Vicious Venice: ‘Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice’ Launches on Meta Quest

The time has come to once again step inside the World of Darkness universe—this time, in the stealthy shoes of a vampire. Announced during the third annual Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice is an open-ended, narrative adventure RPG. You play as Justice, a vampire of the Banu Haqim clan. After your sire is mysteriously murdered and a relic is stolen, you travel to Venice, Italy, home of the death-worshiping Hecata vampires, in search of answers.

This is the second VR foray into the World of Darkness universe for developer Fast Travel Games, with Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife launching in 2021 to favorable reviews. With a gritty narrative campaign and several side missions, Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice offers roughly eight to 10 hours of gameplay (more for completionists) as you strike from the shadows and drink the blood of both mortal and vampire prey. The dark skies of Venice provide ample opportunity to level up your powers and build a character suited to your playstyle. Convince NPCs to aid your quest, solve puzzles, and uncover collectibles throughout each mission.

We sat down with Fast Travel Games Creative Director Erik Odeldahl to learn more.

Erik Odeldahl: I’ve worked in games for over 20 years, getting my start at Custom Red Software. In 2006 I joined the team at DICE and worked on some of the Battlefield titles as well as serving as the Design Director on Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst. Around 10 years later, myself and several colleagues from DICE and other studios took the leap into VR and launched Fast Travel Games and didn’t look back.

And what a journey it’s been. We’ve already made six VR games (Vampire being our seventh) and have published even more.

EO: We started talking about the game with the World of Darkness team at Paradox in very early 2021, and the team started ramping on to the project in April that year. We’ve stuck fairly closely to what we set out to build back then but have allowed ourselves to experiment a lot with Justice’s different vampiric disciplines to give the players as many options for stealthy take down as possible. As with any game that relies on the player interacting frequently with AI NPCs using a lot of different systems, we’ve had many hilarious mishaps along the way. My favorite bug was when, for a time, you could explode the heads of people you were in a conversation with, and they just got back up and kept on talking to you, even though their heads were no longer there.

EO: Demoing Justice has been a really fascinating experience, and we’ve seen a fantastic response so far. This is a deep VR game with a lot to explore, and we wondered if players would be able to get to grips with it in a short demo slot. Fortunately, they’ve really been engaging with the game’s traversal and sense of empowerment. We’ve loved seeing how people take different approaches to tackling our open-ended encounters.

Oh, and watching people take a bite into the neck of an unsuspecting Hecata for the first time never gets old!

EO: Justice takes place in the same world as all other World of Darkness games. It’s set in Venice, and you get to meet with characters from different vampire clans that you might recognize from other games or books. We chose to focus our story on the internal struggles of a smaller group of vampires, and they’re all new original characters created for this game. If you’ve played other Vampire titles, you might recognize some names floating by though. And of course, we couldn’t resist adding some Easter eggs from Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife.

EO: We can confidently say that you don’t need any previous experience with the World of Darkness universe to enjoy Justice. The great thing about Vampire: The Masquerade in general is that it lets you live out the superpowered vampire fantasy, and that’s what we’ve really zoned in on. So even if you’re just a fan of the mythic creatures but don’t know much about the World of Darkness incarnation, you’ll find plenty to love here.

Of course, if you do want to experience more of the World of Darkness in VR, you can check out our earlier title, Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife.

EO: Fast Travel Games has a lot of exciting projects in the works. We recently announced our first internally-developed multiplayer title, Mannequin, which is coming in 2024. It’s a tense 2v3 experience built around a really unique concept, and we believe people are going to love it.

We’re also continuing to publish plenty of amazing new VR games. You may have seen we’re working with App Lab hit Project Demigod, and we just announced a partnership with a new studio called MoonHood. So there’s lots to be excited about from the Fast Travel team!

EO: Just that we really, truly can’t wait to see your reactions to Justice when it launches on Quest. Take your time to enjoy the game—there’s a lot there, and it’s intended to be a challenging experience! Remember that it’s a stealth game first and foremost, and there can be a bit of trial and error involved.

Bringing the Vampire: The Masquerade series to VR for the first time has been a real privilege, and we really hope that we’ve done it, well, justice.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice is available today on Quest 3, 2, and Pro. Hungry for more Fast Travel fare? Check out the following games developed and/or published by the team:

• Apex Construct
• Broken Edge
• Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency
• Cities: VR
• The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets
• EVERSLAUGHT Invasion
• Guardians Frontline
• Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game
• Virtuoso
• We Are One
• Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife