on functioning at the verge of everything.
According to Focus Home Entertainment, The Surge will feature “innovative combat mechanics and an original character progression system based on modular upgrades gained through tight, visceral combat.” Some people have compared it already to Bioshock and Dark Souls, although Jan Klose, CEO and Creative Director of the studio, argued that the story may remind us of the Bioshock franchise, yes, although the gameplay will be something different. They have mentioned a melee arsenal and a lot of strategy for each hostile encounter. If you have played Lords of the Fallen then you know that these guys never take fights lightly… So we can expect some cool mechanics in The Surge as well.
The game will come in 2017 too although we still do not know for which platforms. We certainly hope it does not become a console exclusive!
[Sources: Official Websites for Vampyr and The Surge (still under construction)]
