[This is an extended version of something I wrote for PCG. Well... I didn't write it for PCG. I wrote it for myself after something had moved me in the flawed-but-oft-magnificent Vampire: Bloodlines and I sold a cut down version of it to PCG months later, as it's spoiler central. It's very much my personal experience with a memorable section...]
“Power Corrupts” has never been true. In my experience, Power Seduces. “Corrupt” implies it’s akin to sprinkling a little shit in an otherwise immaculate meal. The problem with power is that it just makes everything better. And when someone’s staring up at you, saying you’re the best person in the world and they’d do anything – anything – you ask, could you say no?
I thought I could. I was wrong.
I’ve been on adventures before, and I always lean towards the side of right. I tried to do that here too but since entering the World of Darkness, even best intentions twisted in my hand. Heather was the classic case. I found her, lying dying in the corner of a Santa Monica emergency ward. A college girl with market-bought Scarlet dyed hair and emo glasses, straight off an Oakland campus. Pity makes me choose to feed her a drop of my own Vampiric blood, gifting her a little of my own power – enough to save her. She becomes what we call a Ghoul. Coming to, she asks me what happened. In a moment of madness, I tell her the truth. She screams, calling for the police and I make with the disappearing into the night thing my brethren and I do so well.
I forget about her. So when, much later, she turns up outside the LA Camarilla’s headquarters it’s a surprise. She’d been looking for me everywhere since that night. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about me. She just wants to be there for me, pay me back any way she can, whatever. I try and talk her out of it – she really doesn’t know what she’s getting into, but she’s so insistent. I think “why not”. I’ll treat her well and everything will be okay.
I take her back to my sanctuary and tell her what’s going on. She doesn’t believe me at first. “Vampire and Ghoul?” she asks, “Is that some kind of Fetish Slang?”. I persist and the stain of truth sinks into her. But when she recovers from the initial horror, she doesn’t care. She loves me in the way the flame loves the air or the arm loves the needle, except a thousand times worse. I know it’s fake and it’s only what I did to her that made her like this. But no matter how artificial the affection is, it’s still a tongue lapping my ego.
She gives me a little of her money and offers up her neck for me to drink from. I try and treat her as politely as I can, but she’s so damn submissive, I find myself falling into the role of master. I’ve got a beautiful girl who’ll do anything I ask her too, quickly, obediently. Since she wants to serve so badly, I find myself giving her tasks and demands that I’d never make to anyone else. And, to my horror, I like it. I have to leave heading out for serious business, but I surprise even myself with my final command: Change your appearance. She went to the bathroom, a happy slave and I head out into the eternal night.
“Is that some Fetish slang?”. Heh. It may as well have been.
My work takes me into a hellish place, full of violence and madness, but it’s my internal turmoil that’s confusing me. This isn’t like me at all, but the opportunity was there and what was the real harm? She thinks she loves me. It makes her happy. And in a sordid kind of way, it makes me happy too. As I progress around the dilapidated mansion full of knives and the men who wield them, I start thinking that the insanity of the place as some kind of reflection of my inner turmoil… but then realise that’s yet more egotism. How did I find myself in this place? I think back to the chain terribly slutty, manipulative things I’ve done since being embraced, and I wonder if you’ve been falling long enough, you even notice anymore.
I deliberately put off returning home until I close all business, but the nagging questions haunts me. What’s going to happen when I walk through the door? How will she look? How will I feel? Will I like it? I step inside.
Heather’s changed. Bits of red hair show in scarlet slashes through the fresh black. Green eyes drowning in kohl, hair a halo and body wrapped in something tight, black and shiny. Her idea of what a Vampire’s servant should look like. She’s not far wrong.
She’s made the effort so, it seems, should I. I let her suckle some more of my blood from an opened wrist, cementing our relationship a drop at a time. I’ve been told that three feedings lead to a bond of an intensity unknown in all other life, and this is one more step towards that. At that second, I don’t really care. She’s my ghoul. I’m her Vampire. She lives for me and I take what I desire. It’s the natural order, for my kind, and I’m almost exulting in it.
At which point, she throws down a pile of greasy notes in my lap. Her college fund, she announces, and she wants me to have it. After all, she doesn’t need it anymore. She’s going to drop out of school so she could look after me properly, like she knows she really should. It’s like a slap to the face. I wake up.
Sure, I was a vampire, but there was no need to be one I was slouching towards. I told her she had to go. She screamed denial. I insisted, saying that this was to be my last order to her. Distraught, she’s begs for another chance. And even there, there was some part of me that was thinking “Go on: You deserve to be worshipped, and you can spend the money on especially Bloody Marys and shotgun rounds”. But I gritted my teeth, rammed a stake through that part of my heart and hoped it stayed lodged there long enough to do what I had to do. Eventually, she left. I breathed a sigh. Or regret or relief, I really couldn’t tell.
I may be a Vampire. I don’t have to suck.
Related Stories:
The first time you stealth kill with a Katana should bring a smile to anyones face. I love little touches like that.
Vampire was great.. it had awful moments (the sewers.. the last bit) but the rest was so worth it. Just bring a magnum and plenty of ammo for the finale.
It makes me sad that Troika died. Very sad.
It possibly sounds cheesy, but what really works are those steam engine facial animations. Combined with really pro writing and voice acting, you get great performances from the “actors”, unlike in any other game. That face technology really gets used to its potential in this dialogue-heavy game (as opposed to hl2).
If anyone is still confused about the patches, I’m pretty sure the “Unofficial” as opposed to the “True” patch is what you want. It has gotten updated more, and I decided to use it partly because True patch’s author seems, um, oddly possessive– apparently there are visible signatures on revised graphics textures, for instance.
Some tips when you use the Unofficial patch: 1) choose “basic” if you want closer to the original release (e.g. no new guns) and “plus” if you want more additions. 2) There’s an app you can run seperately in the dl that will patch the game to run widescreen (which looks pretty great). 3) Bonus tip: hopefully you have 2 gigs of RAM, as loading times can be pretty terrible.
Since it’s not the easiest thing to find, the Unoffical patch is at http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php
Arcanum was brilliant.
I would be highly interested in reading a VH-1 style ‘Rise and Fall of the House of Troika’ article if that sort of thing interests the writers of RPS…
OK, I messed up BIG TIME when editing my post, but things seems to have cleared up, thankfully. So I will re-post it again.
* To Dave N-P:
Regarding the two sets of patches, I’ve only tried one of them, the “True” Patch, so my recommendation goes for that. It was v4.04T when I used it, and the game was absolutely playable from beginning to end. The main difference with the other batch of patches is, I think, that the True patch does not modifify any gameplay elements, just fixes bugs (and adds a weapon in the late game part that was never fully implemented in the original – a sniper rifle- , although dialogues for it even exists in the files).
The other patches, however, do things like adding XP rewards when you do certain things in the game (that were rewardless in the original), adds the ‘Domination’ skill to all bloodlines dialogues (it was only available to Ventrues) or makes some weapon’s availability easier and sooner, among other things (at least that was what I gathered reading the readmes).
In the end, it is just a matter of taste which one you choose, but rest assured that, in any case, the game will be fully playable, and thoroughly enjoyable, with either community patch installed on top of the v1.2 official one.
* Mike: Just to bring the twins back into this, I remember being a bit dissatisfied that once you’d made ‘the decision’, their plot arc came to an abrupt end. Given how important they are to the first quarter of the game, it’s a shame you didn’t run into them later on. I kept popping back to the Asylum to say hello, but there was never anything new to find out.
I kept coming back to the Asylum as well… but for other reason… (Yes, I chose Jeanette :P )
* Benjamin Barker: I didn’t noticed any “visible signature” on textures (not saying they aren’t, just that maybe they aren’t so obvious, after all). Regarding the “True” author, yes, he seems a bit too much, er, arrogant, but maybe he has some reason. Read what he says about the “Unofficial” Patch here:
http://www.tessmage.com/forum/index.php/topic,1112.msg36174.html#msg36174
Yeah – I kept wanting, um, more from the Twins afterwards. Just don’t tell me missus that.
The good thing of RPS is that when I read this on PCG I couldn´t thank the writer for such an excellent write up, a great example of videogame journalism and a clever exposure of one of the most powerful narrative elements that a game can achieve when offers important and meaningful choices that make the player care for what he is doing.
So, thanks Kieron.
And Jim is completely right, we need more (any) of this.
I could be wrong about the patch controversy (and those textures), just going with hearsay, and favoring the one I tried. Anyway, the one worked for me as well as it sounds like the other worked for YogSo… I must say that in the Unoffical patch I didn’t get any Domination options for non-Ventrue characters, so probably there’s misinformation about both patches. I preferred the idea of more stuff to the idea of trying to remain as true as possible to Troika’s intentions, so if they truly both work fine, I’d suggest using that distinction to decide.
I’ll wind it up with the thought that it’s a telling barometer of the uniqueness and quality of the game itself that there even are rival patches. If you haven’t played the game, just choose one, and do it.
I went with the True patch for my games, though I am thinking about trying the Unofficial one of these days to see if that new content is consistent to the game. I’d suggest you go with the True patch for your first game, then make a decide what to do for future games.
@Dave N-P:
I’ll second YogSo. When I downloaded V:TM:BL I opted for Tessmage’s True Patch. I don’t regret it. All they tried to do was restore the content that Troika had to suppress when they rushed it out the door. I’m just sorry my laptop doesn’t have the guts to run the game full throttle–I had to cheat to get through the game because I kept dying from system lag.
Oh, a warning:
YogSo’s link contains some NSFW CG images. Someone may want to tag that.
-Z
I’ve played this through 6 times and always kept Heather, mostly as my greed for cash, blood, and body armor outweighs any consideration for her welfare I might have.
Incidentally it is possible to keep her alive (Toreador: celerity 5, auspex 5, bloodbuff. Shoot (headshots with magnum) the far one first then right then left) if you do keep her but it breaks the scripting and she just stands there doing nothing and makes no further appearances.
http://fromearth.net/LetsPlay/Bloodlines/
I thought this might be of interest to some of you. Some guy doing novel-like recap of his Bloodlines game. Cool game, if Scooby-Doo didn’t give me nightmares I’d play it.
I realize I kind of missed the boat on this whole controversy but I really adore this kind of thing. I keep a stack of strategy guides for old JRPGs I don’t have the time to finish and don’t particularly like just because they’re so fun to read.
This game was so, so, so very good for the first 10-15 hours. Definitely the most a videogame world has got into my head, and probably the only genuinely adult characters seen in a videogame. Shame about the end, but, god, it was worth it.
That we have not seen its like again in the intervening years is a greater indictment of the videogames industry than virtually anything else.
Vampire sex?
What?
When?!?
(I had enough persuasion to keep both twins)
I’ve never previously felt any real impetus to pick up this game. I’d always pegged it as kind of a subpar “Whoo we’re vampires!” thing.
But if it’s good as everyone seems to be saying it is, I might have to make a point of playing it.
@AlpineViper,
[Spoiler]
With Jeanette. You need to say the right things to her throughout, save her, and visit her when it’s all over (I seem to remember), and I presume have high enough seduction.
[/end spoiler]
@Noc,
It is. As has been said, for a game that lets you focus highly on conversational abilities (which it breaks down into 3 separate skills), it nosedives towards the end when it decides that what it’s really about is tough-as-nails combat (I’d specialised in socialising stuff, so ended up cheating past it), but up until that point it genuinely is as good as people say. Deus Ex with vampires, essentially.
On the subject of Heather, one of my favourite things about that story is that she isn’t one of the most gorgeous characters. She’s just a normal girl who you happen across – the trip isn’t about her being a hot male-fantasy sex slave, it’s all about the power and the effects it has on her, and you as a player. Which Kieron nicely captured here.
Well, there *is* another Vampire the Masquerade game (Redemption) which was a second rate Diablo clone with mild Vampire veneer and an autorun that would crash my computer. Perhaps you got it confused with that one.
My favorite part was prolly with Velvet, the hot stripper owner in Hollywood and all the sassy sexy dialog she has with your character.
Benjamin Barker: Agreed totally on the acting. It was the first game who I completely didn’t click through the dialogue on after reading it, because I wanted them to see the performance.
(Some games get moments of me doing that, but mostly mediocre voice-acting and characters standing and staring makes me click.)
Noc: The first 10-15 hours are close to Deus Ex in quality. The writing is better, certainly.
KingMob: The Escapist actually did one…
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_77/440-The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Troika
Glad everyone seems to have got something out of it.
KG
I loved that game with all of my non-goth soul.
Kieron captures perfectly the conflict related to Heather. I remember actually getting pissed off about her getting killed.
I kept her though. What? I was a Toreador for God’s sake!
Solario’s comment just reminded me of something. Bloodlines was one of the very few CRPGs that I actually played ‘in character’ – doing things because the character I was playing would do them as opposed to doing things that allowed me to min-max my way through the game.
“Agreed totally on the acting. It was the first game who I completely didn’t click through the dialogue on after reading it, because I wanted them to see the performance.”
I tend to do exactly the same thing, but this had me captivated. Smiling Jack was brilliantly written and acted.. heck they all were really, but he was my favourite.
Even the little bit parts had character, there was no sense of “4 voice actors trying desperatly to sound different and one or two big stars sounding bored and unmotivated” like some games ¬_¬
I consider VtM:B to be one of two excellent games that were utterly lost and forgotten in 2004.
The other was Tribes: Venegeance.
T:V is completely forgotten, and only sold ~20k copies. That said, it was an amazing FPS.
2004 just had too many awesome games: Doom 3 (doesn’t hold up now though), Half-Life 2, GTA: San Andreas, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and probably another 20 I’ve already forgotten.
I really wish Activision would wise up to how good this game can be, put some serious resources into fixing it (maybe hire the community patchers?), and re-release it. With the game possibly being melee-heavy, I could even see it working out pretty well on a console.
They could out-FPSRPG BioShock.
Bloodlines is excellent. Even the old Redemption is great once you use a fanmod, like WoDMOD. Of course, it’s just a storyteller tool then. But a proper one!
(Not saying that just because I was on the modteam :)
Just a little love for vampire and deus ex
Deus Ex : Malkavian Mod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6coZ7pvPyE
some of the funniest stuff ever.
I don’t know what you’re talking about by bugs. If you update to the most recent official patch from Troika, there are very few bugs. The game is extremely fun and I would go so far as to describe it as epic. I had a lot more fun with this than I did with Deus Ex, that’s how good it is. And you can’t not love talking to your own television as a Malkavian and having it answer back.
Esh, start a gangrel character? Get stuck in a tutorial failure loop, no matter who you are reams of missing dialogue broken quests because you walked in through the wrong door, doors that decide not to open.
the unofficial patch(s) is/are near essential.
Doesnt stop the game being damn good though.
I wanted to replay Vampire Bloodlines again, but it doesn’t like my new video card and the driver (8800GT). Keeps crashing and never even gotten to the opening scene…
Too bad, it was an interesting game. Was pretty buggy back then during my first play though…
Ah yes Bloodlines, brilliant game. Linear as hell though, but Santa Monica and Downtown had so many great role playing options it’s unreal.
Different gameplay styles: Nosferatu, Malkavian, Toreadar, Tremere. Fantastic. Goddamnit I miss Troika, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil and Bloodlines….
All brilliant games, sloppy execution. ToEE’s combat is hands down the best combat in a cRPG ever. PERIOD.
Fantastic game, despite the cracks. The only kicker here I found
*SPOILER ALERT*
was the ending. I opened the box myself first time round, and felt like i’d wasted that time gaming, such a copout. Second time around, I let Lacroix open it- much more satisfying, to think I walked away an Anarch after letting the “Prince” get his just desserts.
Shoulda listened to the thin-blood on the beach- she actually says “Don’t open it”-now that’s freaky, how the developers put hints in for a better ending that you can quite easily miss…
I know this isn’t a tech support forum, but has anyone managed to install Vampire on a machine running Windows XP Professional 64-bit? I get the message when trying to install that it only supports 95/98/2000/XP. I guess it assumes x64 isn’t XP. Know any workarounds?
Desperate to play the game again now that there are some halfway-decent patches out there.
There is a fan made x64 patch available, Thelps.
There are also blank screen fixes for the game, if anybody like me needs one.
Both of these fixes work with the Steam version of the game. :-)
Right. Installed the game. Downloaded and installed the official patch. Read up on patch differences (here and other places), opted for the “True” patch. Followed instructions to install that. Downloaded a couple of texture packs from the True patch site (a few…I don’t really need my character to be topless, thanks), and installed them. Found and installed a widescreen patch. Messed around with the .cfg file to enable Histories. Skimmed a gamefaq so I wouldn’t screw up ENTIRELY when creating a character.
Realized what time it was, went to bed. But I can see Fun, off somewhere in the distance!
- “Also, does anyone else still feel there’s a chance Obsidian will produce real greatness, given their Black Isle Troika roots, once finally given a proper length of time to make a game? Both NWN2 and KOTOR 2 were deeply flawed but with some moments of real brilliance.”
They already have – it’s called Mask of the Betrayer, the NWN2 expansion.
- “They already have – it’s called Mask of the Betrayer, the NWN2 expansion.”
I don’t know. It was a decent expansion, but the stupid curse was just plain annoying, you had to rush through everything cause of it and didn’t have time to stop and smell the roses.
I don’t get the complaints about the curse, it makes perfect sense in the story, and I would have been disappointed if Mask of the Betrayer had been like practically every other game (like say, BG2?) that put the protagonist in a similar position and simply let the player wander about sight-seeing for ages when the curse/condition would realistically, according to the game itself, require swift action or result in death.
*MAJOR END OF GAME SPOILERS*
I played this through the first time after the patch made it playable to the end, as a Tremere. So I sided with the Tremere Elder… in which the box is never opened, it just gets filed away in that warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and you are left with the impression that there is absolutely an ancient, vampiric horror sleeping inside.
Much later, I replayed as a Gangrel anarch. When I got to that ending and found out what was actually in the box, I laughed so hard I had real difficulty breathing.
This is the only RPG I have played through more than once–although I just about quit playing the first time through when in the sewer system looking for the Nosferatu stronghold or whatever it was called. Now that was an uninspired, excessively long, and completely “been there, done that” level. I suspect that is why Vampire Bloodlines seems to start going downhill after you get to the Chinatown section.
I played the game all the way through as a Torreador and loved it. I installed the True Patch and am now going through as a Malkavian. Nice change, but I would not recommend Malkavian for the first time through. Incidentally, even though the True Patch does not alter game play, it does affect what you see. You get to see Grout’s wife, for example, which you cannot see with the “official” 1.2 patch.
[Minor spoiler follows]
Regarding the twins, I saved them both the first time through, but the second time I could not; even though I replayed that “final scene” and explored every dialogue option. Apparently, you need to have high enough seduction and persuasion skills (4 each or better?) and need to have chosen particular dialogue options earlier in the game with each twin as well. (It could also be that the choices presented to Malkavians are different since the twins are also Malkavian.) Anyway, I chose Jeanette the second time and later got an email from her. (The result was very nice, by the way.)
[End of minor spoiler]
I also noticed that the clothing you purchase in the game varies depending on your clan–at least it did for Malkavian–very interesting. :-) Small changes like this in appearance and dialogue are what make the game very special indeed.
this has been one of my favourite games of the last few years – yes it is buggy and crashes more than Richard Hammond, but the quality of the storyline, which is relatively non-linear for major phases, plus the variety of vampire clan skill-sets make this game replayable to a much greater degree than the norm.
the environmental humour level surpasses the likes of Duke Nukem 3D (anybody else remember that?) and the dialogue options are often amusing.
as to Heather – this has been my biggest conscience-searer of the whole game. I’m not too bothered about draining bad guys or killing to maintain The Masquerade if necessary, but allowing Heather to depend on you and then NOT kicking her ass out to save her so that she gives you the body armour – well that feels a bit sh-tty.
OK so her life is there only because the PC saved it – (read her medical records in the trauma unit) – but even so, when you have the foreknowledge that the Sabbat will kidnap and kill her for being your ghoul, you kinda want to save her. I’m annoyed that with level 5 speed enhancement available to my PC, and with her only a few yards away, the game plays a cut scene of her being executed, rather than gives the PC a chance to save her. the Sabbat attacking her would have been sparkly bits in the air facing my PC in a rage, but hey – the game wants to make you feel guilty and succeeds. I don’t sell the ring she gives me – I take it with me as a good-luck charm and to remind me to kill every last Sabbat I come across. Loyalty works both ways…
this has to be my favorite game of all time. it was the first RPG i picked up as well as the first game i bought from steam. seeing as i was a n00b at games i didnt realised the game its self was bugged and just asumed my computer was playing up or disk was scratch so i kept turning off my computer and reloading untill things worked. my worst memory of a bug though was the clip where you get the first part of the snuff tape of a weird hoodied guy who was supposed to run off and get killed, but for the first 20 times i loaded it, stood still while the sounds of him running and getting devoured played. sigh. still im the proof that u can finish the game without a patch lol.
i didnt notice the game getting worse after 15 hours of play though? how could u not like china town and the crazy facist ex-army “herbalist” who’s rack o’ spices revolved to reveal guns. lots of guns.
i kept heather on to the end despite the fact my gangrel looked stupid with his hood up because of the body armour. when she died i was so pissed my play must have increased as i owned all the rest of the sabbat in that building. its amazing they built up that much emotion.
i think people often forget the sense intruge the game builds. in the end i was faced with the dilema, and since that time its been the only game choice i didnt make instantly. did i choose camerialla, or go with the main bad go or go for my self or go with the qui-jinn? in the end i choose go by my self because i felt i would be used by all of them. but it still took the taxi ride to make up my mind. the irony is the final clip made me feel like i was used anyway…
also who rembers the spaz 15? the pump action shot gun that had 6 rounds per clip and u could fire them all off in a second. “sighs dreamily” you dont get guns like that in games today…
but then you dont get games like this today….
(sorry about the spelling…)
how do i feed the chick in the clinic my blood? i have tried and i see no option to do so. can some one please help me?
You need to have Mercurio tell you about how Ghouls work; that opens the conversation path with Heather in the hospital.
(Slight bug: Mercurio isn’t the only one you can learn about Ghouls from, but even after the other guy spells it out, the option doesn’t appear.)
wow i am just blown away by your story it’s so close and correct on the details of a vampire. I loved it very much as i do all the topics relateing to my heritage though not many geat the facts or details straight you have seemed to studied up. congrats on achieving this were so many have failed. *vamp*
@KG: Read this a while back, great article. Made me want to play the game but I couldn’t find a copy for some reason.
Picked it up on Steam the other day and I’ve been putting a worrying amount of time into it ever since. (Though not quite the 5am bedtime kind of effort.)
You describe the moral conflict with Heather perfectly. At the risk of repeating what others have said before, this is what games should do. Make you feel something. Care. Worry that you’re not as good a person as you thought you were. The interactivity of games, when properly harnessed, makes them the most absorbing and engrossing artistic medium there is. Films, books, poetry, music – they struggle to come close.
Love it.
I found it strange that no matter which answers i choose in the character help, i always end up malkavian. Not that i mind though
If I’d ever re-finish a game it would be this, just to meet the characters.
The interaction is a jewel. There are great RPGs but the most memorable characters I’ve met are here.
Cogar said:
“Incidentally, even though the True Patch does not alter game play, it does affect what you see. You get to see Grout’s wife, for example, which you cannot see with the “official” 1.2 patch.”
I guess that I’m the best person to respond to this… because I’m the guy who repaired that particular issue.
Grout’s wife was always supposed to appear, in that weird glass display case where he kept her pickled corpse. The problem was that in their haste, Troika had neglected to add an important switch to the texture information file (VMT file) that controls the way Grout’s wife interacts with the lighting in that scene. The result was that on some systems — not all, mind you — Grout’s wife would either clip as she spun and partially disappear, or else she wouldn’t be rendered at all.
The changes made to Grout’s wife by the True Patch were legitimate bug fixes in regards to this issue. There were also a few other similar bugs in in various other areas, most of which I managed to track down and repair in version 5.04AT of the True Patch.
All my best,
- Tessera -
Co-author of the True VTMB Patch
Texture Artist and Modder (retired)