You would think with so many vampires in video games that we’d have more actual good vampire video games. Yet despite everything from Castlevania to The Sims 4 including blood suckers in some form or another, most games miss the point of what has made vampires so compelling. They lack bite.
That is, the biting commentary vampires excel at as vessels of our larger societal fears during any given moment in time. There are — at best — two vampire video games that successfully pull this off: 2004’s Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines and 2018’s Vampyr. With the release of narrative RPG Cabernet, that number goes up to three.
A night on the town
Vampires are social monsters. The terror they inflict comes from their ability to look like us and glide through regular society while carefully picking off prey to feed upon. While they have different powers depending on the story, mostly vampires use charm as their weapon of choice. This is the core idea behind Cabernet. Much like 2022’s Pentiment, this is largely a game about talking to people and building relationships. The caveat is that those relationships likely always come with a price.
Cabernet begins with the funeral of Liza, who will soon wake up as a newly turned vampire. During her eulogy I’m given the option to choose what kind of life she lived, which grants stats like Science, Arts, History, and more. These will come in handy once I set out into the game’s 19th century Eastern European town filled with residents, both living and undead. As a vampire Liza needs an invitation to enter certain buildings as well as a reliable source of blood. Building relationships is often a means to an end. As any good vampire, I deftly navigate conversations with the town locals to ingratiate myself to them which then broadens my options in any given evening.
To keep me from accomplishing everything I want, Cabernet employs an action system during its evenings. Liza can engage in three events that burn actions, which often are major points in a resident’s questline. I wasn’t able to complete every quest in my first playthrough, meaning I had to prioritize some people over others depending on my goals as Liza. I spent a lot of time researching vampire blood in hopes of getting insight into undead life, while also finding the time to seduce a local musician following her husband’s death — a crime I failed to tell her I committed. That meant that I never found time to get to know the local bookseller.
Even as an immortal, with seemingly all the time in the world, I can’t have it all. There are times that quests might not be completed due to technical issues. I ran into a number of glitches during my two playthroughs that at best reset progress by a few minutes and, at worst, completely broke questlines. Save often.
Working up an appetite
Getting locals to like me is expedited by the skills I imbued Liza with during her funeral. A high literature & writing stat made the local poet instantly like me, but a low science stat meant my work with a vampiric doctor took a long time. Over time I’m given more points to allocate in my stats as I level up. The option to change Liza’s attire at the start of every evening, choosing from a plethora of dresses with their own stat boosts, helps fill out any other holes in my knowledge.
Yet building relationships as a vampire isn’t a harmless thing. Very early on Cabernet leverages its well written, and incredibly likeable, characters to teach me this lesson. Liza is, and always will be, a slave to her bloodlust. Getting close to people puts them in danger. When Liza first gets the urge to desperately feed I find myself looking on in horror as she plunges her teeth into someone I had invested so much time into.
This immediately changed how I played Cabernet. As much as I wanted to build a rapport with characters and get to know them, oftentimes I was left wondering if it was better to keep them at an arm’s length. This also encouraged me to seek out relationships with some of the less appealing characters of the town in hopes of finding a reliable blood source. It’s a clever way to make players get out of their comfort zones when it comes to the characters they spend time with in games.
Blood sucking isn’t the only power Liza has. She is also able to turn into a bat, hypnotize people, and turn invisible. When used properly these abilities helped me avoid unwanted attention and even convince the local general store to give me a permanent discount. These powers feel like a last resort, though, something to break out only when absolutely necessary. This feeds the vampire fantasy, as using powers is exactly what risks exposing Liza and her delicate existence amongst the living.
Bloody good
Cabernet offers plenty of freedom in what kind of vampire you can be, but it isn’t without consequences. Every action that Liza takes grants her humanity or nihilism. Being kind to town residents and helping out grants humanity while stealing and killing will grant nihilism. This morality extends to minor dialogue options as well. Giving comfort to someone in mourning will grant humanity being cavalier about the fragility of human life and will grant nihilism. At its core the system reflects Liza’s outlook on life and if she can find meaning in her cursed immortality. This embraces the existentialist aspect of many vampire stories in a clever way.
That isn’t the only type of vampire story Cabernet is trying to tell. In fact, it acts as a pastiche of the vampire’s place in culture. That extends to metaphors for marginalized communities and a fear of “deviancy.” The most impactful use of the vampire in Cabernet, however, goes back to the monster’s roots. The modern vampire was born in 1819 when John Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” as a way to express distaste for the wealthiest members of society, who Polidori saw as sucking the blood from those around them. By building relationships, Liza is able to see how the literal and metaphorical vampires of the town impact the lives of everyone. It’s a timeless theme for a timeless monster, and Cabernet couldn’t have picked a better time to bring it back.
Cabernet is now available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
