October is a wonderful month for gamers who enjoy horror and other spooky games, as developers tend to release a lot of them in time for Halloween. Because of that, it was not surprising to see that the visual novel Vampire: The Masquerade – Reckoning of New York was released just as the month began. It’s available for consoles and the PC through Steam.
Yes, we’re all still waiting for Bloodlines II to get released amid the trials and tribulations surrounding the sequel that we all want to play. But in the meantime, there is a surprising amount of great Vampire: The Masquerade (VTM) and World of Darkness content to enjoy. This particular series of visual novels by developer Draw Distance mixes traditional text adventure type gaming with a visual style that has traditionally been pretty impressive. The first title in the trilogy, Coteries of New York, demonstrated great writing style and visual flair, while the sequel, Shadows of New York, took everything up a level to become a true classic in the VTM world.
Right off the bat, it has to be said that Vampire: The Masquerade Reckoning of New York does not stack up very well against Shadows (or even Coteries). It takes a notable step back from that pinnacle in both artistic and storytelling quality, which is a shame, and also quite puzzling since it’s the same developer for all three titles. How can a developer regress in quality over time when they should be getting better? For example, the art in Shadows was mesmerizing at times, giving us beautiful views of New York from odd angles like at the top of skyscrapers, gazing at a scene though a reflection in a puddle on the ground and other interesting artistic treats. The characters, those quirky vampires we have come to know and love (or hate) in Shadows were also clearly hand-drawn with a lot of character that made that story even more engaging.
In Reckoning, we instead get nothing but extremely generic backgrounds for almost every scene. They honestly look like they were generated by a poor artificial intelligence and without much prompt engineering. It’s like someone typed, “draw a generic city street at night with some shops and parked cars” into a graphical AI and then used the first thing that was churned out as a key piece of art for the game. Worse yet, those backgrounds are reused many times as the story unfolds, so players get to see, for example, “generic back alley number two” several times over. The characters also no longer look hand-drawn and lack any real charisma. They seem more like live people from slick magazine ads pushing handbags or trendy outerwear.
Putting aside the obvious drop in art quality, Reckoning of New York also makes some curious story choices. At this point, most players are likely going to be pretty well invested in the overall story and the many twists and turns that are happening in New York, so being able to continue that story is pretty exciting. But here we run into another odd design choice in that the main character, Kali from the Ravnos clan, is an outsider from a nomadic group who doesn’t care one bit about the politics of the Ivory Tower in the city. Beyond that, she spends almost all of the game away from the core characters we know from Shadows and Coteries. So, we have a major potential change in leadership happening in New York with the fall of a Prince and maybe an Anarch Baron too, but get to see almost none of that as Kali is charged with following an inconsequential quest to find her missing sire, who is yet another outsider.
And then once you finish Kali’s quest, you get to (or have to, depending on how much you enjoy Reckoning) go through the entire story again with a character named Padraic. Now, Padraic is supposedly a Caitiff, or clanless vampire, although it’s pretty obvious to anyone with any VTM experience what clan he mostly aligns with based on his actions and clothing.
But the biggest problem is that he is ordered by both the Prince and the Sheriff to partner up with Kali and follow her around while she runs her investigation, so you see pretty much the entire story at her side. Then when he unlocks as a playable character, you are going to go through most of the exact same story again, including most of the same dialogue, exploring the same generic locations and everything else. You do get to see a few scenes here and there that are new from when he was away from her, but Padraic and Kali are pretty inseparable during the first playthrough, so not a lot of new information is given.
If Reckoning were a standalone title introducing us to the World of Darkness and the vampires of New York, then it might have been a slightly above average visual novel. However, it’s marketed as the climatic third episode in this series, with many players already heavily invested in the stories from the other two games.
But in Reckoning, we are forced to sidestep the main story to play what is basically a sub-plot or side quest, with the best part being whenever familiar characters like Julia Sowinski from Shadows, Hope from Coteries or Hellene and Qadir from the other two titles make appearances. Unfortunately, this happens too rarely, and we get very little time with them before having to wander off on our own quests. Huge things that were set in motion during Shadows and Coteries are happening as the New Year approaches in Reckoning, but we don’t get to see hardly any of it as either Kali or Padraic, much less have any influence over that story.
As a visual novel in the VTM universe, Reckoning of New York is passable and even enjoyable in places. But as a finale and an ending to a really amazing tale about vampire clans in New York, it falls well short of what most players are probably expecting. Video game developers in general have trouble ending stories that span multiple games, (Mass Effect, Deus Ex, etc.) but Reckoning suffers from several self-made and avoidable errors like employing generic (probably AI-generated) artwork for backgrounds and characters, sidelining popular vampires from the series and focusing on a story that is only peripherally connected to the other two titles. None of that had to happen, and all of it lowers the quality of the presentation.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Reckoning of New York is clearly the weakest entry of the entire trilogy, and I can’t help but think that the many fans of the series deserved more.
Developers: Draw Distance
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X