Vampire fiction in popular culture has always been one of the most desirable themes in productions. This vampiric dark world, which was shaped in flesh and bones with Bram Stoker's "Dracula" character in his 1897-dated novel, has been iterated with thousands of remakes ranging from folkloric historical vampires as demeanor figures with their ruffled collars and sleeve cuffs to the everyday-man vampires who we are sharing the same high schools.

Sinking its teeth into the world of video games, the Vampire: The Masquerade series became a very successful role-playing (RPG) game amid vampiric lore with its deep embedded narrative and dark atmosphere. Its last version, Swansong, which was developed and released by Big Bad Wolf and Nacon in May 2022, has started to enter the lists of gamers. Also, a strange twist at the end of the "Swansong" surprises the players, especially those interested in history. It appears that one of the main characters in Boston's vampire court is a former Ottoman sultan's son who was born in Constantinople.

Released in 2004, the first of the series, "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines," was a rare game that became a legend in the RPG genre, unveiling the dark secrets of night creatures walking among the streets of distorted Los Angeles and trying to survive amid the political turmoil. Although the producers heralded March 2020 for the second game's release, its launch date is transforming into an unknown secret.

Keeping the players waiting for so long after announcing the making of "Bloodlines 2," it can be said that the makers have been slightly successful in appeasing our appetite with the supernatural detective game "Swansong" edition. Through the sequence of events that developed around the World of Darkness, we are left with the different narrative choices that determine the characters' fate and the ending.

"Swansong's" story takes place in 2019's Boston. As players, we begin in medias res after the Boston vampire court is confronted with a bloodbath at a party that is organized to sign an alliance between the Hartford Chantry (a sect of blood sorcerers). Due to the unexpected violent attack, the prince of the court, Hazel Iverson, (groundbreaking that "the prince" is a woman) calls out to her three most-trusted lieutenants in the court. She sends the trio on the revenge mission to unveil who is behind the attack.

The three vampire lieutenants consist of Emem Louis, a nightclub owner, Leysha, a soothsayer, and the finally dignified character Galeb Bazory. They become a member of a clan that their master belongs to and gain abilities. For instance, Galeb is a Ventrue, Emem is a Toreador and Leysha is a Malkavian.

Each character we play respectively can be developed with the abilities they have within the framework of their clan. Each clan in "Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong" gives characters a unique advantage and is tasked with researching accordingly. While Emem's clan allows her to achieve the prince's goals through conversation, persuasion and mobility, Galeb's gameplay is largely less focused on direct exploration and interrogation of minds. Leysha, on the other hand, is valued by the prince because of the Malkavian curse – allowing her to have unique insights into her surroundings and randomly appearing visions that show her the past and the future.

The game is quite rich in terms of its storyline. Especially in some scenes, there are places to push the gamers to think like real detectives. For this reason, every document and every password discovered during the cluttering are of great importance. In particular, some passwords may even need to be noted, because the scene that it needs to be used in may not appear immediately. For that reason, it is necessary to follow the storyline throughout the game and use it wisely during the confrontations of puzzles.

At the beginning of the story, we start the missions with the default willpower points. This first phase provides hacking, lockpicking and use of rhetoric in dialogues. We generally need to convince the character whom we are talking about by using skills such as "Rhetoric, Intimidation, Persuasion, and Psychology" in dialogue collisions called "confrontations." Otherwise, all the choices and failures can greatly affect the fate of each character and therefore the end of the game. It is praiseworthy that producers prepared such detailed conversations to draw a picture of the theme of the game. However, in some parts, they took so long that you feel the urge to skip the scene yet left without a skip button.

Each stage is full of secrets and mysteries left to unravel, allowing players to access the additional story and unlock additional experience points. However, a dreadful failure is also possible, as players could potentially leave or fail to reach the goal. For this reason, every drawer should be scrambled, every "secret" file on the desks, and emails on the computers should be read in detail.

I tried to discover all the information that I came across as much as possible with the fear of not missing anything. I was quite surprised to see that Galeb Bazory, one of the main characters we played and one of the oldest members of the Boston upscale vampire court, was Sehzade Suleyman, born in Constantinople in 1710, as the son of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Ahmed III, and Mihrişah Kadın. According to the story, he had to flee to the West to escape a revolt scheme plotted against his father. Then he was adopted by a family of diamond merchants. During his sail around the world, he expanded his knowledge in terms of intellect. It was a shocking and interesting choice that the producers wanted to place Galeb in such a historical background and reveal him as an Ottoman sehzade.

The scenes of Leysha, one of the other characters we played, are quite satisfying. We can steal identities and infiltrate areas that we cannot enter with disguises. On the other hand, thanks to Leysha's auspex, we can sense past events by recreating them. Yet I'm sorry to say that the third character Emem's missions are the weakest and most boring throughout the game.

Let's come to some bad aspects of the game. Although the telltale-style engaging story and detective-like explorations are quite enjoyable, the vampires of Boston court are not as creepy as we are used to. On the other hand, for a game released in 2022, the graphics are so weak that they can be called "mediocre," and there are many bugs. Occasionally, the characters can get stuck where they stand. Although the game promises 20 hours, the scenes are so detailed that you may have to play for longer to not miss anything. On the other hand, you are always missing something as the investigation venues are vast and detailed.

Another disadvantage of the game is the lack of a quicksaving option. When you make a choice that you don't want or fail in a confrontation, you cannot continue where you left off. By restarting, you may have to play the whole scene from the beginning, which can erase an hourlong effort.

An RPG genre like Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong that heavily relies on the engaging story should have been supported with meticulous music and sound selection. Music also affects the atmosphere of the game/story in general in terms of hooking gamers into the reflected realism of the "World of Darkness." Unfortunately, neither the sounds nor the music function to contribute to such matters in "Swansong."

The soundtrack of the 2004-made "Bloodlines" was very successful in this regard. In particular, the "Cain" song, which has the gothic tunes amid the creepy church bells of Swedish metal band Tiamat, also containing biblical references to vampirism, was in line with the story and the whole soundtrack of the game was serving to support that dark atmosphere at the very core of it.

In a nutshell, Swansong can only satisfy those who miss vampire fiction. It's not bad, but it's not a good game either. It is only a good option for those who like detective fiction and want to experience a bit of a vampiric atmosphere. It looks like we're going to get our hopes up for Bloodlines 2 unless our dreams are deferred.