Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood

There is untapped potential in video games utilizing the many tabletop roleplaying games under the World of Darkness series. There actually exists quite a few titles using one of the licenses -- Vampire: The Masquerade being easily the most popular -- but they're largely not very high profile ones: interactive fiction games, visual novels, VR games, etc. Another truly remarkable, single-player roleplaying experience on the level of Bloodlines is yet to be made. Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is not that either.

Truly one of the werewolf games of all time

Earthblood was developed by Cyanide Studio who are best-known for the Bloodbowl video game adaptations and the Styx stealth games -- unless you're into cycling video games because they sure have made a lot of them. Earthblood was not well received, and I wasn't expecting anything amazing from Cyanide in the first place, but it was still kind of shocking to experience such a waste of the license.

The game's story is utterly basic, deep in who-gives-a-shit territory. I'm doubtful of the tabletop game (which I have never played): how interesting and what kind of stories can you really do with werewolves compared to the masquerading vampires? But surely one can do better than Earthblood. A custom character would probably go a long way -- being an RPG in general would help.

You play as Cahal, a werewolf -- or Garou as they're called in the setting -- whose pack is working with a human eco-terrorist group, Lambda Mankind. (I guess werewolves don't care that humans know about them? From what I'm reading, werewolves apparently have a passive effect called Delirium but I don't think that's present in this game.) The backdrop atmosphere is, as per the RPG's subtitle, the end times: Wyrm -- which is one of the spiritual entities in the Triat with the Wyld, and the Weaver -- has decided to end it all permanently.

Similarly to the Kindred -- vampires -- trying to hold on to their Humanity to not let the Beast within take over, the werewolves struggle against the Wyrm. Completely losing control throws a Garou into a berserk frenzy, in the RPG rules known as Thrall of the Wyrm. In Earthblood, there seems to be a high chance of that happening when witnessing the death of a close one. One would think that operating as a close-knit pack might not be the best idea due to that: someone getting killed leads to another going berserk and having to be put down as well.

Cahal can shapeshift between human (Homid) and wolf (Lupus) forms at will. The human form is for talking, pressing buttons (so many), and stealth takedowns, while the wolf is for traversal and being stealthy. I don't know how shifting happens in the RPG but I have a feeling it's not a snap-of-the-fingers thing that also magically keeps clothes for the human form intact. (I checked: by default, clothes get shredded but that can be avoided with a Rite of Talisman that binds an item or an outfit to the Garou.)

Paint the town red

In combat, Cahal rages, transforming into Crinos, a towering, on-two-feet-standing human-wolf hybrid battle form. As Crinos, the Garou are outrageously fast and strong. This was quite accurately depicted from the opposing perspective back in Bloodlines when you're forced to flee from the encountered Garou, unable to engage in a conventional manner. Any Garou is too much to handle for one of the Kindred unless the vampire is really old, of an early generation.

In Earthblood, you get to experience the primal strength from the Garou perspective: a bloodbath after bloodbath. Silver bullets hurt a bit, some armored humans take more effort to kill, and an occasional boss fight can challenge you but largely -- on medium difficulty -- combat is an absolutely mindless power fantasy. Rooms get leveled and decorated with gore.

Destructoid's reviewer wrote that Earthblood is the exact same stealth mission repeating for 10+ hours. The thing is, though, that you don't have to stealth through the uninspired level design and it doesn't matter one bit if you don't -- there are no narrative consequences. I hate how pointless that makes everything. The whole stealth game proposal is such a laughable thing with how powerful werewolves are.

Getting through a room undetected can in theory be considerably quicker than starting a fight because you will have to battle waves of reinforcements every time. Softening the opposition with stealth takedowns first is largely pointless too thanks to the reinforcement waves being the actual fighting force. There's nothing you can do to stronger enemies from stealth either, thus if any are present, a stealth clear is not happening. I suppose switching between the two playstyles might help you in avoiding boredom -- not touching the game at all is probably the best option, though.

15 long hours

For a completionist, Earthblood is almost a straightforward one-run deal. At the end, there's an exclusive choice of which ending you want to do -- backing up your save before deciding on the door will save you from replaying the whole mission again just for a single achievement.

The most arduous trophy requires collecting all of the game's 134 spirits (potted plants, stone buddies, tree trunks etc.). I underestimated the difficulty of finding them -- they're really easy to miss -- and had to restart my run with a guide after the first actual mission when I didn't get the achievement for finding all spirits in an area. You also have to be careful if you happen to die because you'll have to recollect the spirits you had found after the last checkpoint.

A third Styx game, Styx: Blades of Greed, is set to release in Q4 this year. I assume it's being done by this same team at Cyanide -- and I hope the game will be a lot better than this one. Styx is at least better suited for a stealth game protagonist.