As with most people, I am getting sick of these teen dramas taking our favorite monsters and making them tame and whiny. I want to bring back the old school monsters and bring them into the 21st century. My idea for a game focuses around the two biggest victims of this latest craze, the vampires and werewolves. I would like to make the game into two stories, one from the point of view of each race. The story would take place in a dark city where the two races are fighting for power, when they hear rumblings of a big event about to occur that could change the tide of their war forever.

The vampires have long been sophisticated, charming and usually a position of power a.k.a. Dracula. Taking this into account I imagine the vampire race to be CEOs of a big corporation. In their large ebony skyscraper, with specially tinted windows for the sun (where they burn, not sparkle), overlooking their empire. They would have their hands in everything from blood banks and hospitals for food to Pharmaceutical companies. The elders run the companies as they would their coven. There is ranks that they all fall into. The player would be able to take the role of a low level female vampire that is having dreams of an unusual crack that is emitting a strange light. Her name is Rebecca Vespera, and she comes to the attention of the vampire elders, when she starts digging into the mystery behind her dreams. They believe Nazear, the god of darkness, chose her to bring forth his arrival. This brings her at odds of the other chosen one who is on a mission to release Nazear for his own purpose.

The werewolves have a pack mentality, they stick together no matter what. They are at their base, savage beasts, and as such they are not against getting dirty. They are deep in the criminal underground. Owning nightclubs and strip joints all across the city. They also have some men undercover in the police department so they can kill and operate their business free and clear. There is few alpha males in charge of different aspects of their business who work together begrudgingly for the better of their entire race. For when the moon is full they have human slaves who work hard for a chance to become a wolf. It is a dog eat dog world out there. The player takes control of a lone wolf who has wandered into town. He starts hearing Nazear's voice instructing him to unleash him from his cage. He comes at odds with the local pack and has to earn his way into their good graces while dealing with the voices.

The basics of the game is to choose what race you wanna play and work through the city doing jobs for your side trying to bring about Nazear. I was thinking for the 21st century we would need guns. This would be beneficial with the subject matter because humans shouldn't live after being shot with an entire clip. With these creatures they will not only be able to live but heal at a supernatural rate. Besides being an action game i would love to have some really memorable scary moments. They way I have outlined the story, I left the end open to being able to have sequels or have a satisfying ambiguity to it.

So what do you guys think about this?

The story has a striking resemblance to Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. If you haven't (and to be honest I assume you would have given your interest in the subject) it's worth picking it up along with the relevant mods.

I think the problem you will find is that classically vampires have absolutely no redeeming characteristics. They are monsters pure and simple, what charm they have comes from their powers and not from their personality. As a result basing a story solely around such creatures will be quite hard, especially if you expect the player to take on the role of one of these things. You will probably end up humanizing them to an extent but since you are expressly trying to get away from this it's something you would have to be careful about doing.

The same is largely true of werewolves. The redeeming point with them is the internal conflict between man and beast, something which seems to strike a chord with a lot of people. The very definite split between these two allows a single character to be bother irredeemably evil and virtuous at the same time. It has been done before though, like Tachikoma pointed out, which can make it hard to be fresh and interesting especially to seasoned veterans of the genre.

If you could overcome/avoid those problems then I feel you would have a pretty good basis for a game on your hands.

I have heard of Vampire: the masquerade, unfortunately I never got a chance to play it. It seems like a cool idea, exploring the different types of vampire. As to what you said about the story being hard to form around these creatures being pretty hard, I would have to agree. It is not impossible if I put work into it. With the vampire story line I want them to be smart and vicious at the same time. Rebecca was chosen specifically by a god and brought up the chain of command without all the work of her peers. This would lead to a lot of resentment and envy. The player would go through being shunned and hated by most of the cast in the beginning of the game. In truth that would be a way for people to relate to her, since everyone has felt that way once in their lives. Make no mistake though, she is a monster, and as such she has to kill. The way the story goes humans have no idea their city is infested with either of these creatures. Rebecca would have to go about her business of releasing this god and balancing her need to feed on the humans. Separating one from the crowd and killing them in solitary. This would be in no way romantic. Kind of like giving a man who has been lost in the dessert for 3 days a banquet meal. It is messy and disgusting.

With the werewolf story, being an outsider who must merge with the pack would be an uneasy thing to do. Since He had no pack, he was never taught how to control and balance his new found life. With them being criminals it adds to his guilt. Not only is he a beast, but the only ones who can help are murders, thieves and psychopaths. Now games have explored crime before: GTA, Mafia, etc. But this would be a whole new breed (pun intended). They are a family who works together, fights for leadership, and oh yeah, hunt for humans during the night. The player would be a human with a heightened senses and abilities, and when they need to, turn into a beast who is all rage. You have to keep killing to stay in that form. Again you can connect on one level and still keep them as monsters. Then again who hasn't felt like a monster?

p.s. Thank you for the feed back this is helping me get an idea of how i'd like the game to be while addressing what others want from it.

I have but one question: why would vampires and werewolves fight each other? (Please don't say "because werewolves were slaves of vampires a long time ago" )
Since both vampires and werewolves peacefully coexist with humans it seems counterproductive to not do the same with each other. Moreover their areas of influence are different. It seems more intuitive when werewolves of different clans and vampires of different clans fight each other rather than one race fighting the other. Furthermore, when there's an all out war going, humans are bound to find out, get scared and try to fight at least vampires - being their natural prey and all. So a more realistic environment would be a city torn apart by the war or a city where the werewolves and vampires are not in a state of war just because they are different.