A cruel observation about DONTNOD, a studio whose skills have never matched their over-ambitiousness. The core of the title revolves around Dr Reid's – and therefore the player's – ability to resist the beast. This ability is directly related to the amount of experience the player has, so that being charitable and restraining his impulses leads to more complicated battles, simply by the difference in levels. As the combat system is already very poor – notably because it is very free-floating and has no real feedback – progressing in a pacifist game reveals masochism and appears to be a very artificial way to build difficulty and guilt. On the other hand, the fact that there are no real mechanics for being stealthy creates a narrative dissonance, in that a phenomenal amount of Priwen's guards are murdered each night. As such, the weakness of the bestiary adds frustration to the title. Beyond that, the game feels like a clumsy mishmash of references and story arcs. The characters never manage to be really interesting, despite promising premises, and the clue mechanics are a source of frustration, with the amount of back and forth to be done, without any teleportation options. It doesn't help that the art direction is objectively good, but misses the mark in terms of level design and communication. Similarly, the soundtrack is too repetitive to allow for greater immersion, with a slightly too easy use of dissonance to hide the low number of tracks. The accumulation of all these flaws makes Vampyr unpleasant: they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This may be true, but when a studio lacks as much finesse as DONTNOD – Life is Strange had the same problems –, it is appropriate to question their relevance to narrative games and the medium in general.