Happy Halloween, PlayStation! I’m Erik Odeldahl, Creative Director at Fast Travel Games, and I’m excited to return to the PlayStation Blog to talk a little more about our new PS VR2 title. Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice, which launches later this week on November 2nd. Check out our shiny new launch trailer below.
When we announced Justice earlier this year, we gave you an in-depth look at our stealth game. Players will travel to the seedy streets of nighttime Venice and become a true predator, stalking enemies, drinking their blood and using brutal powers to defeat them.
We may still be a few days away from release, but since it’s the spookiest day of the year, we’d like to delve deeper into the RPG aspects of the game. Each discipline of Justice can be upgraded and transformed into much more effective and deadly versions of themselves. Let’s talk a little about how this changes the game.
Improve your disciplines
Between each mission in Justice you can visit The Inner Sanctum. It is here that you will learn about the game’s full set of potential disciplines. Select a tile and it will hover over you, giving you a detailed look at exactly what each update entails.
It may seem overwhelming at first, but rest assured that you will work your way up the tree as the game progresses. There are plenty of opportunities to unlock as many skills as possible during the 10-15 hour campaign, depending on how you play.
Build your own justice
Fundamentally, these upgrade paths will allow you to tailor your gaming experience to how you want to play. If you want, you can focus on the game’s more aggressive abilities and have a much better chance of surviving when you’re spotted or taking out enemies from afar.
Or you could choose to take a more passive approach. Cloak of Shadows, the ability to turn invisible and dodge enemies, can be upgraded first to consume less blood meter, allowing you to use it more often. Keep investing in this skill path and you’ll even be able to disappear into thin air even when enemies are looking directly at you.
XP galore
But how do you earn XP to upgrade skills in Justice? There are several ways, including simply beating missions. This will give you the base amount of XP which will be great for building up the essentials as you progress through the story.
Bonus objectives and missions will be a key means to faster upgrades. Each mission in the game comes with two additional objectives, which often ask you to clear the level without being seen and/or without harming anyone. These can be tricky and push your skills to the absolute limit, but the rewards are worth it.
Finally, you can also search for the game’s hidden collectibles, which must be eroded with the Corrosive Vitae ray. Each one will provide you with a small amount of XP.
New persuasive paths
However, the Inner Sanctuary is not just for improving your disciplines. Another element of Justice’s RPG mechanics is the dialogue system, which allows you to choose how to interact with characters in certain scenarios. You can choose to sweet talk your allies and make friends, for example, or turn your back on them.
But if you want, you can invest XP to make Justice a more intimidating figure who can glean additional information from targets. You may even be able to unlock shortcuts, avoiding certain areas of levels. That is if you know exactly when to apply pressure. This is just a small sample of the RPG mechanics that await you in Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice. It’s also just part of the overall experience. Fast Travel Games is delivering its most ambitious project yet and we can’t wait to hear what you all think when the game arrives on November 2nd. Don’t forget you can also pre-order the game now for a 10% discount and access to the exclusive arm-mounted golden crossbow.
