More New Vampire Shots

Developer Nihilistic Software's new role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade went gold earlier this week, and should be in stores on June 7. Although Vampire contains an epic single-player story mode that spans many centuries, the game also features a multiplayer storyteller mode that lets one player dynamically manipulate the environment for the other players, like a pen-and-paper RPG's dungeon master. In addition, although the Vampire CD won't ship with any sort of scenario editing tools, Nihilistic's Rob Huebner wrote yesterday that a set of editing tools will soon be available for download, hopefully to coincide with the game's June 7 release date.

Among the editing tools will be the Embrace level editor, an object template editor, source code for game scripts, and documentation that describes all these features. However, the environments in Vampire are complex and highly detailed and it may be difficult for users to match this level of quality, so it's too early to tell whether the game and its unique storyteller mode will garner an avid online following.

Vampire's single-player story grows more involving as other characters join Christof's quest several hours into play. You can switch control between any of the characters in your party at any time, while the characters you aren't controlling directly do a good job keeping pace behind you and assisting you in battle. The first few hours of gameplay are linear, but the expansive environments and the ability to customize your character by spending your experience points on improved statistics and additional vampiric powers helps make the gameplay interesting. We'll have our full review of Vampire shortly, but for now, check out these new screen shots that show off some of the game's beautiful environments.