Last month we reported on a video that Bandai Namco had released teasing a new project. The video was animated in a hand-drawn style and didn't reveal much about the new project. It appeared to be vampire related, and it closed with the hashtag "#PrepareToDine," an obvious play on the Dark Souls tagline, "Prepare to die." The whole thing was rather mysterious; a true teaser if there ever was one.
Well, the mystery is officially over. Bandai Namco posted a video to its YouTube channel today teasing a project called Code Vein. The trailer features, you guessed it, vampires. However, instead of hand-animated footage, the video is composed of cutscenes and what appears to be gameplay footage.
The scene opens depicting a city punctured by huge alien spikes protruding from the ground and buildings. The Japanese narrator refers to the spikes as the "Thorns of Judgement," and something apocalyptic has apparently happened to the world. It becomes evident at a point that something is causing the denizens of this land to turn into vampires and monsters.
The gnarly, over-sized swords and weapons, as well as pointy hairdos, shows a Japanese anime heritage reminiscent of the Final Fantasy series. Some of the scenes also show what seems to be two-player co-op support, but Engadget suggests that it might just be a single-player companion feature.
Any details beyond that are just speculation, so Bandai Namco has left us with a little mystery after all. As the title of the video, "CODE VEIN - First Trailer | TBA" suggests, the game has yet to be officially announced and even the developers are not saying which platforms should expect the title. It also does not yet have an exact release date, but the end of the trailer says that Code Vein is coming in 2018.