Code Vein will lean on its vampire characters to help it stand out from Dark Souls

There's not much of an argument to be made that Bandai Namco's Code Vein is a Souls-like game. And to be fair, it's not a bad thing to take inspiration from a series such as that, especially when the market for such games is still quite fruitful. That said, the developers do need something to keep Code Vein from simply being "Anime Souls," and in speaking with VG24/7, game director Hiroshi Yoshimura says that the game's narrative and its vampirical protagonists are what will do just that.

"There’s a lot of character behind the story and drama behind the story, too," said Yoshimura. "We do have that unique flavor of narrative in there, so we wanted to feature that within the dungeon action RPG genre."

Yoshimura described the game world as "post-apocalyptic, and its characters "have the drawback where they need blood in order to survive." If a vampire goes without blood, they become ghouls who are referred to as "Lost," which make up the enemies in the game, explaining why each encounter is so difficult. In this world, the blood supply is diminishing, and more and more vampires are turning into Lost.

Your character is not immune to the need to feed, but fortunately, you can drain it from enemies, which Yoshimura says helps to define the nature of the gameplay. 

The thing that separates us from Dark Souls is really.. well, like I said, it’s because they’re vampires. Because of the blood they suck, they can use these special abilities called gifts. These gifts allow you to for instance speed up or create shields to block enemy attacks.

By using these gifts, it gives you that very fast-paced action that you’d see in other games also. It becomes a combination of the Dark Souls style high tense battle with a very high pace action – that’s what sets us apart.

Code Vein releases on PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2018.

Source: [VG24/7]