By Jim Rossignol on February 11th, 2009 at 11:54 am.
There’s a bittersweet flavour to playing Bloodlines. It’s not because of the vampiric moodiness and the twilight tales that it tells, nor the real-world tragedy of its costly development finally undoing brave development studio, Troika. No, the sense of sorrow comes from the realisation that there’s nothing like this on the horizon. The idea is begged: why should there be so few games like this? Oh right, because it’s so very hard to do.
Bloodlines – a clever, multi-faceted RPG – is a rare animal. Even under the blazing light of Fallout 3′s recent release, there’s a sense that we’ve not yet reached our promised land of games that do more, games that do worlds, games that do people. Bloodlines points the way to those games. Indeed, there’s a sense that these games might just be becoming a myth. Like the plight of an animal species on the verge of extinction, the lack of games comparable to Bloodlines is one of the great tragedies of our time.
Our plight is this: if your great pleasure is hybrid action-oriented first-person role-playing games, with nuanced, open-plan stories filled with interesting characters, then your fantasy life is necessarily stunted. You have very few options. Games that offer a personal experience of worlds that we could never otherwise access outside of film and literature are rare. Ultra-violent warmonger, battlefield overseer, even sneaky thief man – these are all catered for in some way. But other, wider ideas are harder to come by. What, indeed, would it be like to live life as a 1950s private detective, or an FBI agent, or a nano-tech enhanced super agent of the near future, or a vampire?
Not many games bother with such wide open scope. Bloodlines does. And it does what a select few videogames have articulated: giving us sudden, direct access to something wonderful and alien. But it’s drama, and pseudo-social, as much as it is videogame action. It is filled with brilliant artificial people. Bloodlines allows us – like a participant in some larger soap opera – to make decisions about what might happen to those individuals. In this case, it’s always something wonderfully dark. Bloodlines manages to be funny, humane (if not human), brutal, horrifying, and thrilling, all at once. Its vampires are larger than life and yet nevertheless alive. Their twisted traits come tumbling out in excellent dialogue and strange quests. It is heavy on heavy themes, ideas that might otherwise pervert the purity of any other action game. Seduction, sedition, schizophrenia, propaganda, pornography, purgatory: these thematic notions are the lifeblood of vampire fiction, and they’re essential what’s going on in here. The struggle between the vampire castes is at once noble and despicable, and picking your route between its pitfalls is a delight. Ultimately, though, this is about exploration: about seeing something out of the ordinary. Toxic tourism in vampiric clubland.
Bloodlines is something like an action soap-opera. I truly wish I could say that of more games. So few games have attempted to access this most natural of game approaches: analogy of the real world, with conversation and violence intermingled, rather than simply delivering uninterrupted carnage, or endless management. These ‘immersive sim’ games are tough to make, granted, but when you play something like Bloodlines they also feel like they’re the games we deserve. Game developers often talk about the strange sense of entitlement that gamers seem to bring to their hobby, but when you taste games like this, it becomes entirely understandable. To be to be stealthy or stabby, seductive or violent, well, it’s almost like the game is spoiling us with options. After ten hours in Bloodlines you’re struck by the nagging concern: why aren’t other studios reaching for the stars like this? Even Bioshock and Stalker seem vapid in their shooter-obsessions.
Of course, it’s a matter of complexity. To make a game like Bloodlines is a task of terrifying scale. It’s one thing to make a game about running around putting bullets into people, and quite another to make it the tale of a weak young vampire who can talk to almost anyone in a series of thriving city hubs, travelling back and forth between them amid of a web of quests that range from simple puzzle solving, through the seduction of innocent human victims, to the brawling battles with rival monsters. To make this, you really have to know what you’re doing. And therein lies the crux of the matter, the black heart inside the game: the crucial problem with Bloodlines was its complete and utter brokenness on release. Troika had tried to reach the highest peaks of game design, and faltered, and then fallen. My first journey through this glitchy underworld left my character stranded in a sewer pipe. I never did get any further and, savegame deleted, his weird adventure game to a permanent end. Getting past that point months later sent me trudging into endgame of horrifying hack-and-slash tedium, where nothing of the early game intricacy remained to give us respite from the melee. Even if you didn’t get that far, a sojourn with Bloodlines exposed you to animation failures, spelling mistakes, and all other kinds of design splatter. This was not a finished game. Bloodlines, despite all its riches, was incomplete.
Ultimately the lamentable collapse of the final act of the game cannot be fixed without money and studio expertise, but many of the other problems have been dealt with. I’ve played through now with the community patch, and dozens of problems have been fixed. Dialogue trees have been trimmed and punctuated, animations have been been altered and replaced, bugs have been uncovered and squished beneath a fashionable gothic boot heel. Hell, the original boxed version of the game had glitches in the opening cutscene. Those have been mended. Bloodlines is so very far from perfect, but it is perfectly far from almost any other game we could pick up and play today. If you’ve not sunk teeth into it, then I fear you’re truly missing out.
A shorter version of this article first appeared in PC Gamer UK.
11/02/2009 at 11:57 Nighthood says:
Hold on a minute, this seems very similar to a recent Long Play in PC Gamer. Copying is afoot!
Still though, great article, great game. It’s my favourite game ever, and really balances the mix between linear and open world RPG.
Oh, and toreador for the win.
29/10/2010 at 16:07 watch movies online says:
Yeah man, great article
20/11/2010 at 18:06 DrazharLn says:
Spambot, attack! ^^
11/02/2009 at 11:58 Lord Skwizzal says:
The above person is clearly misinformed.
The children of father Malkav are clearly the best clan.
Ah man, this is making me want to play this game again :)
11/02/2009 at 12:05 Ian says:
This is on my “Games to find cheap and play” list.
11/02/2009 at 12:06 unique_identifier says:
those malkavian dialogue lines were scrumptious. i finished this game over a three day binge when it was released, pausing only to google for workarounds whenever it bugged out and crashed.
best bit evar: the decreasing “brains!!!!” progress bar when attacked by zombies.
11/02/2009 at 12:07 Jim Rossignol says:
Owning the rights to your own work is afoot!
11/02/2009 at 12:09 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Oh, Jim. Where were you when fans of this game were being crucified as Troika apologists and fanboys?
Troika was always the underdog, even if sometimes for the wrong reasons. There are only so many design concepts you can shove into a game without playtesting, and they were clearly a case of untamed ambition; small wonder their logo depicts a focus on design, with art and code coming in second and third, respectively.
Bloodlines was likely their best effort – which is indicative of how, even in their last game, potential was still trying to claw its way through the rough edges. Yet, some areas still rise head and shoulders above the competition. There’s a good point there. Games like Oblivion, Stalker and Bioshock forget about humanity, coming off as a veneer for the empty house behind it. It takes more than lifelike photorealism and random routines to simulate that. With far less time and resources, Troika pulled it off in ways others have yet to achieve. But why would they care to, when so many applaud a bloom-infested facsimile with such ease?
11/02/2009 at 12:10 Gap Gen says:
The article in Sunday Papers a while ago where the writer suggested that people had marked Fallout 3 higher than they wanted even though they didn’t like it raised an interesting (if flawed) point. He related the anecdote of someone playing Fallout 3 and being disappointed that much of the game relied on social interaction with fictitious people.
I think it’s a very disappointing thing to happen. Maybe the anecdote is isolated and most people can be persuaded that complex social interaction can be a good thing in games. But if it is true that the majority of gamers are ultimately shallow, then it could be disappointing, as it’s true that complex, intelligent games often cost money to do properly, and while small, interesting indie games are good, few indie developers can fund epic, complex games that fulfill gaming’s promise.
11/02/2009 at 12:19 Xercies says:
@Gap Gen
I agree most gamers are quite shallow(there isn’t really anything wrong with that really its just some people want more) and something like this they can’t get into. I don’t think that anecdote is isolated, talking to people around me and on the internet on the “mainstream” forums they did have problems with the social action.
Games like this need money to create but because of the nature of gamers they won’t get that much money in return. Which means most studios would not do the risk and its only the indies that do but because they don’t have much money they can’t really do something as big as this.
Money is the real problem here.
11/04/2013 at 05:33 GOU_NoMoreMrNiceGuy says:
it doesn’t have to be though – if we’re talking about not being shallow, we can accept low-fi or even no-fi graphics and concentrate on the social interactions and story.
the problem maybe money but the solution is to do an end run around money – it’s possible to games like this for cheap.
but then, we’ll just find that even more people will be discovered to be shallow.
11/02/2009 at 12:21 Lord Skwizzal says:
I think the real reason people adore this game almost purely comes from the fact it reflects and transfers the dark beauty of the world of darkness without messing it up, something requim failed.
About 80% of the people I know to own this game knew little about world of darkness, even I when I first saw footage of the game knew little. Hell, for a while I was put off by supposed “bad gameplay”. I don’t remember much mention of the games brillaint writing and faithfulness to the source, a rare thing in games where everything is dumbed down and pushed out to float for a larger audience instead of select groups.
However, by the end of the game, most who I know have played it have shown keen interest in the WOD series, something I’ve never seen in any adaption of Warhammer/40k ect ect.
And that’s why I love this game. It’s the very tip of the source but in such a brilliant way.
05/04/2013 at 05:18 transientmind says:
I’ve always been a W:tA man, in the WoD. The proud, noble, but cursed warriors of Gaia, knowing the truth of the Triat that underpins what all else call magic and science… The losing battle to reclaim the sacred places from the long, dark night? Good stuff. Mage, Hunter, Wraith, none of the rest really did it for me. But Bloodlines? Bloodlines made me really appreciate all those poncy, gothy vampire types. (Didn’t hurt that a friend of mine was the model behind the cover pin-up.)
It is a DAMN shame that there is nothing else out there which stays as true to the WoD spirit as this. For a while I followed CCP’s upcoming WoD MMO, but it looks like they’re really trying to attract the same viciously toxic audience as EVE.
11/02/2009 at 12:22 Satsuz says:
Playing Toreador is great, especially if you haven’t the patience for madness (no matter how delicious). Take Celerity for help in combat with them, btw. All that said, playing a Malkavian is still the must-have experience of the game; everything else is just gravy.
11/02/2009 at 12:23 Rei Onryou says:
Still never got past the 2nd hub, but that first one is just dripping with well versed dialogue and interesting tales. The haunted hotel and the Therese and Jeanette “situation” are hallmarks in my mind. A game I always enjoy returning to, if only to play the beginning again.
11/02/2009 at 12:30 Erik says:
I played this game vanilla and the only gamebreaking bug I encountered was down at the society of leopold which I managed to fix with some sneaky console commands. But yea, its not a finished game… A thing thats always annoyed me with Bloodlines is that the world in general is so wonderful but almost all the levels concerning the main quest just end up being very very generic and linear… Still one of my favorite games ever and as far as ‘modern’ rpgs goes this is still the best in my book… So much better than Fallout 3 where it seems like a fuckload of writers got together and threw ideas in a bucket but noone there to arrange it for them. Oh and yea, unlike Fallout 3 Bloodlines dosent cheat when it comes to voice acting.
11/02/2009 at 12:32 Senethro says:
I was thinking of this game recently. I was playing Mass Effect and thought how flat and unexpressive many of the character models were during conversation. If Vampire did it so many years ago, where are our facial expressions now?
11/02/2009 at 12:33 Nny says:
Replayed it for the nth time last year. Going to replay it again soon and I bet I’ll like it more than F3 :D.
11/02/2009 at 12:38 jalf says:
I didn’t run into any significant bugs when I played it (and I don’t even think I had the community patch installed)
I had a blast though, especially in the first half of the game. I never got around to finishing it though. I wonder if I still have my savegame.
Oh, and playing malkavian was hilarious. Although it was a huge letdown when I convinced a friend to try it, and he didn’t get the funky silly font in the Malkavian dialogue. For some reason all dialogue on his machine was just in the regular font. Never figured out why, or how to fix it. But it was such a nice touch.
11/02/2009 at 12:48 Jonas says:
A nano-tech enhanced super agent of the near future, you say? I think I can help with that ; )
11/02/2009 at 12:51 Alex McLarty says:
Original X-Files game was pretty damned good. You could even touch up your partner and get arrested and kicked out of the FBI.
11/02/2009 at 12:54 CdrJameson says:
Perhaps they’re too ambitious in too many areas.
Open the scope, but shrink the world?
System Shock 2 confined you to a couple of space ships, and your interaction was all one way, but I found that more ‘complete’ than Bioshock’s sections of a wider city.
Keep the world, but shrink the options?
Mercenary gave you a whole planet, but only a few commands. (pickup, drop, board, leave)
11/02/2009 at 12:59 Jules says:
Bloodlines was great. Definitely in my all time top ten. And yes, Malkavians are great! The outfits alone are wonderful :)
11/02/2009 at 13:01 Homunculus says:
Yeah, seconding Senethro’s observation regarding the exemplary facial animation. Despite working on a beta of the source engine, Troika nailed the emotive expressions; a success that subsequent titles have mostly failed to build upon.
I picked this up at the same time as Half Life 2 dropped, as its release was contractually delayed ’til then. The latter was rapidly sidelined in favour of the former’s skewed riff on Los Angeles nightlife.
11/02/2009 at 13:02 theanorak says:
Bloodlines is one of my currently-playing titles, thanks to an article *ages* ago (here, if I remember correctly) about corrupting one of the characters.
It’s interesting that, although the rendering is showing its age, some of the artistry (and plain *art*) in the game is still really great. Plus I’m a sucker for goths. Sue me.
Anyway — does anyone know if the unofficial fanpatch can be applied to the Steam version?
11/02/2009 at 13:04 theanorak says:
Oh yes, and another salute to the facial animation. It’s a little OTT at times, but if you turn the sound off you can still get a great feel for a character’s mood just by looking at their facial expressions.
11/02/2009 at 13:06 Homunculus says:
I’d love to play a game set entirely in a single cramped tavern, with a cast of characters that barely numbers double digits, but detailed as all hell in terms of possible dialogue, characterisation, social and physical interaction, AI scheduling and responses, models, animations and textures.
11/02/2009 at 13:11 Tei says:
@Homunculus: The Witcher as a set of quest on a social reunion, …was a hella cool part of it.
11/02/2009 at 13:11 Baltech says:
Even after all the brokenness I still loved this game so very much, if only for it referencing Dellamorte, Dellamore… you don’t get more obscure than that.
Maybe one day we’ll get another game like it, one can only hope.
11/02/2009 at 13:12 Vandelay says:
Really making me want to replay this game now. I’ve only played it through once and may have started another time, but didn’t play much. This is really one of the best games I’ve ever played and puts many others that attempt the same to shame. I would even rate it higher than the likes of Deus Ex, particular in the area of writing and acting.
Some of the quests on offer are so rich, so twisted, so perfect that the likes of Bioware and Bethesda could only dream of creating anything so far away from the basic black and white morality they have to offer. The twins, the girl who you save with a little of your blood only for her to become your slave, the haunted mansion, the prosthetic limb shop where you acquire a severed human arm as a weapon, the first encounter with the monsters from the snuff video, the list of incredible moments is just endless.
Unfortunately, the list only really extends to the first couple of chapters and eventually it all falls apart. But for those early moments we truly are glimpsing into the power of gaming. I really hope that the article is wrong, and that this style of game isn’t a dead bread. We need more like this.
11/02/2009 at 13:13 Syneval says:
I bought the game right on release, and strangely I don’t remember being much affected by game-breaking bugs. Sure, there was some sloppiness here and there, but it was all smoothed over by the excellence of the gameplay (with the firearm rebalance mod) and story.
And yes, it’s worth playing through the entire game again just to check out the sublime dialogue options you get as a Malkavian !
11/02/2009 at 13:13 Sum0 says:
But other, wider ideas are harder to come by. What, indeed, would it be like to live life as a 1950s private detective, or an FBI agent, or a nano-tech enhanced super agent of the near future, or a vampire?
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Games should be a chance at escapism, to live a fantastically detailed simulation of something we’ll never get to try. Bloodlines was that, to a T.
I’m gonna admit that I made myself enjoy Fallout 3 like everyone else, but in retrospect – and compared to Bloodlines – it’s really not up to par. It’s dog turd. Dull characters, dull quests, dull environments … It wasn’t a simulation of being a wastelander in a post-nuclear landscape, it was a simulation of being an RPG PC doing quests. Bloodlines actually felt like I was a naughty vampire fucking around with vampire politics and the lives of mere mortals.
Same thing with Bioshock or whatever. We come to hail these games because they’re all we have, but compared to what we should be getting, they’re flat, unadventurous shite. Essentially what I want from games is the Holodeck from Star Trek – the chance to step into another world. Being a 50s detective, for example – can you not already picture coming down the stairs from your office after the opening cutscene with the femme fatale and finding yourself on a moodily-lit noirish street with strangers in raincoats wandering up and down? Aaagh, I want that.
And finally, on the “game reviewing is broken” bandwagon – reviewers ought to give more credit to games that try, even if they end up buggy. Patches can always fix bugs, but you can’t fix a lack of imagination. (Except with hard drugs, maybe.)
11/02/2009 at 13:16 l1ddl3monkey says:
I loved this game up to a point but the levels started to feel rushed and clever dialogue and exploration gave way to endless waves of enemies and tedious corridor running. I never finished it.
In terms of creating NPC’s with distinct personalities (drawn wholesale from the pantheon of classic and modern vampire mythology though they might be) this is, IMHO, the only game that’s ever managed to do it well.
11/02/2009 at 13:16 Jockie says:
A timely reminder to install this game and give it another playthrough methinks. I never played it as a Malkavian for some reason, this needs to be rectified.
As for lessons not learned by the industry, how well did bloodlines do commercially? it must have been pretty poor given that it lead to the collapse of the studio. Maybe Age of decadence can fill the void in respect to games with choices, characters and dialogue.
11/02/2009 at 13:19 Syneval says:
By the way, I always figured the cabbie was Kain … Anyone know if it was indeed so ?
And the endings were a bit vague. Never did figure out if Gehenna really was about to start.
11/02/2009 at 13:27 fijam says:
A timeless classic. Truly, I wish there were more games like that one.
11/02/2009 at 13:29 Evangel says:
Sum0, I think it was Miyamoto who said it, but there’s a quote, “Bugs can be fixed, bad game design is forever” or something to that effect.
Troika died because no publishers wanted their next game, which is unfortunate, since all their games made a profit (although not the “OMG MEGABUCKS LETS BUY A CITY” type money that the mainstream is interested in).
If you haven’t, I suggest playing Arcanum, another game by Troika that was fairly buggy at release but has been patched to near perfection.
The problem with Troika’s style (read: Well written, directed, animated and voiced) is that good writers are rare, whereas you can goto any art college and grab a dozen 3d artists/animators/texturers for a few bucks.
Unfortunately, 90% of everything is crap, music, movies, TV shows, books, games. And due to 90% of people liking crap, it’s what we’ll get.
11/02/2009 at 13:29 Evangel says:
Also, Jeanette Voerman and Velvet Velour are hot.
11/02/2009 at 13:33 danielcardigan says:
Homunculus says:
“I’d love to play a game set entirely in a single cramped tavern, with a cast of characters that barely numbers double digits, but detailed as all hell in terms of possible dialogue, characterisation, social and physical interaction, AI scheduling and responses, models, animations and textures.”
Not exactly on that scale but I really enjoyed the Dark Brotherhood quest in Oblivion that was set in a single house and you had to kill all the other guests. Also, in a way wasn’t The Ship a BIT like this?
Bloodlines was great. It’s on my list to replay but I was hoping to have completely forgotten the little twists that made it special before giving it a second run through . Unfortunately this thread has reminded me of so much about it that was brilliant.
11/02/2009 at 13:35 Lewis says:
Conceptually, intentionally and intelligently, it’s far and away my favourite game in the world. But boy is it broken, and boy is that four-hour stretch of sewers near the end horrific…
It’s so nearly my perfect videogame. How tragic that it falls so short in some basic areas.
11/02/2009 at 13:35 danielcardigan says:
“Unfortunately, 90% of everything is crap, music, movies, TV shows, books, games. And due to 90% of people liking crap, it’s what we’ll get.”
Can’t remember where I heard it (This Week In Tech? maybe…) but someone brought out that quote and one of the responses was that all that proves is that some crap is really really popular. That’s why you have McDonalds, High School Musical movies and Deer Hunting sims.
11/02/2009 at 13:37 Schmung says:
I found my original box for this in the detritus of my last house move the other day and thought briefly about playing this. The someone posted about it on the forums. Then I read this. Must be time to re-install and go for the long put off playthrough as a Nosferatu methinks.
’tis truly a lovely game and as others have said it creates a world with characters that are a way more compelling than the cardboard cutouts in Fallout 3. I really enjoyed playing Fallout, but I can only point out maybe three or four characters from it, whereas I can reel off the names of a good ten or fifteen from Vampire without trying. I don’t even really like RPGs per-se as I’m a twitch gamer at heart, but it was just so easy to become immersed in this.
11/02/2009 at 13:39 Gilzor says:
Anyone know if you can apply the community patches to the Steam version???
11/02/2009 at 13:43 sbs says:
Evangel: I think the quote was “Late games are late until they are released, but bad games are bad forever”.
The only game I know that compares to Bloodlines in terms of what the world feels feels like was the original Deus Ex(or rather the other way around). I was not able to shake off this impression for the entire time I played it(VTMB that is).
11/02/2009 at 13:45 Paul Moloney says:
One of the greats. Even before I actually finished the game (only on my second playthrough), I got involved with the patch, spellchecking (and in the process, finding mispelled variables that fixed some issues) the dialogue files for Werner’s Bloodlines patch. It’s a game with genuinely great characterisation and dialogue; I love characters like the genteel old vampire movie mogul in Hollywood. And the scene when you meet someone on the street who knew you as a human is clever and touching. It genuinely is a one-of-a-kind game and it’s tragic there aren’t more like it.
P.
11/02/2009 at 13:48 Brother None says:
Bloodlines is not really the most complex game from a technical world design aspect that these guys did. For the Troika trio, Fallout and Arcanum were both more complex in underlying design mechanics.
Bloodlines kind of combines (and simplifies) that complexity with some of the most fantastic storytelling and great characterization we’ve ever had…it’s a great game for it, but it’s not necessarily the most complete design approach Troika took (ToEE is similarly “incomplete” in design, Arcanum isn’t, it’s as close to a complete game as they could get).
I love Bloodlines for what it is, but make no mistake about it, it hides quite a few of its largest flaws – which aren’t necessarily all related to technical polish – within great writing and creating a living, breathing world. Immersion in the true sense of the word, rather than the PR abomination that term has become.
Besides, Jim, I’m not sure if you land on the crux of the problem exactly. It is a matter of publisher approach if one wonders “where has Troika gone?” It’s simple, Troika is not viable in the game industry as we made it, there’s no real room for these mid-tier publisher-supported studios, at least not in the US. Even without making a loss, Troika never managed to find a proper way to manage its time or funds compared to what they wanted to accomplish, and none of their publishers cared enough for it…
Hell, and why take the hard way if the easy way even offers better rewards? Take your budget and cram it all into graphics and PR, letting half a dozen half-competent developers take up the reigns of the rest. No one cares. Fallout 3 was atrociously written, with one of the most horribly tepid video game plots of any RPG. Yet it is covered in critical accolades, including – bizarelly – awards and nominations for writing.
BioWare? BioWare has been making the same model games for years without any honest attempt at innovation. When you hear Dave Gaider speak, you get a good sense of why that is so; they have no wish to invest in truly reactive and diverse storylines or even a small world with fleshes-out characters when the method of a linear storyline crammed mostly with archetypical characters and predictable plot twists is all the much more cost-efficient.
Bah. It was the wrong time for Troika, and it still is. Nobody is going to care about people shouting “we deserve better” as long as critics lap up and praise inferior products, steep them in awards and accolades to see the effective PR campaigns result in millions of sales.
Honestly, why should anyone care if consumers aren’t even capable of really rewarding Troika for their work?
11/02/2009 at 13:48 Schadenfreude says:
His screen resolution was set too low. Not sure why but the special Malkav font only shows on the higher resolutions (1280×1024 and up I think).
11/02/2009 at 13:49 Brother None says:
You can find the game’s folder under Steam\steamapps\common\Vampire – the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Install the patch there.
05/04/2013 at 05:21 transientmind says:
Anyone who jumps into that folder would also do very well to rummage around and grab the awesome soundtrack.
11/02/2009 at 13:59 Tim says:
This was a great article, and a really insightful discussion. I agree entirely – Bloodlines was an unforgettable experience that I have returned to, again and again. Fallout 3 – in spite of its undeniable quality and my love of the franchise – was little more than a wondrous simulation. It had some really great moments, like crawling through and uncovering the secrets of the other vaults, but it was still a game I stopped playing (and subsequently deleted) a bit after I reached level 20. It’s enchantment wore off once the sense of progression ceased – I didn’t even bother completeing the main quest.
At the same time, I keep returning to my favourites – Bloodlines, Deus Ex, Baldur’s Gate 2, Fallout, Planescape Torment – because they offer more transcendental experiences. I don’t accept that this is habitual, gaming nostalgia – these games all delivered an overwhelming sense of immersion. There was too much to experience and to do, and you felt it on your first play through; your heart ached at the knowledge of all the content and subtleties you were missing, and it encouraged you to positively drink the details of the game-world, and play through again.
It is a sad reflection on the state of the industry (the commercial industry, at any rate) that there are so few releases that truly excite me, yet I can’t wait for the release of Deus Ex HDTP. Dragon Age looks promising, I must say, but BioWare’s latest effots have felt a bit like truncated experiences – too linear, too little to explore.
11/02/2009 at 14:03 DusttoDust says:
God’s teeth but I hate vampires. The actual life-from-blood mechanism itself might possibly be a bit cool…actually, no: it’s ALL pants. What gets me most, what really gets me grinding my tooth enamel, is the simpering goth/emo mythology they always try and pull, like it’s all so worthy and about death and god the pain makes my skin split open – (ref: anything by Anne Rice). Hence I ignored this game completely on release.
Still, if the prices on ebay, amazon and others is any indication (holy s**t) this is still a highly regarded game. I’ll add it to the list of ‘RPS Recommends’, then, and see what happens. Always willing to be proven wrong, me.
11/02/2009 at 14:03 SpoonySeeker says:
These kind of games aren’t hard to make, you just need the right people to make them. The problem is that the gaming industry is filled with enthusiasts who are entirely the wrong kind of person to do anything.
11/02/2009 at 14:07 Jim Rossignol says:
Even if that first assertion is true, that second bit still means they’re difficult to make. Getting a team together is half the battle.
11/02/2009 at 14:15 Dominic White says:
@DusttoDust – Bloodlines isn’t the SLIGHTEST bit angsty. Your tutorial is given to you by Smiling Jack, a fantastically snarky vampire biker, (voiced by John Di Maggio, aka Bender), who may have been a pirate in his earlier days. That tone pretty much stays throughout. Your character takes about thirty seconds to adjust to the concept of being an immortal, bloodthirsty predator, and it just gets more and more badass from there.
11/02/2009 at 14:21 Heliocentric says:
Dont get stuck playing this… finish it, cheat… Just experience it all.
And dont rely on guns unless you can get the infinite ammo cheat.
11/02/2009 at 14:21 Lewis says:
It’s not a game about vampires. It’s a game about quirky subcultures, gritty underworlds and social hierarchy. That it features vampires felt almost incidental to me.
11/02/2009 at 14:32 Reid says:
DustotoDust – How you can comment on a game’s atmosphere so much without playing it is beyond me. One meeting with the prince should sort out all those goth/emo thoughts. The goth culture is used but it’s done in a way that mocks it. You see goth kids outside a club and you almost stare in wonder at the ridiculousness of the situation.
If you haven’t played this game then you’ve missed out on realising what the potential of games really is. That kinda sums up my experience with Vampires. I love it for it’s potential and for those genious ideas in it, I hate it for what it actually turned out as.
11/02/2009 at 14:35 JDC says:
Dust to Dust: I feel exactly the same way about vampires that you do but I loved Bloodlines once I gave it a chance. Most of the NPCs are consumed with noble existential darkness and absorbed in the sorts of power struggles that most people don’t see past high school, but the player character is a robotic soulless video game protagonist with no discernible personality, with the opportunity to betray and totally undermine whichever NPCs you happen to hate the most. Then he can steal the watch off their corpse and pawn it. Wonderfully cathartic.
11/02/2009 at 14:40 Tiago Sá says:
Bloodlines is the shit!
Also, naming Fallout 3 and Bloodlines in the same sentence is a heresy. I just lost all respect for you Jim.
Seriously.
Troika went down, and they made two (at least) of the greatest RPGs of all time: Arcanum and Bloodlines, and Temple of Elemental Evil is also an incredibly good tactical game, and has more role-play than 90% of the so-called RPGs out there.
Boyarsky is working at Blizzard on Diablo 3 (as lead world artist – I think), Tim Cain is working at NCsoft’s Carbine Studios on an unannounced MMO that supposedly will bring role-play into the genre (finally) and Anderson, I don’t know. Isn’t he at Interplay working on Fallout Online? I have my eyes set on that baby. The concept of a desolate empty desert wasteland filled with loot-seeking warriors repulses me, but since it’s an old Fallout dev working on it, it’s 100x better than Fallout 3 actiony shit.
11/02/2009 at 14:41 Cooper says:
Many of the points here I agree with, and as much as I love to wax lyrical about Bloodlines and how games are still ultimately stuck in a Hollywood wannabe cycle, I’ve got a question that’s a bit tangential.
Does anyone know where the money goes to once development houses are disbanded (not only for Bloodlines, but for so many other games)? Bloodlines deserves to be bought, that daring and valiant attempts deserves to be rewarded in hard cash, but now that Troika are no more, does the money disappear into a publisher’s black hole, or do the developers still recieve royalties?
11/02/2009 at 14:58 I am beginning to understand this comment system says:
Jim I am surprised at your off hand dismal of Fallout 3, as looked at from a purely design perspective Fallout 3 and Bloodlines are essentially the same game.
In actuality the games are very different. This due almost entirely to one thing, scale. Fallout 3′s huge world offers world explorer plenty of nooks and crannies, but pays for it with generic npcs and a general lack of detail. Bloodlines offers superior dialogue, but contains a relatively small and linear gameworld.
The difference in the games is allocation of resources. I wonder what kind of game Bethesda would produce if they decided to focus on a much smaller open world.
11/02/2009 at 15:03 Jim Rossignol says:
Logging into the forum allows you to edit, I believe.
11/02/2009 at 15:04 Jim Rossignol says:
Oh no!
Amazing how people can discern exactly what I think of Fallout 3 from that small remark.
11/02/2009 at 15:06 Jesucristo says:
Where was the good comment when this great game was released?. Vampire Bloodlines was not perfect and the second half of the game is not so good as the first one, there is some bugs and faults, but is far better than most RPG and action games since last 6 years. Ocean Hotel is one of the all time maps and NPC were sublime.
I misss Troika a lot. How I miss them…
11/02/2009 at 15:10 Andrew says:
The hate for Fallout 3 in this comment thread is quite astonishing. It’s not like Bloodlines can only be good at the expense of Bethesda’s offering.
11/02/2009 at 15:11 Jonas says:
The good comment was all over the reviews, FYI
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/vampirethemasqueradebloodlines?q=vampire%20bloodlines
For such a horrendously broken game, it sure was highly rated. Deservedly so, in my opinion – even if I had to use a complicated cheat code to get out of those damn caves where the level transition was bugged XD
11/02/2009 at 15:13 Pags says:
Is this seriously the line that’s getting Jim in trouble with some people? Either my irony-meter has broken or the internet is feeling doubly petty today.
Bloodlines has my favourite offhand pop-culture reference in a game thus far. It’s a Big Lebowski reference. See if you can guess what it is!
11/02/2009 at 15:15 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Bloodlines kind of combines (and simplifies) that complexity with some of the most fantastic storytelling and great characterization we’ve ever had…it’s a great game for it, but it’s not necessarily the most complete design approach Troika took (ToEE is similarly “incomplete” in design, Arcanum isn’t, it’s as close to a complete game as they could get).
I disagree. Arcanum is probably my favorite Troika game, but it’s nowhere near a “complete design”. The gameworld was cobbled together with spurious, often lazy areas (ie., most dungeons), unbalanced mix of technological and magical system, dozens of cardboard NPCs, vapid writing. What really managed to come to life was the same that made Fallout a stellar game – the role-playing, the myriad of choices and consequences which nothing the big hitters like Bioware or Bethesda ever created has still managed to come close.
But it was a textbook example of anything Troika – big ideas, lousy implementation.
Bloodlines, at least, managed to congregate the best aspects of what Troika had done in the past. True, it was a more contained, less sprawling game; but from the writing to the area design, it’s much more complete and developed than anything else they pulled off during their existence. Of course, the awful areas – the Sewers, the latter part of the game, the bugs – are still there but on a broader scale, it’s a much tighter game, focusing on what they could do best.
11/02/2009 at 15:17 Gav says:
I still weep for Troika… I bought Bloodlines at realease (having gasped in aww at its promise from the PC Gamer cover discs) and although broken I had high hopes that this was the sign of things to come to RPG land… A brave game, an insightful game, a F*****g gem in any games collection but no…. I am still waiting for anything that has half of what this game delivers. If you can’t find this game cheap – you are not looking hard enough – you must play this before you die… or after you die…
Jim your original article in Gamer and this one articulate better than I possibly could what Bloodlines represents. And Arcanum wasn’t half bad either!
11/02/2009 at 15:18 Jim Rossignol says:
Or, indeed, if their primary focus was the interaction with NPCs.
11/02/2009 at 15:26 lanster says:
Bloodline is an awesome game. Just a little buggy here and there. Most other vampire games are too half-arsed to make a good storyline and interesting characters. So in the vampire genre, this game comes first.
11/02/2009 at 15:26 Brother None says:
As I said in the big-ass post above, Bethesda is an example of the publishing model popular now which requires heavier investment in graphics and PR than in the design team. And – again like I said – since all they get for this is critical accolades and financial success, there is no reason to change. And that, Jim, answers your question of why we don’t get any better games. Because we’re not seriously asking for it.
Yes. It is a flawed, limited game, that opted to simply fall back on old or limited game design whenever ideas or time faltered.
But that’s not what I’m talking about: ToEE is primarily a dungeon crawler that uses its excellent TB combat system as a crutch. Bloodlines is primarily a linear storyteller that uses its excellent storytelling combined with great dialogue (both in writing and execution) to make up for rather weak gameplay otherwise (the combat is awful).
Arcanum has its flaw, but it doesn’t expressly decide to drop a certain gameplay element for another. Like Fallout, it is an attempt to bring a “total RPG” to the computer. The insane ambition to bring true reactivity into a rich world with great dialogue. Fallout managed to keep its focus and thus feels like a tighter game, but that doesn’t mean the intention isn’t the same. Arcanum is the closest game in existence to Fallout 1/2, and that alone is an accomplishment.
It’s not a huge wonder Arcanum fails in many ways and that it’s not the most popular game. But it is certainly the most ambitious one of Troika’s stable.
11/02/2009 at 15:32 Lukasz says:
They all told me not to do it. Warnings were clear. There was no doubt. Yet in my stupid stubbornness I did it. Why? Why did I open that damn sarcophagus? I learned few things about myself that night.
Only few games managed to achieve what Bloodlines did. To make me part of the world.
When I played the game it was me who did all that stuff, not a character who I simply controlled.
and for that Bloodlines will always be one of the greatest game made by human kind.
11/02/2009 at 15:34 M_the_C says:
I’ve recently been playing Children of the Nile again, and can see a similar pattern. It’s flawed compared to other city-building games, but your citizens have so much more life and character.
I still haven’t finished Bloodlines, it seems my problem was creating a toreador with too much focus on social skills (although it’s great for getting blood ;) ) I’ve got to a level that’s just a straight brawl, no way around it and started feeling bored. I played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo a week or two ago, and wasn’t scared at all, the beach hotel in Bloodlines however nearly scared me too death. I like shallow games as much as the next gamer, but I want some with real depth as well.
Great article.
11/02/2009 at 15:43 Hermit says:
I bought Bloodlines on release and struggled to get it working. Tried it again a year or so ago with the fan patches and by and large I loved it. The final act is, sadly, a let down, but then many openworld games don’t end on a high, given the difficulty of trying to write something non-linear into a single conclusion.
The thing which still impresses me is the sheer amount of passion fans of the game had for it. In many ways, it’s the same devotion Elder Scrolls modders show. I don’t think I’ll ever replay Morrowind or Oblivion without a ton of mods installed, because they enrich the experience so much. And there are countless games out there where a fan-produced hotfix for a bug or error or crash will arrive days or weeks before any official solution is found.
It’s a shame more development studios don’t recognise that the fanbase can be a damn useful group of people.
11/02/2009 at 15:55 Xerxes says:
A superb game that was for adults, and not an “adult” game, as so many peg themselves, with cheap tricks that really only appeal to the pre-pubescent.
I greatly enjoyed this at release, despite struggling through the bugs and issues that plagued the game.
More of these games, and less “generic copy of game that did well XVI” please.
11/02/2009 at 15:59 bansama says:
Bloodlines wasn’t a bad game at all, but all the *****ing over which community patch was “canon” and which was not, kind of ruined the whole experience in the end.
11/02/2009 at 16:05 Markoff Chaney says:
Phenomenal doesn’t do this game justice. This is one of the single most immersible worlds I have ever been through virtually. This current manifestation of flesh and blood takes the cake for this life, though. As far as simulated environments created by silicon from arrangements of 0s and 1s, this and Deus Ex (the first, naturally) are so high up on my list of all time fantastic gaming experiences that they share the crown as of now.
I am only a consumer, and not a producer of such joy, but I can only hope that some developers pick up these torches of the near perfect hybrid Adventure/Action/RPG/FP/Sim. I know it’s not the path of least resistance, and thusly probably the path of least financial gain, but I can dream.
11/02/2009 at 16:10 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Arcanum has its flaw, but it doesn’t expressly decide to drop a certain gameplay element for another.
True, but there lies the problem, since it does something that is potentially worse – cram as much as it can into a single experience. There’s no particular element that isolates another, but several compete for attention – look no further than the combat system designed to try and please both turn-based and realtime fans, the narrative flow that was not discontinued by “breaking” the game, the use of a two dimensional time engine to assist a potential mod community that came out stillborn, or the online capability that never took off. All of these syphoned time and resources better spent on a more cohesive whole.
Like Fallout, it is an attempt to bring a “total RPG” to the computer. The insane ambition to bring true reactivity into a rich world with great dialogue.
Come now, BN, no need to waste the “total RPG” speech on me. I was Role-Player at the RPG Codex, and I am aware of Troika’s intentions. But I digress. The point is that Arcanum tried to be a complete experience and failed by spreading itself too thin; whereas Bloodlines took the “less is more” approach and it came off as a much more balanced game, and it was clearly the best balancing act Troika pulled off. This isn’t to take merit away from Arcanum, nor is it to say that it should have forsaken X elements in favor of Y things, but it was not – in spite of its achievements – walking on sunshine. It failed in the areas both ToEE and Bloodlines achieved, and it does leave one wondering just what is the more accomplished feat and what we should be judging – trying to create the “true” or “total RPG”, or just making a solid one.
11/02/2009 at 16:14 Chis says:
I paid VERY full price for this on release (GAME had it for £34 at the time). Worth every penny. Seriously, even in its original broken state, I enjoyed every second. Bloodlines reaches immersion heights I’ve only experienced – albeit in rather different ways – in titles such as Thief, Doom (yes, Doom – its genius lies in its simplicity), System Shock and Star Control 2.
Trouble is, I have a long memory for games. So in the intervening years I’ve only played VTM:B about 3 times through. But every time it was an experience I’ve savoured and treasured. They also were without the newest fan-patches. This article has tempted me to bring the game out again… or at the least get my gf to try it.
11/02/2009 at 16:18 Chis says:
Sorry for the double-post, but I want to come to the defence of Stalker here. No, I’d agree it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Bloodlines, but compared to the likes of Fallout 3 or FEAR, it stands head and shoulders above them for two reasons: truly effective immersion (the AI, the AI!!), and a strong sense that the dev team had a creative, unique imagination.
11/02/2009 at 16:22 pharago says:
ive finished this game so many times i can recall most of the quest’s details, the community patch is just awesome, those guys should be given some kind of medal or just plain large amounts of money.
the prince, the pirate, man, this game is so made of pure win i just can’t bare that troika is no more…
the sarcophagus…dont open it…lulz
11/02/2009 at 16:24 Brother None says:
Hardcore RPG street cred aside, I feel you’re missing my point. I never claimed Arcanum is a better game than Bloodlines in an absolute sense. All I claim is that it has more complete design. Not that it is a more polished, finished or better game, but that in its core Bloodlines is intended and thus finishes as a narrower experience than Arcanum. I think you’re basically saying the same.
11/02/2009 at 16:36 Diogo Ribeiro says:
What cred? I never get any :P
I don’t remember having said you believed it was a better game, but I think we’re probably nitpicking over what we mean by “complete design”. I assume you’re using the term as Arcanum embodying the more complex, or the more extensive, amount of design – from conceptual to actually being implemented – present in the game. I’m using it as describing of a design that feels stable (I know stability was an issue with Troika, but work with me here) and focused on a tighter, more solid structure.
It may be basically the same, I don’t know. Is it?
11/02/2009 at 16:41 Brother None says:
No, it isn’t, and indeed it is a bit of a miscommunication.
Taking one gameplay element, raising it above all others and keeping it as a central focus of gameplay is pretty much what you’re talking about. I’d call that a complete game too, especially since it tends to feel more finished and as a “complete” experience.
But design width (maybe a better term than complete design) is really about setting the bar higher. Troika couldn’t do it in Arcanum because of time and money constraints. Fallout 3 is another example of a game with unfocused design, though it seems to have been made more as a patchwork of design concepts rather than just a wide game. Fallout 2, similarly, rambles, because it fails to keep its wide design in check with a clear central vision. Fallout might be the only one that succeeded at it.
I adore both Bloodlines and Arcanum, but I think my attitude towards Bloodlines is more one of infatuation, while towards Arcanum I feel more admiration. Exactly because of the above.
11/02/2009 at 16:43 DusttoDust says:
@Chis: Seconded for the Stalker defence.
@Reid: I don’t belive I did comment on the game’s atmosphere. what I said was that I completely overlooked the game based on a pre-existing hatred of Vampires generally. I also finished by saying I would like to give the game a go – I’m always intrigued by games that get universally good praise from my fellow gamers. To think that I’ve missed something of Deus Ex’s calibre…(in concept if not completely in execution)!?
11/02/2009 at 16:44 Charlie says:
I remember I bought this the week it came out in game in the bargain bin. It literally went straight in there! Got it for a tenner!
I lost the damn thing and recently re bought it on Steam though I only ever seem to get what I think is about halfway through before I give up. I don’t think I will ever be bothered to get passed that mansion mission again. An amazing level the first time through, one of my favourite moments in a game I think. That and being a crazy Malkavian.
Don’t think I’ve seen a game try to make you insane before or since but it did it really well. I remember hearing voices, seeing things, and some brilliant dialogue.
11/02/2009 at 16:48 pkt-zer0 says:
You’ve made a powerful enemy today, sign.
11/02/2009 at 16:49 Diogo Ribeiro says:
I see your point, and kind of feel the same regarding the infatuation/admiration divide ;)
But as you say, Fallout may have well been the only one to succeed. Troika didn’t quite make it although they valianty tried with Arcanum; and even Obsidian Ent. has yet to achieve the same. Because of that, Fallout seems even more its own thing, triumphantly (and nearly) alone in the genre. Which will prompt everyone else to call us old, nostalgic, out of touch, and so on for thinking so :/
11/02/2009 at 16:49 Brother None says:
DusttoDust: the best spot to pick it up is probably Steam. It’s 19.99 EUR/USD there (I think), and available on it as it was – heck – the first game ever finished on the Source engine.
Fallout was a child of its time and unique circumstances. It may take a while before publishers decide investing as much into a B-roll title as Interplay did back then is worth it, nevermind if a team like the Big Six that worked on Fallout would surface again, let alone if a key cog like Urquhart would be present.
Like I said, too many ifs. We’ll get there eventually.
11/02/2009 at 17:07 Kez says:
I love Bloodlines. I played through about half of the game using the official patch(es) back in the day and late last year I used the 5.something fan patch to play again. Got about 3/4 of the way through the game that time before getting lost in World of Warcraft again.
I’ll be busting this out again and finally FINISH. It’s still a memorable and very fun game despite not finishing yet.
11/02/2009 at 17:20 Bhazor says:
Fine I’ll just come out and say it
Everything good about this game falls apart in the last third.
11/02/2009 at 17:27 Bananaphone says:
@Homunculus
You should try ‘Facade’, an indie tech demo does almost exactly what you describe on a smaller scale. One day someone will do that with an entire game.
11/02/2009 at 17:35 PHeMoX says:
I’m 100% serious when I say I enjoyed Bloodlines a lot better than… Half-life 2. Yeah, I know this makes me look funny perhaps, but for real. Bloodlines wasn’t perfect, but damn very much like the author of this RPS article, I think the idea behind Bloodlines is awesome. Too a good extent the game is very good.
I’d like to see a Bloodlines 2 someday. Preferably right before Half-life 3. ;)
11/02/2009 at 17:37 Dreamhacker says:
This article is going to make me cry, isn’t it? Goddamnit, I miss Troika. I miss games created with passion. I miss REAL RPG’s.
11/02/2009 at 17:38 Pavel says:
Second best game ever made.After Fallout.
11/02/2009 at 17:39 JamesC says:
How I loved this game. Gave me the same warm fuzzies as Planescape:Torment. Story and characters you care about!
Hope the dev team / writers / creatives get to do something good again..someday.
11/02/2009 at 17:52 othelios says:
I think that what other games, like Fallout 3, Oblivion, etc, don’t have is life-like ‘acting’. In Bloodlines, the characters are animated when they talk. I don’t mean just facial animations. I mean the actual character moves around (at least the head and shoulders do). For example, the barman in the Asylum club is taken aback when the player selects a certain dialogue option. One of the vampires on the beach leans back and has his hands raised as if the player is a threat. There’s this strange reaction the characters have towards the player, whether it be fear, intrigue, happiness, etc.
In comparison, characters in games like Oblivion, seem to be just talking heads, with either happy or angry eyebrows.
11/02/2009 at 17:56 Nick says:
I particularly like the seer woman at the beginning who makes little sense untill you complete the game..
I love Bloodlines, I just wish they’d been able to flesh out chinatown as much as the other areas, that said there is plenty of warning that you can’t rely purely on your verbal skills (Nines says as much himself and will even teach you a thing or two). The only bit I found a real chore was the horrible flesh creature filled tunnel part.
11/02/2009 at 17:57 Edward says:
I adored certain parts of this game, but it’s to me a perfect example of how new tech has completely changed the quality bar for storytelling in games. The writing was extremely solid – the voice acting continually completely undermines it and, really, ruins the game (for me). The same can be said for the visual fidelity – even at the time, it just came off looking half-baked.
I know this is an unpopular perspective, even the much lauded design has way more flaws than can typically be discussed openly without incurring fanboy wrath. It is a very interesting game, but more educational in how it fails than how it succeeds.
11/02/2009 at 18:13 phil says:
Just to go off on a massive tangent, in term of Action soap opera, Suikoden 2 (though not any of the others), got the balance perfectly.
Of course you could only play one role, though you could make selfish decisions (including agreeing to run off with your sister to leave that defenseless dessert town to sort its own zombie apocalyse problems), the sense of soap opera that regular returns to your home castle provided was sublime. The entirely optional chef game show challenge, which relied on you anticipating the tastes of recruited characters and the private detective you could employ to provide hundreds of gossipy insights into the castle’s residents, were just a fraction of the domestic activities you could indulge in. Combined with solid writing for a JRPG and a sense of continual development as more residents joined and interacted with each other, made Castle Crackhouse (I was fifteen when I played the game) a welcome soap distraction to the epic, well wrought main tale.
11/02/2009 at 18:18 Nighthood says:
Another thing nobody has commented about (I think, there are a lot of comments), is the soundtrack. One of the bands on there (Tiamat) is now my favourite band ever, and it’s really opened up my taste in music.
It’s also the only game which made me rethink some things in life, and has made me a bit of a filthy goth. Oh well.
11/02/2009 at 18:27 Pantsman says:
Call me mad, but as great as the early parts of Bloodlines were, Arcanum remains my favorite Troika game. In my mind it’s up there with the original Fallout. This might have something to do with nostalgia, given that Arcanum was the first real RPG I ever played.
11/02/2009 at 18:31 matte_k says:
Love this game. The hotel quest in the first chapter of the game still unnerves me when I play through. Some of the voice acting is fantastic, Stealth kills with axes are brutally funny, and I agree, Malkavians for the win- you get extra insight into the plot from some characters due to the clan’s nature.
Plus, Jack is the fucking Man- My first choice for Vampire trainer any day.
11/02/2009 at 18:32 pnutz says:
The only game in development that I can see having any where near the depth of the first half of Bloodlines is Alpha Protocol. That may just be my optimism, but hear me out for a second.
Scraping info from the Obsidian boards, AP has a multiple hub & mission structure, larger than life allies and villains all eager to double cross each other and you, long lasting consequences for your actions that may not be immediately apparent. Yes, much of the game will be about combat, but using Unreal 3 it may actually be satisfying combat. This compared to Bloodlines required but much less than satisfying combat.
The conversation system is of course a little worrisome, and probably can’t compare to Bloodlines’ dialog trees. It is a bit misrepresented, however. You are presented with three options, such as “Suave”, “Professional”, and “Intimidating”. They are presented as full dialog options and not just adjectives, the options change depending on the situation and your previous choices, and can include actions like “shoot one of the prisoners”.
The potential for a Bloodlines-like mix of roleplay, C&C, great characters, and (unlike Bloodlines) satisfying combat is there. I think Obsidian is just unable to properly illustrate the kind of game this is, much like Jim didn’t really do justice to Bloodlines for one who may have never played it. He should have given a laundry list of the kind of crap you can do and achieve, like Alec did in that King’s Bounty write up, since this really help those unfamiliar with the game appreciate it’s breadth. It sold me King’s Bounty.
11/02/2009 at 19:06 vinraith says:
Bloodlines was good for one playthrough, but was too linear and completely fell apart towards the end. It was also a buggy mess, like everything Troika ever made. They died an earned death, in that respect.
11/02/2009 at 19:12 Subject 706 says:
If only Troika had had a proper manager and some more playtesting time…If only…
Still, their games stand heads and shoulders above almost anything else. The possibility of never seeing these types of games in the future, makes me sad.
11/02/2009 at 19:23 Taillefer says:
Starting in the apartment was executed to perfection. The decor was just right, but the sounds more than anything really brought it alive. You wake up, hear the noises from the street below, the distant sirens, and then that radio kicks in, which was a touch of genius.
Oh! This is some good f’kin chicken.
11/02/2009 at 19:30 Jazmeister says:
I very much like the cut of this article’s jib.
11/02/2009 at 20:43 Über Nerd says:
Ever since Orange Box engine I’ve been wondering if Troika had a better tech insight and waited for Source to get its sh*t together instead of being the first game to be on Source, how many zirillion times the game could have been better?
11/02/2009 at 20:59 Alex says:
@ Cooper
With the odd exception like Valve, most developers don’t own their games- the publishers control the rights and only give some royalites once a product sells past a certain number of units.
I’m guessing ActiBlizzion keeps whatever the game brings in nowadays for itself.
11/02/2009 at 21:00 Pijama says:
maybe we should form some sort of hardcore pc gamer league demanding quality stuff like this.
just sayin’.
11/02/2009 at 21:06 Kadayi says:
VTM:B is (for all it’s faults) to my mind the template for future Computer RPGs, and that it’s an utter crime that no other developer has yet come along to build upon it’s legacy. Troika took Valves facial animation system and ran with it to fantastic effect, imbuing their NPCs with visible reactive character and personalities the likes of which no one else has really yet matched in recent years (Sorry Mass Effect..but he said/she said cut scenes don’t make the grade). It was a template that was moving away from the anally retentive statistical legacy of P&P RPGs and one that was actively embracing the immersive opportunities of play & approach games such as Deus Ex, Thief & System Shock 2 were exploring with 3D game space.
Bizarrely the only developers I think who are remotely near Troika in that respect these days are probably Rockstar. GTA IV accords to the template on so many levels by being open world and freeing itself of the yoke of statistical meta gaming, it’s just a pity that R* can’t escape/move beyond the crime drama nature of their product. Liberty City cries out to be used as more than a backdrop for ‘Drive here, shoot that’ missions.
Great article Jim, but the reminder of just how badly served we as gamers have been since just raises the hackles. One can only hope some game playing Russian Oil Baron comes along and decides to revive Troika with the ultimatum of ‘MOAR LIEK VTM:B PLEASE!!!’
11/02/2009 at 21:11 Oddtwang says:
@Pangs: Spoing!
Really ought to go back and finish this thing at some point – the oft-mentioned twins and the haunted hotel stick in my mind incredibly clearly; probably only surpassed by Blast Pit and some formative experiences playing Halls of the Things (back when games were allowed to be ridiculously hard) on my dad’s Spectrum.
11/02/2009 at 21:31 Taillefer says:
Tangentially, do we know what happened to Dropship?
Was it dropped?
11/02/2009 at 21:33 CryingTheAnnualKingo says:
There’s not a single character that sticks in my mind from any BioWare or Bethesda game, as much as I love ‘em.
However, the characters, even the minor ones, in Bloodlines are all still fresh in my memory because of their verve, edge, flavor and generally amazing voice acting. I’m looking forward to Dragon Age and ME 2 but I’m afraid that BioWare is going to stuff the games with the same, dry and wholly uninteresting backstory and characters as they always have.
@Uber-It was less an issue of “tech” as it was an issue of “time”. They didn’t have enough of it to finish the game. Even if they had the best, most polished engine to work with, they still wouldn’t have had enough time to complete the game, so don’t blame Valve, blame Activision. Or the industry as a whole for not funding what would have been their next project; an untitled Fallout successor that would have been the game that the NMA crowd wanted Bethesda to make. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYmQyHl2bc
11/02/2009 at 21:44 Tardvape says:
“He related the anecdote of someone playing Fallout 3 and being disappointed that much of the game relied on social interaction with fictitious people.”
Ah but here’s something to consider: That’s an awful, poorly designed aspect of Fo3. Even if you like that in games, chances are you don’t give a crap for it in Fo3. Now give these same people a Velvet Velour or a Jack the pirate vampire and I bet many of them would change their tune.
Even with their flaws, Arcanum and Bloodlines are among the best RPGs ever made. If Troika had had the time and budget that Fo3 did we would have had 2 games that truly transcended greatness and became the stuff of legends.
What we’re seeing in games today can be compared to what you see in say the music industry. The market has exploded since the late 90′s and people are trying to cash in on it left and right. You can compare us “old-school” rpgers to old fans of punk and hip hop. The kids out there listening to Kanye and Good Charlotte have likely never even heard of KRS One or Dead Kennedys yet they say they’re fans of the genre, much like many of the “RPG Fans” playing Fo3 have never touched the originals or planescape or god forbid something ancient like wasteland.
The market for rich and possibly even turn-based RPG games never disappeared, I would argue it’s larger now than it ever was. The thing is, the entire market has expanded to such a degree that we’re no longer targeted. When producers start realizing there are hundreds of thousands of us who have found very little worth purchasing in the last few years besides puzzle quest and portal, we might start seeing something again. I think you could take a team of less than 20 people, and a budget of less than $500,000 and make a game that makes as much profit (percentage wise) as a blockbuster with a budget in the millions. Hopefully we’ll see something like that in the not too distant future.
Stardock is working on an RPG…
11/02/2009 at 21:56 ph0tik says:
The hate of Fallout 3 in this thread is hilarious. I am sure if this same post occurred in ’04 when Bloodlines came out everyone would say “oh this game is shit compared to Fallout 2″. It’s the same thing over and over again with gamers.
Nothing can touch the storyline and intrigue of blah blah blah. Listen, they are still making games like this, you just seem to hate them all.
11/02/2009 at 21:57 Eschatos says:
Such a great game. I played Malkavian my first time, and no other clan was quite like it. My favorite bit was listening to the newscasts and hearing the reporter refer to you in a menacing way. “We know it was you!”
11/02/2009 at 22:09 JKjoker says:
ahhh, poor Troika, making the best D&D crpg engine ever and then using it with a incredible shitty and boring setting… every time i fire up nwn i weep thinking how that crap could be so awesome with TOEE’s engine
During their short life they either aced on story and flunked on gameplay(arcanum) or aced gameplay and screwed up story(toee, bloodlines was more of a mix), also releasing bloodlines so close to half life 2 was suicidal (i doubt it was their choice tho)
11/02/2009 at 22:18 DeliriumWartner says:
I’d like to see a film noir game along a similar line. I’d want him to start off an alcholic. Every now and then he starts to crave booze again, probably every night. If you indulge him, you’ll have to put up with the effects, as well as a downward spiral into a worse addiction. If not, he’ll steadily get more agitated, moaning and wimpering to himself, vomiting and cursing.
Sounds grim, I know, but I think it really could work. What you reckon?
11/02/2009 at 22:21 Jambamagamba says:
Been meaning to play this for ages, but it never seems like quite the right time to get into it. soon enough i’ll pick it up on steam and i’m sure i’ll kick myself in the face for having not done so sooner.
11/02/2009 at 22:29 Gaph says:
Even far outside of “immersive sim” games I’ll occasionally catch a whiff of that immersive sim spirit. Those little moments often become my favorite parts of the game, more than the gameplay or story.
Most recently in replaying FEAR just wandering around the ATC offices. The sprawling, haphazard layout of cubicles and offices, dimly lit only by the blue glow of LCD monitors. The silence is so prominent it feels like the slightest noise could be heard from anywhere in the building. I walk quietly, leaning around every corner.
Just brilliant, immersive atmosphere. The AI, story and gunplay is all great but these little moments make it for me.
11/02/2009 at 22:37 Tardvape says:
At ph0tik:
Sorry bud, comparing Fo3 to Bloodlines is like comparing Avril Lavigne to The Ramones
One defines a genre, the other is a pop sensation. We won’t see any articles hailing the glory days of the Fallout 3 Era 5 years from now. A lot of us will have Fallout 1 and 2 on our machines for yet another decade, but no one will still be playing Fo3 in half a decade.
DeliriumWartner: I dig that idea, starting off either on the spike, poppin pills or on the bottle, and your character getting pissed off or degraded depending on whether or not you feed the need.
11/02/2009 at 22:39 Petethegoat says:
Looks like I’ve been beaten to mentioning Facade, which is a great game, by the way. I had to play three or four times before I beat it. As Gonzalo. The amount of voice acting is just incredible. Only downside is that it takes aaages to install.
11/02/2009 at 22:43 ph0tik says:
@Tardvape:
I am not saying Fallout 3 is the best game ever but let’s not rush to herald the death of this kind of writing in games. Don’t worry, the time will come =)
11/02/2009 at 22:44 RED-404 says:
I love this game and it has some great mods.
But this game has one life altering side-effect I find myself endlessly arguing with stop signs all-most every day.
11/02/2009 at 22:50 Tardvape says:
And I wasn’t trying to say it was the worst game ever either, hey I kinda like some Avril Lavigne songs. (no sarcasm)
And I’m not hopeless either if you read the last part of my first post. When developers / publishers realize that not only is there a market for good writing but that it’s largely the same market that prefers Art over Graphics, and that they can sell more copies if they stop targeting the 5-15% of the market that keeps up to date gaming rigs.
11/02/2009 at 23:01 ph0tik says:
^ Agreed
11/02/2009 at 23:02 Levictus says:
I wish there were more games like VTMB, it’s really too bad that all we get now is generic shooters aimed at the lowest common denominator. I don’t even like the whole Vampire thing, but VTMB got me hooked. The NPC’s seemed so real, the atmosphere rocked. The game literally took you to another world. I was lucky enough to play this title in 2006, so most of the bugs were fixed. I miss games like this…
11/02/2009 at 23:17 bhlaab says:
Yeah, what if Bethesda was not even remotely similar to Bethesda.
Huge and shallow is what they do there, and it’s working. The reason more games aren’t like VtM:Bloodlines is because the Bethesda formula is more viscerally impressive while being an easier pill for casual players to swallow. The Diablo hack and slash and MMO clickathon have even more appeal, God knows why.
If you want to play a “real” RPG anymore you’re going to have to jump into the trecherous world of indie games, ugly and buggy they may be.
11/02/2009 at 23:21 bhlaab says:
No, it was shipped.
Actually, I have no idea. It fell off the face of the Earth 3 years ago I guess?
12/02/2009 at 00:06 Sunjammer says:
I just hated having to fight so much. The fighting never worked very well in the first place, and there’s so much of it near the end that it just stopped being all that fun.
Playing Nosferatu is a staggeringly different experience to playing Toreador. Which is a very different experience to playing Malkavian. There’s so much gameplay in the game it’s almost miraculous that it wasn’t BUGGIER on release. I dare other developers to try their hand at this school of game.
This reminds me; Temple of Elemental Evil was another game that got community-fixed the hell up post release. That kind of devotion speaks a lot about how much love Troika games inspired. RIP.
12/02/2009 at 00:36 The Spirit of Dr Alex Neill says:
“the idea is begged”? Jim, I’m revoking your degree.
12/02/2009 at 02:23 Mike says:
Also wanted to give recommendation for Facade. 1 small apartment with you and two other people – just type what you want to say to them and see how the night turns out. Check it out if you haven’t.
12/02/2009 at 02:39 Pantsman says:
@All those recommending Facade
I loved the idea behind Facade when I first heard of it, but was I the only one that thought the implementation was just terrible? They didn’t seem to respond naturally (or at all) to anything I said or did.
12/02/2009 at 04:36 Nervous Little Tit says:
This game is the shit. I first played it when my gf went away for a week. I went into a very dark place (figuratively and literally) and found salvation in this game. Well, it passed the time incredibly well, let’s put it that way. I don’t think I’ve ever been so immersed in a single player gameworld before. Or since. I slept all day and played all through the nights until the sun came up. Then she came home and normality resumed. And I couldn’t help but feel like I’D been the one away.
12/02/2009 at 06:16 Muzman says:
The chief problem with Facade is you have to type so damn quick or they’ll react to your silence before you get the chance. And if you’re too terse they don’t seem to be able to parse what you’re saying.
Still impressive though. Would make a very interesting aspect of a detective game, for instance, interviews and negotiations etc.
12/02/2009 at 07:51 Alex says:
‘What, indeed, would it be like to live life as … an FBI agent’
I would pay both my kidneys for a well-executed game like this. There’s a wide-open opportunity for a GTA-a-like with the protagonist on the side of law and order (don’t mention True Crime, for my sanity).
12/02/2009 at 12:45 Zwebbie says:
There’s this odd phenomenon where your opinion on games can change quite a bit when you’re done playing it. I loved Oblivion while playing it, but grew to hate it once I was done and saw how shallow it was. By contrast, Bloodlines, in my memory, has already overtaken Arcanum and is now vying for my no#1 favourite game against Deus Ex. The more I come back to this game, the more I see how beautiful the atmosphere and writing are.
One of my greatest regrets in gaming (along with buying Spore) is that I didn’t buy Bloodlines at release. I loved Arcanum, but the whole gothic vampire atmosphere in the modern world didn’t inspire me in the least and reviewers weren’t particularly excited about the game. I should’ve bought it. I’d buy it five times over today if only it would help Troika – but it’s too late. I feel that Arcanum was the pinnacle of the games of its era, but Bloodlines could have been – should have been – the template for role playing games for the next ten years to come, like Fallout was in its day. The game wasn’t perfect in its execution, but its philosophy of a character-driven world and story is admirable to say the least.
The writing! Just last week, I flipped through Bloodlines’ sound files and found the radio files (->Vampire\sound\radio) – the Deb of Night. I listened to the whole loop, for the umpteenth time and laughed at Republican senator Robert Thorn as always. When it was finished, I fired it up again. The next day, I listened to it again and looked up a transcript for the parts that were hard to follow. How much of a difference compared to Fallout 3′s Three Dog!
And that extends to all the writing in the game. I’ve yet to see anything that comes even remotely close (though I have yet to play Torment). Through dialogue, I actually found myself caring little for ordinary humans. Not because they were just a bunch of NPCs in a computer game, but because the game had talked me into being an arrogant predator with more important matters to attend to than these kine would ever understand. A wonderful experience, compared to other role playing games where I asked myself what kind of guy I was role playing. Something about the game elevated it beyond role playing and somewhere into role being.
There’s an odd thing. The stop sign. Brian Mitsoda, its writer, said that it was conceived of and executed in a matter of minutes. That’s exactly what I imagine Bethesda does, come up with ideas and implement them, because FO3′s quests and locations are all stand alone rule-of-cool items. But the stop sign is a wonderful piece. Maybe Mitsoda is just a better writer than anything Bethesda has, or maybe this was just an isolated event in developer spontaneity, but there’s a clear difference.
All right, I’ll stop my sentimental love letter now :) . If you haven’t played the game but like good writing, play it and don’t let its setting, gameplay or bugs bother you. Malkavian dialogue makes up for anything.
“So… what’s it like to be a turtle?”
“It’s a lot like being a walking house that eats lettuce. “
12/02/2009 at 13:50 Winterborn says:
The ToEE engine was by far the best D&D engine ever made. It’s a shame the game was fairly shallow as the combat was pure joy. For anyone who’s not played it or had trouble with it back in the day I reinstalled it with the community patches(I think they’re on a site called circle of eight) about a year back and had a great time.
As for Vampire, probably number five or six on my all time favourite list. Great game.
12/02/2009 at 14:10 kadayi says:
@Alex
This might be what your looking for:-
http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Noire
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/911/911808p1.html
Apparently it’s no longer a PS3 exclusive (Sony have cut their funding) so I’m fairly confident that it will arrive on the PC somewhere down the line after the console release.
12/02/2009 at 14:28 Janto says:
I’m a bit confused by the Arcanum love on display here, my own experiences of it were indifferent, to say the least. Possibly it just suffered from being busy and inaccessible, especially in character creation – my reaction to the technology option on first sight was pretty much ‘fuck right off, you mad bastard.’
Perhaps it’s the fact that there seemed to be so many options, but anything which wasn’t an option seemed to be so much more glaring an issue, a good argument for limiting scope to focus on specific issues. All the sprawling sideways depth was actually deeply unappealing to me, and in my opinion makes a game like Planescape far more successful, design-wise.
Take the ogre-farm subplot/thing. That was far more interesting than the vacuous main plot, but it didn’t go anywhere – at least for me, I was laughed at and the guy ran away. Then it was off to the Wise Dude to tell me about me super destiny to fight another Evil Dude, who may or may not have been related to the Wise Dude… and I stopped playing. Maybe there was a twist, maybe I could have hunted down the gnome conspiracy anyway, but my experience up that point had been following the main story in the hope that, at some point, it would become good, and I’d had enough of Arcanum’s tosh by then.
Also, the game’s as bad as Morrowind for psychotic wildlife attack tedium in my memories.
12/02/2009 at 14:52 Alex says:
@kadayi
Looks interesting, and I really can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. Thanks for the links, although I did notice a particularly unfortunate choice of words in the IGN link:
Ow.
12/02/2009 at 16:57 kadayi says:
It does sound interesting and I’m rather hoping it delivers on the promise, though given the lack of news on it, I doubt we’ll be seeing it any time soon unfortunately.
12/02/2009 at 19:20 drewski says:
I don’t understand why I’m not allowed to like an open ended, vastly interesting freeform world like Fallout 3 or Morrowind and also like a more focused, detailed and character based world like Planescape: Torment or Bloodlines.
12/02/2009 at 20:21 Troika fan says:
to me the first place for the most complete, cohesive world design goes to fallout the first.
Bloodlines is impressive until it starts to become a horrible dungeon grinding game, even with all its faults. I agree, it was simply too much of an ambitious game to be actually completed. The scope of it, it’s something a big software house could begin to fantasize about making.
12/02/2009 at 21:17 absentblue says:
Damn I gotta go home and replay this… never actually finished it either, I got to the park at the end with the wolf and got pissed off (and a tad scared, admittedly).
Such a good game, I even played it without Wesp’s patch and didn’t experience much aside from the typos of course and a couple of non-show-stopper bugs.
12/02/2009 at 21:34 ascagnel says:
@drewski:
You’re allowed to like the open-endedness/freeform-edness of Fallout 3 and Morrowind. The difference between those and VtM:B is that they put their focus on the actual world, where VtM:B puts its focus on the “world” in the more ethereal sense: they make you feel like you’re in a real world, with well-thought out characters instead of lame archetypes.
13/02/2009 at 00:10 Uriel says:
With the benefit of hindsight, I think Bloodlines was actually the best game I ever played. It frequently didn’t feel like it at the time and it certainly wasn’t finished but every game since it has been a disappointment.
The only other thing that’s come close was going back to play the original Deus Ex.
13/02/2009 at 00:20 Duncan Frost says:
Ahh gads don’t use the wesp patches there terrible.
The True line of patches is a lot more faithful to the original game. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=628246
13/02/2009 at 09:05 Vorpal says:
Awesome article for a game that literally “sucks” you in!
What can i say about Bloodlines really? immersive atmosphere, fantastic music.. actually i love every aspect of it — one bloody fine wine troika made there.
Gonna miss Troika(they were a bunch of honest dudes)and VTM series in general – games created with passion are damn rare nowdays.
13/02/2009 at 15:45 MunkyRiver says:
Thanks for reminding me of that game, and for pointing to the unofficial patch! Didn’t know about that one. And shouldn’t know either, with two exams still to go, I guess. Ah well, got to go playing again..
13/02/2009 at 18:05 karthik says:
Bloodlines is so good, it gets two Retrospectives on RPS.
The community patch really does clean up the gunk. I still stop playing before reaching the endgame, though.
14/02/2009 at 03:11 Metronome says:
Vampire:Bloodlines is indeed a gem. I think the gaming studio should really aim towards making game like this or even better. Lately, the graphic of games are getting better, but not sure why, the gameplay of these new gen games are more toward shooting games lately. They don’t really care about the uniqueness of the story and concept anymore, it is more to heavy shooting game, that’s all. If only this game is being remade….
15/02/2009 at 06:00 Alex says:
Tessera’s ‘true’ patches are a crock. They’re a hatchet job done on the wesp ones to conform to the other guy’s ‘purist’ viewpoint.
At least he had the presence of mind to keep his Bloodlines nude packs out of the main release, though.
15/02/2009 at 13:28 cowthief skank says:
I want to buy it on Steam but I don’t want all my money to go to Activision :-(
17/02/2009 at 18:51 Funky Badger says:
Bloodlines was wonderful – and the haunted house and jeannette missions are a couple of gaming highspots to compare to anything else.
But ToEE was utter rubbish. Cannot believe the same people were reponsible.
21/02/2009 at 06:44 Testicular Torsion says:
Has there ever been a game which involved using a severed limb as a weapon didn’t rock?
21/02/2009 at 06:46 Testicular Torsion says:
“That didn’t rock”, even.
08/03/2009 at 22:42 Uriel says:
Forgive my enthusiasm – but this is quite possibly the best thing ever – a mod for Bloodlines that enables you to recruit a posse of NPCs for the ultimate in social vampirism.
http://sites.google.com/site/vtmbcompmodhome/
06/04/2009 at 10:01 Risingson says:
I’m beginning to consider if all the memorable rpg experiences are the ones that involve some hacking in the real world…
06/04/2009 at 14:08 John Smith says:
Okay Toee wasn’t that bad, it was a recreation of a small classic module it wasn’t meant to be a grand story driven quest, that doesn’t make it bad just a different experience.
Bloodlines was awesome if unfinished, however I’ve always thought its problem was that they needed a combined arms assault, if they wanted shooting and almost realtime combat they need to have people from that background on their teams. Or even hand over some aspects of making the game to other teams.
Although the endgame isn’t that bad if you’ve persevered with firearms, you can by that point literally waste anything in the game with startling ease, so it takes much less time.
Also Arcanum kicked major ass.
09/04/2009 at 18:14 Gravengrav says:
Except for Fallout 2, this has got to be the best RPG I have ever played.
I always enjoy playing again after a while, especially because of Wesp making those unofficial patches for it on planetvampire.
If only gaming companies made good games these days…
25/09/2009 at 21:17 Erufailon says:
Completely agree… Fallout 2 and VtmB are by far the best computer RPG ever… I am still waiting for games with such scope and stroytelling…
05/08/2010 at 15:53 Mjx says:
The above person is clearly misinformed.
The children of father Malkav are clearly the best clan.
Ah man, this is making me want to play this game again :)
06/08/2010 at 03:34 Neil Young says:
Run it out rudeboy.
It remains eminently playable today, spesh if you get up all over the latest fan made patch:
http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php
16/08/2010 at 01:23 sinister agent says:
Finally, I got back into this game after abandoning it last year, not long after the horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE sewer level that just Would. Not. End.
I’m glad I did. The endgame isn’t as good, no, but the sewer thing is by far the worst bit. I laughed out loud at Jack, who narrowly beat Becket to the post as my favourite character. Good stuff. A terrible shame that its quality didn’t hold up throughout. But still totally worth playing again.
09/04/2013 at 01:21 SilverDrake says:
My thoughts while reading article:
“Certainly, a great game, but it is clearly incomplete, one can see it when playing… Oh, here it is. And patch is fixed a lot of problems… Here it is.”
Good read, nothing to add. And elegant choice of title for the article. Hats off.