Vampire the Masquerade: Eternal Whispers might be my new obsession.

I have a long standing obsession with RPGs and vampire stories. For my money, one of the greatest games of the turn of the century was Troika Games’ messy, but beloved, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

A quarter-of-a-century later, the art collective ZA/UM would release Disco Elysium, a role-playing game that was not only one of the best written and designed games of that year, but perhaps of all time.

To say I was intrigued when the trailer for “Vampire the Masquerade: Eternal Whispers” came across my feed would be an understatement. The visual language of the game immediately evokes Elysium, but the strong art direction depicting a Montreal inhabited by the impossibly cool and tragically forsaken sets Eternal Whispers apart as its own Beast.

Developer Flyos has done prior work in the World of Darkness, producing VtM:Chapters, a board game that clearly has a lot of love and care put into the materials, as well as Werewolf: the Apocalypse, a table top dungeon-crawler in the more lupine corner of the setting.

Whispers is the studio’s first foray into video games, although they appear to have been well connected to that industry, having also produced an adaptation of publishing giant Ubisoft’s Rayman franchise.

Eternal Whispers shares its Montreal setting with the Chapters boardgame, which is also the city that Flyos calls home. Anyone who has found themselves running a tabletop game of VtM as a Storyteller knows all too well how easy it becomes to create the dark and hidden lore of your hometown when given those keys, and one could hope that inspiration will bleed through into the game.

If it sounds like I’m hunting for reasons to be excited, it is because I am. As popular as Vampire the Masquerade has become since its release in 1991, I must admit it has never had a true and unqualified home-run in the digital space. Bloodlines has required significant work over the decades from an Unofficial Patch to fix some of the lingering technical issues from that games troubled development. Last years Bloodlines 2 was seen by many fans as too significant a departure from the original game to be a true successor, and had some pretty rough edges of its own (although I will admit to being very positive on it, for my part). Other games in the setting have been text-based or more linear narrative-first experiences with mixed receptions.

While Eternal Whispers says it will not have traditional combat encounters (another page from Elysium’s book), player skills and abilities will have a significant impact on how the game plays out. Being designed with a “fail-forward” philosophy, the developer explains:

“Botched negotiations, broken promises, missed clues and reckless decisions do not stop progression, they transform the narrative, opening new consequences, tensions and paths through the story. Every success has a cost and every failure leaves a scar“

This is exactly the kind of gameplay I go nuts for. Flyos is speaking to me in my mother tongue, and it sounds great. Am I being snowed? Only time will tell, but from Flyos’s obvious love and familiarity with the material and publisher Kwalee’s track record of picking and supporting winners, I have confidence. I think in these early days signs point not to a sewer rat, but instead a well-bred, bloody vintage for us to feast on when Eternal Whispers finds its way to release.