So the upcoming Werewolf game looks pretty bad.

[Nick Calandra]

Yea, don't get your hopes about this one. Saw it at E3 last year and the combat alone looked absolutely terrible.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I mean, to be fair, that does sound pretty authentic to Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Except the angry bearded dude should be a neo-Nazi or something.

Hey now, I heard the MC is supposed to be Fianna, not Get.

So he should be an IRA bomber.

 

[happyninja42]

I mean, to be fair, that does sound pretty authentic to Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Except the angry bearded dude should be a neo-Nazi or something.

There was SO much more to the werewolf story than just tearing into things.

 

[ObsidianJones]

Here's the thing.

Us World of Darkness peeps have been drooling since we've seen Masquerade 2. And that looked stellar.

Why would anyone in charge of these ips look at the reception of Masq 2 and then think this would be good enough to move products anywhere near Masq 2's release?

Mobile Phone Games Don't Look Like This Any More!

 

[Kae]

Oh my!

I must confess I hadn't actually looked at the trailer until now, but that looks hideous, the art direction is pretty lacklustre, and the graphics seem like below par but the most egregious thing are the animations, wow, those are so awful and amateurish they would look rough on a PS2 game.

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah, that doesn't look particularly interesting. Even if you want to play as a Werewolf, I know there have got to be better games out there.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Thaluikhain]

There was SO much more to the werewolf story than just tearing into things.

Yeah, there's having normal humans and normal wolves/dogs in your family tree, and how that happens.

 

[stroopwafel]

The problem with Werewolves, to me anyway, is that they are not very subtle nor conducive to any great ambiguity. You are either a normal human (maybe with some extra strength, wind sniffing and such) or you are an unbridled, uncontrollable force of nature murder machine. There's a reason why traditional werewolf stories tend to focus on the victims of the werewolf, those who have to defend themselves against a savage beast unstoppable by normal means and not the savage beast who instinctively murders everything that crosses its path.

Unlike vampires there's no great moral dilemma, no social danger or tragedy (or rather, some werewolf stories are tragedies about loss of control but those would make for terrible games). Werewolves are a representation of mans bestiality, of what happens if we let our base instincts override our civilized minds, and as such they aren't very great protagonists, nor are they very deep in terms of storytelling. W:tA, as much as it tries to reframe Werewolves into noble eco-terrorists, still has to deal with the problem that a Werewolf is a hulking representation of feral rage and that doesn't lend itself to nuance. As has been noted in this thread, W:tA campaigns tend to devolve into "I go Crinos" and then the murder train leaves the station.

I mean, Skyrim probably get as close as possible to how a decent Werewolf game could play out, and even then it is basically just a shapeshift with some additional perks to unlock. As the basis for a standalone game, you'd probably need a rather braindead FPS/TPS that really leans into the camp for it all the work.

That one quest with the werewolf in Witcher 3 was pretty good though. I always liked a jackyll & hyde theme with a werewolf. Where for example one afflicted with this particular condition is just as much a victim as the victims of the werewolf. Like for example one part of the game have you experience it as a fever dream as the werewolf and then the next part as the host having to suffer the consequences and be on the run or look for a cure or something. I don't think loss of control would make for a terrible game as it could be split in different experiences as making the player just as confused as the host like some kind of inverse nightmare reality. Such a set-up could also compliment action and exploration really well without feeling disjointed or breaking the pace. Would be particularly cool in some kind of gothic setting.

 

[BrawlMan]

The problem with Werewolves, to me anyway, is that they are not very subtle nor conducive to any great ambiguity. You are either a normal human (maybe with some extra strength, wind sniffing and such) or you are an unbridled, uncontrollable force of nature murder machine. There's a reason why traditional werewolf stories tend to focus on the victims of the werewolf, those who have to defend themselves against a savage beast unstoppable by normal means and not the savage beast who instinctively murders everything that crosses its path.

Unlike vampires there's no great moral dilemma, no social danger or tragedy (or rather, some werewolf stories are tragedies about loss of control but those would make for terrible games). Werewolves are a representation of mans bestiality, of what happens if we let our base instincts override our civilized minds, and as such they aren't very great protagonists, nor are they very deep in terms of storytelling. W:tA, as much as it tries to reframe Werewolves into noble eco-terrorists, still has to deal with the problem that a Werewolf is a hulking representation of feral rage and that doesn't lend itself to nuance. As has been noted in this thread, W:tA campaigns tend to devolve into "I go Crinos" and then the murder train leaves the station.

I mean, Skyrim probably get as close as possible to how a decent Werewolf game could play out, and even then it is basically just a shapeshift with some additional perks to unlock. As the basis for a standalone game, you'd probably need a rather braindead FPS/TPS that really leans into the camp for it all the work.

While you have your points, you can have a sympathetic werewolf or one with ambiguity. You just have to be good or at least comptent with the writing. Fall in to the right hands that care, and not just copy countless cliches from others. If it can be done vampires, demons, and succubi, then werewolves can be done too.

That one quest with the werewolf in Witcher 3 was pretty good though. I always liked a jackyll & hyde theme with a werewolf. Where for example one afflicted with this particular condition is just as much a victim as the victims of the werewolf. Like for example one part of the game have you experience it as a fever dream as the werewolf and then the next part as the host having to suffer the consequences and be on the run or look for a cure or something. I don't think loss of control would make for a terrible game as it could be split in different experiences as making the player just as confused as the host like some kind of inverse nightmare reality. Such a set-up could also compliment action and exploration really well without feeling disjointed or breaking the pace. Would be particularly cool in some kind of gothic setting.

Excellent example. One of my favorite sympathetic werewolves in gaming is Jon Talbain. Plus, it's just fun playing a Jeet Kun Do werewolf. Awesome, silly, and bad ass all at the same time.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Drathnoxis]

Looks pretty sick, my man. Gnarly!

 

[stroopwafel]

I think the great problem in making a game about a Werewolf were loss of control is an important theme is that you wouldn't really play the Werewolf, you would play the person fighting back against the Werewolf. As you said, that can be a really cool premise but it also means that the best way to portray the Werewolf is to never let the player control the Werewolf. In essence, it'd be more of a personal horror game.

Yeah, but you could link the werewolf and the host together like for example with an insanity meter. First you transform into a werewolf and some meter starts to build up that is then directed to human targets to slow the meter down. Otherwise the meter splashes and damages the werewolf's health bar. You could like retrospectively explain it as the tissue of the werewolf starting to eat itself when not giving in to the beast's rage. Then the host will be just as much victim as the werewolf and you could neatly separate the game into horror based melee combat and exploration based ranged combat. Then as the game progresses the situation could start to escalate as stronger and stronger adversaries are being sent at both the person and the werewolf and then ultimately mix the gameplay styles up. As a player you could then choose to embrace or renounce the werewolf by for example having the choice to play through a section during the day or night. Like either having control over the werewolf or being caged at night. But either way you'd have to fight stronger and stronger adversaries or keep an as low profile as possible to emphasize more exploration based gameplay.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The old world of darkness, in general, had a very punk aesthetic. Each game kind of put its own spin on that, VtM was less punk and more goth. Mage had a kind of cyberpunk theme with the characters being outcasts on the fringes of a world where the technocracy had essentially already won. Changeling was gay, and thus actually good.

Werewolf has by far the most dated manifestation of punk aesthetic, it equates a superficial rebellious ultra-90s punk/grunge visual style, extremely trite Captain-Planet-esque environmentalism and new age appropriation of indigenous culture and spirituality into one garbled mess. Literally none of these elements have held up, and while the other games basically had enough material to adapt. Werewolf is basically left with nothing.

Pentex being the literal manifestation of an evil spiritual force seems incredibly naive in a world where real corporations are killing the planet through simple human greed and indifference. Environmentalism is no longer restricted to fringe activists in dirty band T-shirts living on the margins of society, and that depiction is now kind of insulting to a very real problem all of us have to deal with. Finally, while indigenous people have often been on the frontline of environmental conflicts, people adopting indigenous spiritual practices (or mangled stereotypical versions thereof) as a way of demonstrating environmental credentials or being closer to nature is, for very good reasons, far less acceptable.

Add to this that werewolf's writing was prone to the edgiest fucking shit even in the old world of darkness, where edgy shit was the norm, and you have a franchise which is very difficult to salvage without basically ripping out and replacing its heart, which seems to be kind of what they've done here. The result is extremely generic, because having it not be generic would date it massively.

 

[immortalfrieza]

The problem with Werewolves, to me anyway, is that they are not very subtle nor conducive to any great ambiguity. You are either a normal human (maybe with some extra strength, wind sniffing and such) or you are an unbridled, uncontrollable force of nature murder machine. There's a reason why traditional werewolf stories tend to focus on the victims of the werewolf, those who have to defend themselves against a savage beast unstoppable by normal means and not the savage beast who instinctively murders everything that crosses its path.

Unlike vampires there's no great moral dilemma, no social danger or tragedy (or rather, some werewolf stories are tragedies about loss of control but those would make for terrible games). Werewolves are a representation of mans bestiality, of what happens if we let our base instincts override our civilized minds, and as such they aren't very great protagonists, nor are they very deep in terms of storytelling. W:tA, as much as it tries to reframe Werewolves into noble eco-terrorists, still has to deal with the problem that a Werewolf is a hulking representation of feral rage and that doesn't lend itself to nuance. As has been noted in this thread, W:tA campaigns tend to devolve into "I go Crinos" and then the murder train leaves the station.

I mean, Skyrim probably get as close as possible to how a decent Werewolf game could play out, and even then it is basically just a shapeshift with some additional perks to unlock. As the basis for a standalone game, you'd probably need a rather braindead FPS/TPS that really leans into the camp for it all the work.

The problem isn't werewolves, it's that people who make games out of them are too lazy and apathetic to do anything worthwhile with them and thus just turn them into "braindead FPS/TPS" because it takes less effort. There are, I don't know, 2000 different versions of vampires that run the spectrum from completely mindless monsters to basically humans but much better. They can do the same thing with werewolves until they are narratively convenient but rarely is any attempt made.

For instance, suppose we had a werewolf game where the players is human during the day, turn at night, and have to kill and eat something or someone every night or you'll lose control and start randomly attacking everyone and everything. The more and better prey you eat the stronger you get. You can eat animals to stave it off but get next to no strength boost, or you can eat humans for a much larger boost but you have to hide the fact that you did it or it'll get harder and harder to get to prey and eventually you'll get hunters and mobs after you that get more and more difficult to deal with until you get killed. Maybe one could throw in a bit of morality into there and have you be a private eye who uses evidence and their enhanced senses to hunt down murderers and such to eat relatively guilt free.

On top of that, you have to keep other supernaturals out of your territory. Vampires, other werewolves, zombies, etc you have to hunt down and take care of one way or another or they'll rile up the populace and make things harder for you. You can talk most down, kill them, eat them...

Not to mention gameplaywise focusing on the hunting aspect. You not only have to find optimal prey but you have to find ways to isolate them so your act isn't witnessed, put down traps or drive them into harmful terrain, and then find ways to hide the fact that they've been eaten by a werewolf in your human guise in the morning. Maybe you could get bonuses for scaring the ever loving crap out of them before you kill them too.

...And that's just what came to mind immediately for me. Point is, it's not the creature but the amount of effort the people making video games for them put into making those games.

 

[Dalisclock]

So, vagualy related, apparently there's another Werewolf: The apocolpyse game in the offing,

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Series – Different Tales

differenttales.com

I have no idea if this one is any good either, but it's an indie trying to be a closer adaptation of the tabletop game.

So there's that.

There's also a demo available.

 

[happyninja42]

So, vagualy related, apparently there's another Werewolf: The apocolpyse game in the offing,

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Series – Different Tales

differenttales.com

I have no idea if this one is any good either, but it's an indie trying to be a closer adaptation of the tabletop game.

So there's that.

There's also a demo available.

Downloading the demo now. It's W:tA so it's at the very least got my attention. Not sure how the gameplay will pan out but...*shrugs*

 

[Dalisclock]

Downloading the demo now. It's W:tA so it's at the very least got my attention. Not sure how the gameplay will pan out but...*shrugs*

Yeah, I plan to give it a chance in the next few days. That and the GameDec demo.

I've never played W:tA but I have some knowledge of it so this will be interesting.

Will report in when I've played it.

 

[happyninja42]

Yeah, I plan to give it a chance in the next few days. That and the GameDec demo.

Will be back when I do.

Oh yeah, I remember Many a True Nerd doing a video on GameDec. looks neat but I dunno, something about isometric turns me off a lot.

 

[Dalisclock]

Oh yeah, I remember Many a True Nerd doing a video on GameDec. looks neat but I dunno, something about isometric turns me off a lot.

I grew up on isometric so I'm fine with it. It saw the little thing about it on the Escapist Indie showcase a few months back and kept tabs on it. Hopefully it lives up to what the devs were talking up about "Choices matter" and such.