Werewolf: The Apocalypse -Earthblood : Tarker's Mill Vicinity [Mission 1] {Walkthrough/Gameplay}
Channel: theRedLad
Date: 11/04/2021

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood 
Mission 1 : Tarker's Mill Vicinity
[No Commentary]

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IGN Review : After decades of vampires hogging all the spotlight in the World of Darkness, I've been drooling over the prospect of a good Werewolf: The Apocalypse game to showcase my favorite side of that fantastic universe… but it might be a couple decades more at this rate, because Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is an unambitious swing at video game-ifying the beloved tabletop roleplaying game of fangs and fury that originally got me into that hobby. If it can’t make transforming into a massive beast and ripping your enemies limb from limb fun, what are we even doing here?
In Earthblood, you play as Cahal, a Garou of the Fianna tribe born under the moon sign Arhoun who must battle Banes and Fomori to save Gaia. If you found that sentence confusing, this story is going to be a doozy because it barely ever stops for even a moment to explain any of the concepts of its rich but sometimes perplexing setting. And to anyone without an understanding of werewolves and their culture, a lot is going to be lost from its storytelling. This stands in stark contrast to the classic Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which is set in the same universe. That game spends the first few hours explaining to you what vampires are, what they can and can't do, and how their society works. Earthblood, meanwhile, seems to be written for existing Apocalypse fans only. If you’re exploring this part of the World of Darkness for the first time get ready to be bewildered – and that probably describes most players.

Anyway, Cahal is a tough guy in a leather jacket with a bunch of stock character traits who, through about half the story’s 20-ish hours, doesn't seem to be able to express anything that would register above a two or a three on the emotional Richter scale. This includes when multiple people close to him are killed. In a game with the tagline, "When will you Rage?" it's kind of a problem that your lead character has a hard time expressing believable anger. The voice acting improves a little in the second half, but overall it's very flat. And the dialogue writing isn't particularly good, either, which ends up making most of the characters seem almost creepily robotic.

This central stealth action routine is the one thing that kind of works about Earthblood (which is nice, except that werewolves in Apocalypse aren't generally known for their stealthiness). Going swift and sneaky in wolf form lets you sabotage equipment, shut down turrets, and thin the herd with stealth kills. And to its credit, the levels are well-constructed enough to make whittling away the defenses as much as I could before the alarms went off a satisfying puzzle that tested my observation skills and quick execution. But on the other hand, when it's fully possible to just kick the door down, roar, and splatter all of your enemies into jelly on normal difficulty, it can feel like a waste of time because you don't get any extra rewards for doing things the quiet and patient way.

A lot of Earthblood’s weaker points could have been forgiven, at least to some degree, if Cyanide had managed to make it fun to go on a rampage as a snarling 400-pound hellbeast. But forgiveness must be earned, and combat – the part of Earthblood that seemed to get the alpha's share of the attention – is really mediocre.

It's floaty and arcadey in the worst way. You don't feel much of a sense of momentum, which hurts the illusion that you're playing as a massive, bloodthirsty beast. The animations aren't that great either, and that’s particularly noticeable when most enemies won't even flinch as they’re being slashed by a clawed arm as big as they are. They’re too dumb to even flee in terror when you've killed all of their friends! It’s a far cry from the World of Darkness tabletop game, in which most average mortals go temporarily insane just from looking at a werewolf in the Crinos form. The fact that you never feel scary hurts the roleplaying experience a lot.

There’s some variety to the slaughter in that you can toggle on and off a special heavy stance, but that just makes you into a plodding, cumbersome Frankenstein's monster. Why the designers would choose to include this instead of one of the other iconic Garou forms from the lore doesn't make much sense to me. Especially when the bear-like direwolf shape from the tabletop game is used by several werewolf NPCs, but you never get access to it yourself.