Cabernet, Party For Introverts’ narrative RPG was already on my radar. It casts you as Liza, a newly-turned bloodsucker who, waking up in a gloomy basement, is swiftly introduced to vampire society. However, as I discovered on my second playthrough, Cabernet is even more fun when you just plain suck.
It was the lack of sucking that led me down this path. I’d already played the demo ‘properly’, leaning into Liza’s humanity, making polite conversation and yelling BAT at the screen, What We Do in the Shadows-style.
But I was disappointed that when Liza was faced with her first “victim,” the game didn’t offer me the chance to lean into her vampiric cravings. At the time, I reasoned that this was due to a lack of nihilism, the points Cabernet doles out when you do something negative.
So I made my unlife’s mission to rack up as much nihilism as I could. Thievery, unpleasantness, I gave my humanity the finger at every turn. Sadly, I still didn’t get to sink my teeth into the demo’s sozzled serf but the journey was so, so worth it.
But it’s not that I went on a bloody rampage, this isn’t Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. Instead, my words were my weapon. When a wide-eyed toymaker asked me what I thought of his new doll, I politely informed him that, “She kind of looks like she was brought back from the dead to haunt naughty children.”
This is a doll, by the way, that another vampire will try and palm off on you. Polite Liza happily agreed but, this time around, I wasn’t having it. I don’t care how many humanity points I get, I’ve seen Annabelle. Either hurl it in an incinerator or go and find Patrick Wilson.
Leaving the serf unpunctured, Goody Two-Shoes Liza used her powers to make him drink less. Blood Countess Liza commanded him to rob his employer, delivering the plunder to her. Will that get his head divorced from his shoulders? Quite possibly. But, when the full game comes out, I’ll get a few stolen candlesticks into the bargain.
And Hussar, the vampiric military man who tutored me on the ways of the undead? I used my historical knowhow to call him out on his stolen valour. What’s that? You don’t want to talk about the division you were in? Don’t worry, I’ve got all eternity to pick apart your story.
What’s especially delightful is how, adopting a veneer of politeness, you have carte blanche to be a vampiric git. The game’s period setting helps enable this kind of assholery. Liza doesn’t go full Oscar Wilde but she’s got a certain manner about her which I hope the full game will lean into. I’m eager to deliver verbal barbs that are every bit as piercing as her canines.
It’ll also feature full voice-acting so, fingers crossed, I’ll get to hear the toymaker’s voice waver as I mock his clearly-cursed doll. That said, I’m also very curious to discover whether Cabernet will, in fact, let me get away with these continued shenanigans.
Take the vampiric countess you meet. Second time through, I intentionally got her name wrong, which she dismissed as me being unfamiliar with the world of the undead. And, during the demo, everyone is giving you the benefit of the doubt because you’re a newly-turned vampire.
But will there be a point at which vampiric society will expect better of me? Will I be staked out to greet the rising sun because, for the fourteenth time, I addressed Countess Orlova as Lady Octopusarse? Cabernet’s relationship system tracks how other NPCs view you, so I wouldn’t rule it out.
I’ll have to wait till next year, when Cabernet arrives on PC, to find out for sure. In the meantime I’m going back in. There may be someone in the demo who isn’t cursing my immortal existence and that just won’t do.
