The tabletop-inspired action RPGVampire: The Masqueradehas found its way onto video game screens in a number of different guises. From Nihilistic Software’s 2000 titleVampire: The Masquerade – Redemptionto the yet-to-be-releasedVampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, theWorld of Darkness’sbloodsucking tabletop RPG has had a long and tumultuous history of video game adaptions. Centering around the exploits of vampires in a 21st-century setting,Vampire: The Masqueradegamesusually let players create their own characters and choose their clan affiliations as they set out to lead a life of bloodsucking and mayhem.
One of the central RPG elements of the games is often the morality system. Giving players options like where they get their next meal from to how completely they want to abandon their humanity,Vampire: The Masqueradepresents interesting moral quandariesthat are inextricably linked to the reality of being a vampiric creature in a world filled with humans. The Humanity system featured in the games would also translate well to other titles, even if they don’t center on a set of vampires, and should be adopted by more games.
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Moral Choices In Vampire: The Masquerade
Vampire: The Masqueradehighlights the moral gray areasof living as a vampire in a predominantly human society. The entire ethos of the games is that vampires have certain rules in place to avoid detection and potential persecution from humans, and if players step too far out of line, there are vampires and humans alike that will hunt them down and punish them. Nevertheless, vampires aren’t really the rule-following sort, and there are plenty of opportunities to push the boundaries while still living under the radar.
Games likeVampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlinesput players in a position where they’re already living as lethal creatures capable of great violence; the player just has to decide how far they’re willing to go. In line with their dark settings, the games exist in a world that is far from black and white, and even characters that might aspire to maintain a sense of “goodness” still have to face up to the truth of their vampiric condition and what it takes to keep themselves alive.
In the games, players have humanity points, which can be lost or gained depending on their actions and choices. If gamers start getting a lower humanity score, then dialogue options can change and their responses become unavoidably more aggressive. They will also run the risk of triggering a kind of bloodlust that could see them indulge in a killing spree. Losing all humanity points works in the same way as losing all masquerade points, andwill result inVampire: The Masqueradeendingas the player transforms into a violent, mindless beast.
Morality In Video Games
The choices between killing innocents, draining humans fully of their blood, just taking a tipple, or choosing instead to use blood bags areall aspects ofVampire: The Masquerade’s world. Players can be cruel and heartless or simply manipulative and self-serving. However, the most interesting part of the game’s moral choices is the consequences. Players don’t just get a slap on the wrist for indulging in some gory carnage – they can actually bring their playthrough to an end. These aspects fit in well with an immersive role-playing experience, but they also offer up really fascinating opportunities for other games that want to explore morally ambiguous worlds.
Morality in video games is nothing new.TheMass Effecttrilogy has its Renegade and Paragon system, the Telltale series is riddled with moral quandaries with real consequences, and theBioShockgames are full of questions about what it means to be moral. TheFablegames even take this a step further, making moral choices both big and small drastically change the player’s appearance in-game to reflect their alignment.
Still, while lots of games explore morality or have their own fairly linear systems of good options and bad options, not many of them have dire consequences for going too far one way.InVampire: The Masqueradeit can be difficult to be well-behavedand extremely fun to embrace the darkness, but players need to learn how to navigate the layered and (in a certain sense) stringent society, or else risk being banished from it. In games that usually embrace violence without any meaningful consequences, this could be a meaningful addition to help add complexity to their in-game worlds.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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