Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York is the name of the upcoming vamp-themed narrative RPG that is, in fact, not related to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. If you’re confused, don’t be, because it’s the subtitle that matters here.
Coteries of New York is a far cry from any sort of immersive sim, and it is instead going to be a “narrative experience” with a heavy textual slant. Down below, you’ll find all the info we’ve got on release date, gameplay, story, and more.
Release Date
While there’s been no official announcement of any sort of proper release date, the tentative release window is currently slated for Q4 2019. This means that Coteries of New York is probably going to come out sometime between 1st of October and 31st of December. That’s not too long of a wait, though you never know with game development.
Chances are that the game gets pushed back for this or that reason, but for the time being, Q4 it is.
Gameplay
As you might expect from the screenshots, Coteries of New York probably won’t feature heavy action of any type. In fact, the developers, Draw Distance, specifically mention that “the game is primarily text-driven and story oriented,” though this doesn’t mean there won’t be some type of dynamic gameplay sequences to drive the story forward.
Their previous offerings include brutal top-down shooters and stealth titles, so we’d be pretty suprised not to see Draw Distance feature something of the kind in their biggest project to-date.
So far, we know that there’s going to be significant branching of the story, and reactive narrative sequences, because the developers want for players to “feel their decisions influence the world around them and encourage multiple playthroughs for those invested in the world and story.” What this means, exactly, remains to be seen, but it sure is very promising.
As you’d expect, players will have to deal with Hunger, Humanity, and Masquerade stats as they progress through the story, and this is likely going to be one of the main gameplay mechanics - the balancing of these stats.
Story
The story is going to focus on presenting the players with “choices that matter,” in the context of them building their own vampiric Coterie. Coteries are small “cells” of like-minded individuals who hang about and do stuff, which implies a cast of memorable characters at the very least.
Developers say that players will “be presented with branching dialogue choices, memorable characters - all among iconic locales of New York City.” Vampiric disciplines will dictate how your Coterie evolves as the story progresses, and your choices will fine-tune this development even further.
Furthermore, players’ Humanity will be used to “modify the results of choices in quests, offer additional story choices, or even lock certain choices out.” Aside from these general, wide-sweeping notions, we’ve no clue what exactly is going to be going on in Coteries of New York.
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That’s all we’ve got so far, but rest assured that we’ll keep you up-to-date with the latest jig on this mysterious new project. Stay tuned.
