By Kieron Gillen on April 9th, 2008 at 8:21 am.
[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.
09/04/2008 at 08:35 Matt Dovey says:
Bloodlines may have had flawed combat, clunky controls and the pants-crappingest-scariest-hardest ending that I’ve still never quite got round to finishing, but it was moments like these that still pull me back to it. Seeing all your best intentions turn to dust like this, being turn between duty and decency with your beach friends who find themselves strangers in a lost land, coming across stories like the model-turned-Nosferatu… nobody ended up happy in this game. Thinking back, it’s possibly the most nihilistic game I’ve ever played, as factions tore each other apart and existences spiralled down out of sight.
Great stuff, wasn’t it? CCP would do well to tap into that vein of story for World of Darkness.
09/04/2008 at 08:36 Okami says:
Great write up, Kieron. If I remember correctly I turned her away at some point too. But not at first. Just like you, I liked the idea of having a submissive slave who loved me unconditionally. Of course I never stooped as low as you, telling her to dress like a Goth. I do have morals, you know.
(Also there was a certain phase in my life, when I dressed all black and read Moorcock and Anne Rice by candlelight while listening to Sisters of Mercy. I’d never send another one down that particular path, even if it was just a scripted bunch of polygons.)
I think I’ve read that you can get the best body armor in the game if you don’t turn her down and that.. ahh, well… here there be spoilers, I guess…
09/04/2008 at 08:40 Matt says:
I remember playing as a Malkavian, and she became tainted with madness and the ability to prophesise too, she even foresaw her own fate if she was to remain with you, forcing me to cut her loose. It was so great the amount of different dialogue options and choices they included in that game. Despite its flaws I got the impression the developers made a genuine effort to instill a sense of character into the game.
09/04/2008 at 08:49 Okami says:
I’d take a massively flawed game like Bloodlines, that’s just overflowing with character and personality over any hyper polished soulless cookie cutter game any day.
Though I still remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine upon first hearing about Bloodlines:
“The new Vampire RPG is beeing done by Troika and they’re using the new Source engine.”
“Troika? Weren’t those the guys who did Arkanum?”
“Yup.”
“And they’re giving them the Half Life 2 engine? I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…”
As it turned out, it was a bit too much for them to handle..
Still: Beautifull game, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore..
09/04/2008 at 08:51 Phil says:
Bloodlines was a massively frustrating product – it had moments like this, the ghost house, the twins, the option to spout meth-addict levels of nosense, the chance to wield a human arm as a melee weapon and the general sense campy adult fun BUT it was sluggish, buggy and frequently broken.
In terms of abusive relationships I think your relationship with the burning man in Planescape Torment is equally unnerving – your character tortures him as child and makes him the monster he becomes. He appreciates it and repays you by ripping bits off your already threadbare corpse, which actually makes you stronger.
09/04/2008 at 09:11 Jim Rossignol says:
I’ve been playing through recently with the up-to-date community patch and most of the genuine bugs have been fixed.
09/04/2008 at 09:16 Ian says:
I’ve not played Bloodlines but my friend did. He said to me about the bugginess of it so I decided to wait. I have more PC games than I have time to play anyway but once I’ve cleared the backlog I’ll look into buying it now there patches to help sort much of it out.
09/04/2008 at 09:16 Stick says:
And the great thing about Bloodlines: it was full of essay-worthy situations like this.
(I don’t know about nihilistic, but I love a game where your choice isn’t lightside/darkside but rather “exactly what flavour of complete bastard are you going to be?”)
09/04/2008 at 09:17 Matt Dovey says:
I didn’t realise there was a patch being maintained – I did install the game again a couple of months back but gave up because of the bugginess. I may have to revise that now…
As I’ve been wandering the corridors of my workplace I’ve been stewing this over, and have come to the conclusion that the (spoilers!) “twins” were the highlight for me – having to decide which personality you would keep, which was the truer person or the more desirable ally, having no right choice to make… feeling like a god has never been so agonising and terrible.
I agree with the other Matt as well – the choice of dialogue in this game really made it shine. It instilled a wonderful sense of character and really drove me to play the game multiple times just to see how each bloodline reacted to situations. Even though it was essentially the same story, the colour between the sketched lines was so vivid and unique for each group as to keep it enticing and pull you on. The powers on offer for each genuinely made you play a different way as well, out of necessity – I’ve still not had the guts to play as a Nosferatu, restricted to the shadows and sewers of the world.
09/04/2008 at 09:36 Jim Rossignol says:
I’d say that with the community patch installed the first 10-15 hours of Bloodlines are pretty much essential gaming. It goes very shit beyond that, and there are still come problems throughout, but… I wish there were more games like this. Even *one* more.
09/04/2008 at 09:40 Schadenfreude says:
Get your persuade high enough and you can keep ‘em both; no naughty vampire sex though.
09/04/2008 at 09:40 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
[Warning, there's spoilers here. Obviously, I'm a victim of them.]
Good move, Mr. Gillen. I heard that if you hadn’t chosen to let her go, she would’ve eventually suffer a sad fate indeed, though apparently you would’ve gotten more stuff from her. Not surprising that more Vampire fans seemed bothered by this moral choice than by the “Little Sister question,” which is precisely why I know this scenario despite not having actually played the game.
And Mr. Rossignol, you say there’s a community patch out? Might get the game off of Steam, then. People have been telling me that it’s a more dramatically and emotionally engrossing experience than actually playing a World of Darkness pen-and-paper game.
And given my experiences with playing in d10-based games involving somehow-machiavellian Malkavians, ecofriendly werewolves, and magical reality-altering peyote smoking kung fu dance hippies, I don’t find that statement hard to believe in the least.
09/04/2008 at 09:58 Grill says:
Great bits in bloodlines: The Cradle-crushing haunted house, the manikin guy attacking you with a plastic arm, all of the Malkavian dialogue, the new Histories introduced by the 2.3 patch, that dancing increases your humanity, Jeanette, the bounty-hunter quests and…
The Werewolf. The motherfunting werewolf.
09/04/2008 at 10:15 Phil says:
@Jim
Pathologic? Though for disclosures sake – I’ve only played the demo and it’s more adventure than RPG. Also, it’s considerable less ‘fun,’ more Camus than Anne Rice.
09/04/2008 at 10:17 Jim Rossignol says:
Pathologic is great in its own way, but it’s not quite down the avenue of RPGFPS that I want.
09/04/2008 at 10:24 The Fanciest Of Pants says:
Brilliant write-up.
Me and my wife both eagerly awaited bloodlines, and we both played through it. We both took heather in, though only I ended up telling her to leave, much later in the game.
For all it’s faults it still brings back tons of awesome memories.
@Grill: The werewolf indeed. Did anyone else just run the fuck away? I didn’t even know you could kill the bastard till a mate of mine did it.
09/04/2008 at 10:24 drunkymonkey says:
And to think, I turned her down because she irritated me.
09/04/2008 at 10:37 Lou says:
Great article.
As flawed as the game was, it didn’t really matter much in the end. Though I really wish someone would combine Bioware’s production values and marketing with the quality of writing (and, well, role-playing) of Vampire.
Wishful thinking of course, when not even a flawed game of this calibre is anywhere in sight.
09/04/2008 at 10:40 Iain says:
I agree with Jim: Playing Vampire Bloodlines as a Malkavian is one of the essential gaming experiences.
“I don’t like dramas, please change your channel to a comedy.”
It’s unfortunate that the game’s all downhill once you get to Chinatown (and arguably, a fair bit before that as well, but Chinatown is where it really begins to fall apart), but on the strength of those first 15 hours alone, it’s a must play game.
I’ve not played it with the latest fan-patch, though, so I could be tempted into digging out the disks for this again.
09/04/2008 at 10:45 C0nt1nu1ty says:
I read this article when it was in PC gamer not knowing that she was even there. It took me a while to find her, there’s only a specific time that she appears in the Clinic, after that its just a blood stain there. So I tried to see how far I could take it. I diddnt like the way the game went with her, she was kidnapped, I tried to save her, she was murdered, I tried five or six times, each time killed just at the last minute. I know it was part of the whole “your on your own” story arch but they could have made it less frustrating.
09/04/2008 at 10:47 Chris Evans says:
I remember playing this game and really quite enjoying it, at least up to a point anyway. Can’t remember this part though :(
Great write up Kieron!
Do the community patches work with the Steam version?
09/04/2008 at 10:50 Nny says:
Great game, great company. I wish they were still around.
09/04/2008 at 10:58 Kangarootoo says:
Bloodlines was indeed flawed majesty. And I never realised she changed in response to your interaction with her. I should really pick this up again one day (for a 3rd playthrough).
09/04/2008 at 11:14 Slappeh says:
Unfortunately I lost me damn disks for this game, really want to play it again.
09/04/2008 at 11:15 Uriel says:
Bloodlines is stunning. Certainly the most memorable and emotional gaming experience of my life: an utter triumph of content over game mechanics. It’s one of two games I’ve completed and promptly started again. Troika didn’t really have a handle on the technology but it was analogous to reading an imperfect translation of a brilliant novel.
I relied almost completely on my Toreador’s Celerity for the final battle. With a different set of disciplines or a lack of blood I’m sure that the game could potentially be impossible to complete without replaying several hours. Even with the game-breaking bugs, that was surely its greatest flaw.
Edit: Lost your disks? It was very cheap on Steam last time I checked. Amazingly I got this for £10 from a bargain bin within a couple of months of its release. Best £10 I’ve ever spent.
09/04/2008 at 11:33 H says:
I think now I’m going to have to find a copy of this game; tales of woe and suicide from bug-induced insanity always put me off. Ebay? Taxi!
09/04/2008 at 11:36 Phil says:
Would this be the right time and place to suggest Bloodline’s stable mate Arcanum was better than Baldur’s Gate?
Clockwork elephant guns vs a Big Bad psychotically terrified of death plus the chance to select a sheep in the brothel – good times.
09/04/2008 at 11:46 Willem says:
@Okami: Arcanum was brilliant! BRILLIANT.
09/04/2008 at 12:05 Pete says:
I love a game where your choice isn’t lightside/darkside but rather “exactly what flavour of complete bastard are you going to be?”
Very nice. You’re certainly not the only one with that thought.
I played this one through as a Gangrel and got the shit kicked out of me but enjoyed every moment. Once patched it was a fine game indeed. There’s no question it’ll be one of the few games I replay one day, and as a Malk for certain.
I remember reading an interview with the writer who did most of the Malkavian dialogue – given that it was all totally different to the other clans, it was a monumental task on a brutal deadline that (fittingly) nearly drove him up the wall. I wonder where that talented chap ended up?
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.
09/04/2008 at 12:06 Sören Höglund says:
Arcanum had a better setting than Baldur’s Gate, and I really like it, but it’s no BG. The combat is a bit crap and it’s terribly unbalanced. Maybe if they’d gotten around to a sequel with the problems ironed out.
And I took the money. I hated myself all the way, but I wanted that shiny auto-shotgun. I’m *such* a bastard, which is unusual in a game. It’s a credit to Bloodlines that it manages to make being evil so tempting, instead of the ludicrous options most games give you.
09/04/2008 at 12:11 brainwashed says:
I remember this game for the progress bar labeled “BRAAIIINNNSSSS!!!!!!!!!” while one’s head was being devoured by zombies.
That and one of the unpatched levels being impossible to complete without using a console hack.
09/04/2008 at 12:13 Stick says:
@Chris Evans: Yes. I played through with the tweak/patch fairly recently. Nothing weird about Steam version’s folder structure or anything.
09/04/2008 at 12:16 Okami says:
@WilleM: Yeah, I know. It was an incredibly complex and brilliant beast of a game. And it was done using the Fallout2 engine.
That dialogue didn’t imply that Troika was bad at making games.
It was just meant to illustrate that it’s a bad idea to give the (back then) most advanced FPS engine on the market (which was till in development at this point) to a studio which has little to no 3D development experience in order to create an incredibly complex and mature RPG with it.
That’s just a recipe for disaster.
The result was to be expected. A brilliant and complex RPG that was buggy as hell, had flawed game systems and was nowhere near from completed when it was finally released.
09/04/2008 at 12:18 Zeno, Internetographer says:
I stopped playing Bloodlines once I realized that the storyline was the exact same no matter what “choices” you made.
The only thing worse than a lack of control is the illusion of control.
09/04/2008 at 12:26 Uriel says:
Eh? Characters reacted differently, some disappeared from the plot altogether, lots of missions were optional and there were several different endings.
You can experience a substantially different story by playing differently. What more do you want?
09/04/2008 at 12:32 Lukasz says:
malks, nossies, and others.
Three completely different gameplays.
Other group:
Different dialogs playing as bloodmages (Tesomething) or ventrue.
and how many endings? four?
what are you talking about zeno?
09/04/2008 at 12:52 Matt says:
@Pete
I am hoping that the new game Obsidian are working on (Alpha Protocol) will be something worthwhile.
Usually they are limited by having a pre-existing setting, KotOR 2 had its problems but there were some great ideas in there hopefully with their own setting and a bit more creative freedom they will produce something really good.
I enjoyed the NWN2 games but I really felt they were hampered by the restrictions of the D&D setting and the fact that really they were working with a lot of recycled ideas they had used in games like the BG series and to some extent Planescape Torment. I hope they take advantage of the freedoms a new setting can provide and actually have the right amount of development time this time.
It is also going to be interesting to see what CCP do with the world of darkness setting, it seems such a difficult project for an mmo. I don’t know how the setting will work with so many playable characters.
09/04/2008 at 12:54 Joe Martin says:
Pfft. I kept her. You should see her other outfit!
Strange how much I developed an attachment to her – I too actually liked abusing her a little, so when she gets taken away in the endgame it’s a real sucker punch. You keep her in a cage so long that when the predators get in too she just can’t survive.
09/04/2008 at 13:06 kadayi says:
Great game (and up for a replay later this year). I recall the Hotel section creeped me out big time, as did the zombie section. I thought Toika made good use of Valves Source Engine in bringing a sense of life to their NPCs (the vampire girl on the beach was particularly standout), it’s a real shame other developers didn’t adopt it tbh.
09/04/2008 at 13:38 Mike says:
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.
Brilliant game, though. One of my absolute favourites.
09/04/2008 at 13:39 lungfish says:
Brilliant game, can’t say i disagree with the above, when it worked it was absolutely, spiffingly perfect. It’s just unfortunate that it descended into almost nothing but combat (easily the worst part of the game).
09/04/2008 at 14:11 Okami says:
@Mike: I was a bit dissapointed about that to. But to be fair, most RPG NPCs, no matter how well thought out and detailed they are , tend to become lifeless and boring once the quests they are associated with are completed.
There’s a pretty good reason for that as well: time and budget constraints. I’m currently working on my second commercial RPG and have written dialogues, quests and story archs for dozens and dozens of characters during the last few years. Once you’re done with one particular NPC you’re happy to move on to the next, to implement the next quest and the next piece of actual gameplay.
There are loads of NPCs, that I’d love to revisit at some point, to give them new dialogue options once you’ve completed certain things later on. But that’s just fluff. Nice to have.
They’ve served their gameplay purpose (moving on the plot) and now it’s time to script the next part of the story. It’s actually easier to fully script a whole dungeon of intricate combat encounters than write and update the dialog of just a single story NPC.
And that dungeon full of combat encounters is what 90% of your paying audience will play and remember and enjoy. And you have to cater to this audience and not to the people who run back to the bar after every major plot point to meet up with old friends and have a nice chat with them.
EDIT: Just checked my project folder. I haven’t actually written dialogues for more than a hundred characters. Though it often feels this way..
09/04/2008 at 14:16 Dave N-P says:
Glancing at wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bloodlines#Unofficial_Patches) it seems like there are two sets of community patches…any recommendations as to which is better?
09/04/2008 at 14:37 wcaypahwat says:
the planetvampire one seems to be the one people are talking about. i only picked up bloodlines about a year back, an ex-rental copy, for a fiver. was so dissapointed when i hit a part i could not get past, whatsoever, without the patch. and no internet connection :( im thinking i might jump right into a game once i get back home. once i clear kanes wrath.
Someone mentioned obsidian being constrained in the D&D universe etc, with their work. maybe so, but they do a damn good job while they’re in there. MOTB is absolute brilliance, more so for BG veterans, bringing us all into the wonderful world of Minsc, Dynaheir, and of course, Boo.
09/04/2008 at 14:54 dhex says:
it is amazing how troika would do 3/4ths of a brilliant game – utterly brilliant, like arcanum or bloodlines – and then just splat into a wall of nothingness.
the end of bloodlines cracked me up. another point in their favor is that troika always seemed to be able to pick up pretty good voice actors, especially in such a voice-heavy game like bloodlines. very little cringeworthy acting, which is a remarkable feat for any game.
09/04/2008 at 15:14 Chris Evans says:
Just read this little Eurogamer piece (via the Wiki article on the game) which says that the game was being pushed back to Spring 05.
Shame it wasn’t pushed back til then, it really could have done with the extra work and avoiding being released at the same time as HL2
09/04/2008 at 15:22 PleasingFungus says:
I loved Arcanum, but never finished it – got pretty far, sweating my way through bugs and the complete inferiority of the tech tree to the magic tree, and stopped when a vital plot NPC (in the elven city) vanished. Very frustrating. (My brother finished the game – thus the comment about magic.)
I DID beat Kotor II, while we’re talking about Obsidian, but I wasn’t too big a fan of it until I read this. Then I retroactively loved it.
09/04/2008 at 15:41 Phil says:
@dhex
Gotta say, the end of Arcanum, with the castle, the uber optional henchmen, the wonderfully memorable, bizarrely metaphysical and open ended conversation/confrontation in the throne room and the ‘where are they now’ style resolution was one of the best things in the game (or any game.)
09/04/2008 at 16:09 Mike says:
@Okami
I can see your point, but ultimately I wanted to see really stand out characters appear later in the plot – it was their story I was interested in, rather than ticking a box in my quest log.
The twins’ quest may have been over, but as far as I was concerned their story wasn’t quite at a satisfying conclusion. The ramifications of your decision were undermined by the fact that you never saw how the characters developed (or failed to develop) beyond that cutscene.
I don’t necessarily mean you should have had to traipse back to The Asylum again to find out what was going on, but further interaction later in the plot wouldn’t have been too tough.
Perhaps it’s another on the list of things Troika would have addressed had they had more time.
09/04/2008 at 16:27 YogSo says:
Repeated post. Please delete
09/04/2008 at 16:32 Nick says:
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.
09/04/2008 at 16:36 Benjamin Barker says:
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.
09/04/2008 at 16:37 Benjamin Barker says:
Since it’s not the easiest thing to find, the Unoffical patch is at http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php
09/04/2008 at 16:50 KingMob says:
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…
09/04/2008 at 16:54 YogSo says:
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
09/04/2008 at 17:30 Joe Martin says:
Yeah – I kept wanting, um, more from the Twins afterwards. Just don’t tell me missus that.
09/04/2008 at 17:33 Acosta says:
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.
09/04/2008 at 18:13 Benjamin Barker says:
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.
09/04/2008 at 20:01 Kagitaar says:
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.
09/04/2008 at 20:48 Zed says:
@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
09/04/2008 at 22:15 cannon fodder says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 00:00 RobotLiberationArmy says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 00:17 Will Tomas says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 01:41 AlpineViper says:
Vampire sex?
What?
When?!?
(I had enough persuasion to keep both twins)
10/04/2008 at 02:24 Noc says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 02:40 Will Tomas says:
@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.
10/04/2008 at 04:27 malkav11 says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 07:15 Belo says:
My favorite part was prolly with Velvet, the hot stripper owner in Hollywood and all the sassy sexy dialog she has with your character.
10/04/2008 at 12:53 Kieron Gillen says:
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
10/04/2008 at 13:31 Solario says:
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!
10/04/2008 at 14:05 Okami says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 14:21 Nick says:
“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 ¬_¬
10/04/2008 at 15:39 Andy says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 19:38 Mr.Brand says:
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 :)
10/04/2008 at 20:32 Heliocentricity says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 21:07 Eschatos says:
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.
10/04/2008 at 23:14 Heliocentricity says:
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.
11/04/2008 at 02:23 teko says:
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…
11/04/2008 at 15:52 Volrath says:
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.
11/04/2008 at 23:07 matte_k says:
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…
12/04/2008 at 19:11 Thelps says:
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.
13/04/2008 at 20:31 5eraph says:
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. :-)
15/04/2008 at 18:01 Dave N-P says:
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!
16/04/2008 at 12:30 Nordstream says:
- “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.
16/04/2008 at 16:29 Sergius says:
- “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.
16/04/2008 at 22:01 Nordstream says:
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.
17/04/2008 at 02:39 Sam says:
*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.
30/04/2008 at 19:42 Cogar says:
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.
14/05/2008 at 10:22 Warthog says:
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…
29/05/2008 at 17:26 will says:
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…)
13/06/2008 at 20:56 jennifer says:
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?
29/08/2008 at 16:08 Shadur says:
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.)
02/10/2008 at 08:55 vamp says:
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*
03/02/2009 at 11:00 Dan Harris says:
@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.
20/02/2009 at 02:29 Malak says:
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
17/03/2009 at 04:23 postx says:
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.
19/04/2009 at 12:56 Tessera says:
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)