With the run-up to E3 kicking into high gear, everyone and their uncle is teasing and assuring us of what we can expect from them. Queue DONTNOD with some new screenshots for their upcoming Action-RPG Vampyr. Set at the end of the First World War, it follows the exploits of Doctor Jonathan Reid, and his struggling to balance out the rational, scientific side of his brain. With the supernatural lust for blood borne from his vampiric nature.

The images tease us with some of the options we, as Reid, will have to satiate the need for sustenance. From scavenging the dead and dying, to hunting the citizens of London like ignorant cattle. Whilst the premise promises us that every character, every single one, that we choose to sacrifice will have ramifications on the whole of the game. The examples given in the press-release being if you choose (and choice is pushed as a central point of the game) to feed from a Doctor, the patients where he works will be bereft of the medical care they so desperately need.

This leaves me wondering though, if every character really does have an impact on the world, then precisely how many characters will there be? And more importantly, exactly how much difference would the loss of one vagrant really make? I suspect this will play it more symbolically in a lot of cases. With, for example, each individual Spanish Flu patient you kill not meaning all that much since they’d be expected to die anyway, but if several pass away in rapid succession, around you, then people will begin to wonder what’s going on.

We’ll be shown more at this year’s E3, which should address some of these inquiries. But the full experience will have to wait until “2017” when DONTNOD are asking “how far are you ready to go?“.