Life is Strange 2 looks to be a very interesting game- which is what you would expect from Dontnod after how deftly they handled the original. Everything we know about it seems engaging- it follows the story of two Hispanic brothers on the run across the American west coast, as they try to make it to Mexico in search of a better life. We’ve even seen some of what the gameplay will be like.

But for all that we know of the game, what we don’t know about is the supernatural power or hook. The original Life is Strange had its protagonist, Max, being able to turn back time. We have already been promised that Life is Strange 2 will have a power, too- but we have also categorically not been told what that might be.

“There is, there will be a supernatural element in Life is Strange 2 for sure, but as with Life is Strange the power, or supernatural element, is linked directly to the story and the heart of the character, so for us it’s not cool stuff to do, but maybe a metaphor, a way to show something in Life is Strange,” Life is Strange 2 writer Jean-Luc Cano told GameReactor. 

When asked if it will be an actual gameplay mechanic, like the time turning was in the first game, he said, “You will see, but what I can tell you is in Life is Strange, Max didn’t want to grow up, so her power to rewind time and change her choices was directly linked to what she is. In Life is Strange 2 we keep that in mind and change it a little bit. Life is Strange 2 is about education and brotherhood, so the power to deal with it on narrative… stuff. But you will discover it by yourself.”

It sounds super intriguing for sure- I wonder what it is, and I hope it is as compelling as turning back time in the original game was (which managed to add such a great spin to the usual cinematic adventure game formula). That said, as I have said before multiple times, Dontnod did so well with the original game that they have the benefit of the doubt on this one. Life is Strange 2‘s first episode launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 27.

Focus Home Interactive and Dontnod’s action RPG based on vampires, called… Vampyr… apparently turned out to be a success for the both of them. Focus Home Interactive announced that the game has sold 450,000 copies across the PS4, Xbox One, and PC worldwide in its first month on the market. Given that they once said that the game would need to sell 500,000 copies to turn a profit, it seems like it is off to a rousing start for them already.

Of course, the success should not have come as a surprise to anyone- the game ended up reviewing well, and ended up charting well in France, Germany, and the UK. Presumably, it did well in the US too, though we won’t know until we have the official NPD numbers for the month on hand.

If you haven’t already, do go ahead and check out Vampyr. It’s totally unlike anything Dontnod has done before, and most of it works very, very well. It’s available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Dontnod’s Vampyr hasn’t really offered much by way of hooks thus far and it’s out this Spring. Still, the Life is Strange studio should have something interesting to sink our teeth into and the latest episode of the game’s webseries seems to provide that.

In this third episode, Dontnod talks about the various non playable characters that inhabit 1918 London. Each citizen is hand-crafted and unique, making the various districts even more distinct in their identity. However, the various NPCs have a deeper purpose – by killing and feeding on them, protagonist Jonathan Raid can grow stronger and unlock new powers.

The more you learn about them and build relationships, the higher the XP gain. However, there are consequences to killing people, above all the fact that you won’t see them again. If you’ve grown close to a particular character, it can be difficult to suddenly farm them for XP. It also doesn’t help that killing citizens will reduce a district’s status, eventually resulting in all kinds of monstrosities running amok.

Vampyr is in development for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. It still doesn’t have a release date but we’re looking forward to it. What are your thoughts? Let us know below.

While we still don’t know a ton about Dontnod’s next project in Vampyr, we have gotten a bit of information about the title in the last few months. What we do know is that the game takes place in the year 1918 and centers around a main character who is a doctor trying to save people from the scourge of the Spanish Flu.

It turns out there are things more dangerous than the flu in London around this time, as the main character  Jonathan Reid, is attacked and turned into a vampire. The rest of the game appears to be the struggle the doctor goes through as he fights other vampires, and his sudden undying needs.

The game, created by the same people who developed Life is Strange, has a brand new video that is airing as part of IGN’s FIRST program.You can check out the video below and wait for more information, including when we can expect Vampyr to be released.

GamingBolt recently had a sit down on the E3 show floor with Dontnod Entertainment’s Stéphane Beauverger, Narrative Director, and Gregory Szcuz, Art Director to talk about the direction they’ve decided to send the player down in this intriguing new game Vampyr:

"We are about asking tough questions and putting the player in front of strong, difficult moral choices. And the setting lent itself to those kind of tough questions."

Vampyr is a very strong departure from the likes of Remember Me and Life is Strange. What inspired its creation?

Each time we try to create a new game we want to first create a universe. This is the first time we went to the Gothic atmosphere. After sci-fi we wanted to go to a more classic universe genre.

We are about asking tough questions and putting the player in front of strong, difficult moral choices. And the setting lent itself to those kind of tough questions.

The decision making forms a very strong part of Vampyr as anyone in the game can be feasted on. Can you tell us about some of the consequences this can have on the overall story?

On the overall story no because that would be giving you a major spoiler. But what I can assure you is that you will have to make your decision on two different levels. You will be frequently asked to make a choice – a major killing choice. This will have a big influence on the main storyline. On a smaller level you can decide to kill any civilian in the game. Each time you take a life it will have impacted somehow in London’s ecosystem, on the friends, on the family members of the deceased.

The theme of duality is interesting, especially when it determines one’s eventual fate. How do you approach that balance of humanity and vampirism from a gameplay perspective while still presenting plenty of choice?

We are trying to give incentives to the player. It’s easy to take life and reap strong rewards from it. As you progress through the city you will see the consequences of your choices. While you grow stronger the city might be getting weaker. It’s about balance.

Similar to Life is Strange, will we come across any decisions that we may not want to make but have to for some greater good?

It will be different from Life is Strange because you can test different options to see what will be the consequence and then go back and make your final choice. In Vampyr it’s exactly the contrary – you can’t go back. Once you decide to kill someone you have to face the consequences. If you kill blind – if you kill someone without first investigating on him – or just kill someone at random you can’t have a clue. If you take time to observe, ask questions, find all the clues about your possible target, do you know who your target is whoever he might be, a good guy, a bad guy, a shady character, then you can decide. Once you’ve got all the clues on someone you can make a more clear decision.

Once it’s done it’s done.

"You have to get into some places where you have no choice but to exert some violence on some people."

So can this end certain storylines?

Yes. They are done according to the level of damnation you reached throughout the game.

Can you go further on the branching dialog we’ve seen in the demo?

For each dialogue there is not just one branch. You can have many choices during a dialogue. There is some questions you can just ask once. If you don’t give the wanted answer you will never get another shot with that, because you can piss off another character who will never talk to you again.

When you arrive at a district you’re faced with the continuity of people, it depends on who you approach first, which stance you take with each one, and then what do you do with them? Do you help them? Do you kill them? so there are many ways to have things branching besides just the dialogue.

What can you tell us about the combat in the game? If the only method to leveling up is by feasting on a victim, what benefits are there to violence?

You have to get into some places where you have no choice but to exert some violence on some people. You get some experience too from fighting. Feeding on people is the major way to get experience and get stronger, but you get some through fighting.

There is an important aspect of that, you are the hunted. The vampire hunters are searching for you. Most of the time you will not start the fight, they are trying to find you to the story. So you have to survive their violence because they think you are the monster.

Can you tell us about the various vampiric powers that you can use? We know about the Spring ability, which allows players to charge across gaps quickly, and Mesmerize which can be used to trick weaker targets.

Different trees which explore different facets of your new vampire nature. You can specialize in something more instinctive about the violence. You can manipulate, smoke and shadows too.

If you decide to choose to play as a blood vampire, I would say to impact your blood or the blood of your enemies. If you decide to play as a shadow vampire you may try to use the mist to remain discreet, to deceive your enemies and to attack them by surprise. And if you choose to follow the beast, the instinct branch.

You’re more brutal. Yes, yes. You’re a more brutal creature. This is how you will express different ways of acting as a vampire.

"For example it will be possible to try and kill no one in the game, but that’s very, very difficult. So I think that will be for re-run."

Is the open ended nature and style of the gameplay inspired by Deus Ex in any way, especially with regards to what kind of vampire you want to be?

Exactly. The different ending of the game will be directly linked to the level of damnation you reach. You will not be able to choose the ending, it will be played to you because it is the logical consequence of what you did throughout the story.

What can you tell us about the game’s scope? How large will London be and how long of an experience can players expect?

You will visit many different districts of London. You will not be able to go to everywhere in London; we choose a different part of town that is very interesting, and very different at the time. The docks. You can freely go in all these parts of town except for a few parts of them which are locked until you reach the chosen part of the storyline.

Will there be multiple endings to incentivize replaying the story?

Yes, of course. For example it will be possible to try and kill no one in the game, but that’s very, very difficult. So I think that will be for re-run. Most of the players will try to play as the good vampire — only when they’ve tried to master the game enough – since the more you kill citizens the more experience points you get, the stronger you will get. So if you want to have it easier game just kill a lot of people. If you want to play as a humanist vampire, trying to kill no one, but that will be very difficult because you will not have a lot of experience points, so you will kind of feeble against your enemies.

It’s not a last-minute death bed repentance where you can switch gears at the end – it’s about what you did all along the game.

 When can we expect Vampyr to release for PS4, Xbox One and PC?

Sometime in 2017. We can’t be more specific.

Okay this is a big one. I am kind of confident that the game will run at 1080p on the PS4. But what about the Xbox One? Can Xbox One players expect native 1080p resolution?

We are not going for any downgrade on the Xbox One.

There has been a lot of talk regarding Xbox One’s eSRAM as the major culprit behind the lack of 1080p resolution. Do you think things are stable and developers have been able to overcome it now?

Okay. That is a very specific and technical question. We do not have a developer at hand to answer that right now about the eSRAM. But I can say that we are past the major hurdles developing the game on Xbox One. Right now it’s Okay.

Fresh off the success of Life is Strange, DONTNOD is moving in a different direction with their next game, though it’s going to have the aspect of choice built in considering that’s becoming the developers’ trademark. Vampyr is going to be plenty story driven, though there will apparently be more of a focus on action and adventure. Not quite open world, there will apparently be a bit more direction from the players than there was in Life is Strange as well.

Examiner.com recently spoke with DONTNOD Stéphane Beauverger, the game’s narrative director and he laid out the two main ways in which players will be able to make decisions in the game.

“There are two important ways that the players can change the world and the storyline. First, each time the player decides to embrace a Citizen, it will affect the relatives and friends of the victim in a meaningful way. This is a constant choice the player will have to make: who to kill and who to spare. The second way to make choices is through the main storyline: the player will regularly be asked to resolve more significant situations, and the way he resolves these will impact the world and the final destiny of London and of the Hero,” Beauverger said.

The studio says there will be obvious ways to tell when a choice the player makes directly changes what’s going to go on in the rest of the RPG. Vampyr doesn’t have an official release date but it is expected on the PS4, Xbox One and PC sometime in 2017.

Dontnod Entertainment, fresh off the high of last year’s excellent Life is Strange, have revealed their new game, and it’s a bit of a departure from their previous works- Vampyr is an action RPG, as opposed to the kind of narrative adventure games that the studio has put out before.

Equally surprising is the fact that the game isn’t open world- in an era when most games, and especially most RPGs, are tending towards offering open worlds and sandboxes, it’s surprising to see Vampyr buck the trend. The reason for this, however, is that Dontnod hope to make Vapyr exactly the kind of narrative focused outing that their other games have been.

“The more you create an open world, the less the storyline will be important for the player,”Dontnod’s Stéphane Beauverger said in an interview with GameReactor. “For example, I really like games like Skyrim, but really there is so much things to do that your main quest it’s just really a secondary quest finally. The most important thing is what you’ll do in this world.

“Dontnod likes to create strong characters with strong fates and destinies, and to control that we have to, a few times, guide the player throughout a process of discovering things. So there is freedom of movement and there is freedom to go where you want in the game we created, but you cannot go freely wherever you want, there are some parts of the game that will be unlocked only when we want it.”

This does make sense- with rare exceptions, games that have gone open world have been criticized for a dilution of their emphasis on storytelling. Xenoblade Chronicles X and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain are two very prominent examples from last year.

Plus, it sounds rather exciting, to have a major new game come up that tries to offer player agency in ways other than an open world, existing sorely to give the illusion of choice. I can’t wait to see how Dontnod go about this.