Comments on: Interview Without A Vampire: Bloodlines’ B Mitsoda

By: eightiesmullet

eightiesmullet — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:21:35 +0000

A beautiful game – I love this game the same way others love Deux Ex. It’s a great leap for computer games, quite frankly.

By: JohnnyMaverik

JohnnyMaverik — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:07:51 +0000

“the money from your purchase won’t get back to the original team.”

Bloody Activision -_-

VTM:B is my all time favourite game, and if they’d had a few more months to weed out the worst of the bugs and polish some other slightly janky stuff, it’d have gone down as one of the best games ever made, which in a way it has but sadly mostly in hindsight.

By: Bugged Brujah

Bugged Brujah — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:59:33 +0000

First, great interview, and I’m reassured by Mitsoda’s words. I always felt that Bloodlines was an amazing game in its heart, mainly due to the story and approach of the plot. The writing was a primary part of this. Good work, Mitsoda.

Now for the ugly bit. I was infuriated upon the release of Bloodlines. Just getting the game up and running was a nightmare, let alone the numerous bugs during play. Now wait, don’t dismiss this post just yet. I know many have claimed either that they encountered zero bugs, or at least no show stoppers, but I’m not some special unfortunate. I am most certainly not alone. Personally, I encountered game ending bugs multiple times. This means I restarted more than once, just to reach the game’s conclusion a single time. During each playthrough minor bugs plagued nearly every encounter. Whether it was a dialogue skip that forced me to reload to see the entire conversation, or a combat glitch that fucked up the situation, or simple things like Malkavian “voices in the head” not loading properly or plain botched game mechanics, these things arose at nearly every turn. Even those bugs that don’t destroy your game, only force you to reload, become unbearable when they are so numerous that they shatter your immersion. The haunted mansion? Not scary to me. It would have been if I hadn’t already been petrified that I’d lose my game AGAIN, and was too busy saving multiple slots and worrying about the next technical hurtle I’d have to leap. Resident Evil and Silent Hill were so much more terrifying than Bloodlines’ haunted mansion, and yet they shouldn’t be. The writing and setup for that scene was top notch, much better than Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but the mechanics ruined it.

I assume most commenters defending Troika are newcomers to the game, playing fully patched (those are FAN made patches, in case you aren’t up to speed) and thus, haven’t had the displeasure of experiencing the fubar that is Bloodlines upon release. Hell, I’ve heard that argument back when it was released six years ago now. Plenty of people were able to play it without flaw, but even if it just affects twenty-five percent of the consumers, that’s far too much. You wouldn’t want to be in that minority, and percentages less than that have halted sales on games lesser than Bloodlines.

Those saying they play it fine on release say it like it means something. It’s like saying your grandfather smoked heavily and lived to a ripe old age, so cigarettes must not cause cancer. Bullshit. If you played Bloodlines on release without a hitch then got dealt a good hand, but massive amounts of people bought this game and got royally screwed. If you were around for the release (or can find a forum that archives its posts that far back) you’ll know the insane amount of technical problems gamers experienced with this damaged game.

I’m surprised myself that I’m still so bitter over this game six years after this release. It was a beautifully ambitious game, modeled off a setting dear to my heart (I’m a big fan of White Wolf). When it worked, I couldn’t have been more pleased, and this could have easily been my favorite game of all time. The problem is that it’s viciously broken. I’ve read a lot of good arguments on who is to blame for this, and I believe neither the publisher nor the developer should made out to be Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. In the negative respects, I think Troika bit off more than they could chew, forcing Activision into a corner. I also think Activision should have given them the benefit of the doubt and thrown more money and time at the problem, but as poster Lintman said, “Hindsight is 20/20.”. I don’t have personal experience with the situation, but given Troika’s history of releasing unplayable games, I’m inclined to agree with others in being glad this company is defunct. I was introduced to Troika when they released Arcanum. A fantastic game, and a classic in my eyes. I later played Temple of Elemental Evil. I’ve loved all three of these, and they deserve credit for their design and idea, but not their execution.

This was a long post, and probably more than any casual reader would bother with for a game released half a decade ago, but maybe my grief will serve as a constructive criticism for any developer (Bloodlines affiliated or otherwise) who chances to read it. Best of luck to the Troika team in their new endeavors. They obviously had a talent for great game ideas, even if it never worked out in the end.

P. S. – I’m installing Bloodlines again as I write this, because despite its numerous flaws, I still think it’s an amazing game. For a game to be this broken and still hold a place in my heart (albeit, bittersweet) is in itself an accomplishment of the development team. I hope my experience this time around will prove less problematic.

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:19:48 +0000

Troika were a really weird studio while they lasted. They had talent, they had vision, they had drive… and then they had Activision as a publisher and a dwinling budget/deadline. Almost all of their games would have been remembered as absolute classics off the bat if they’d just had another six months development/testing/tweaking time.

Fortunately, all their games have gotten amazing fan-patches. Seriously brilliant ones. Temple of Elemental Evil was almost unplayable at launch, and now it’s probably the best D&D 3.0 crawler you could hope for. Arcanum is a much smoother experience now, and Vampire.. hell, they’re STILL finding unused chunks of dialogue, character models and details in the game data files that they’re patching back into the game.

By: Hari

Hari — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:43:05 +0000

Now that we’ve put little dartboards on Troika’s, Activision’s, Valve’s and Rook’s belts, and the darts have gone below, lets step back and look at the game itself.
No game that’s as buggy, and has failed so badly in sales, as VTMB, gets such an in-depth discussion flaming a very successful publisher, a popular game developer and a forgotten one.

I finished the entire game with just the ‘boat’ bug, and if you have the habit of being scared by the hotel and saving every time you saved your Toreador skin, the ‘bug’ took me 3 minutes ( including Googling it) to cross. Never noticed any other bugs, probably because, my definition of a game has been fun, not polished, and I’ve played a lot of so-called ‘buggy’ games.

There’s a difference between a little humidity in the air, and rain. Some people think humid is a bug, I think acid rain is a bug. There were no ‘leopards flying at treetop level’ (Boiling Point) or ‘items disappearing from inventory’ (Daggerfall) bugs in VTMB.

The bug doesn’t have to be a ‘show-stopper’ to count as a bug…if it irritates me for having to spend 3 minutes fixing it, its a bug. But you see, I was so ..”hungry” to get to the rest of the story… the minutes didn’t count. And that, Mr. Mitsoda, is why story/voice acting/art direction rules. Gameplay is the process of experiencing that world as well, not just finding better ways to kick ass. Why do you think Diablo is one of the best-selling franchises ever? Why do Diablo fans sign petitions for the game to retains its original look? The story, the look are what made a simple point-click-hack-slash like Diablo sell.

I found HL interesting, and VTMB immersive. Thats the difference. And what’s a game without Tourette and Beckett and Malkavians?
Thanks to the patchers for patch 6.6 and those wonderful mods you can find at moddb.

And for years, I’ve searched an urban fantasy setting that can match what VTMB did in terms of immersion. No luck.

By: Hari

Hari — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:11:31 +0000

Now that we’ve put little dartboads on Troika’s, Activision’s, Valve’s and Rook’s belts, and the darts have gone below, lets step back and look at the game itself.
No game that’s as buggy, and has failed so badly in sales, as VTMB, gets such an in-depth discussion flaming a very successful publisher, a popular game developer and a forgotten one.

The bug doesn’t have to be a ‘show-stopper’ to count as a bug…if it irritates me for having to spend 3 minutes fixing it, its a bug. But you see, I was so ..”hungry” to get to the rest of the story… the minutes didn’t count. And that, Mr. Mitsoda, is why story/voice acting/art direction rules. Gameplay is the process of experiencing that world as well, not just finding better ways to kick ass. Why do you think DIablo is one of the best-selling franchises ever? Why do Diablo fans sign petitions for the game to retains its original look? The story, the look are what made a simple point-click-hack-slash like Diablo sell.

And for years, I’ve searched an urban fantasy setting that can match what VTMB did in terms of immersion. No luck.

By: Throat

Throat — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:12:44 +0000

I think Bloodlines and Deus Ex are the only two games that leap instantly to mind that were both well-written and well-acted. Awesome to hear from one of the writers. You made the game what it was. Thanks.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:36:33 +0000

MeestaNob! says:

Wesp5, that makes no sense.

The artificial delays imposed by their agreement with Valve would have meant that Troika would have had longer to fine tune their game in opposition to Activision’s desire to get it out into the public quickly. I cant begin to imagine the disaster Bloodlines would have been if they could have released ahead of HL2.

Using the same engine, Valve made the game of the decade, while Troika made an ambitions mess.

==================

You’re obviously not a software engineer. It’s really impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t done any coding how much of an advantage it is to be familiar with the code. This is not an apples to apples comparison.

A 3rd party developer (Troika) using a game engine has to develop familiarity with the engine during development. Valve had in-house expertise with the engine. You can’t overestimate the value of having that expertise on-hand. Furthermore, Valve had the architects of the engine on hand to answer all the questions of what the engine *would* be capable of when finished. A 3rd party developer can only hope that what it requires will be ready by release time and even then is totally beholden to the engine developer to get it working far enough ahead of schedule that they have time to grok it, develop against it, and then test against it.

Bottom line: the engine developer will always make the best use of the engine.

HL2 was not some great game, other than its technical achievements. The story in HL2 and countless other FPS’s … 1 guy with a gun against a horde of baddies must save the world. Truly original and inspired…? I mean, really, what can you say about that? Well maybe it was cliche, but I promise you, they did it with feeling? It was the most inspired guy-with-gun-saves-world story ever? The FPS phenomenon really needs to die already, but we know it never will, because it’s the lowest common denominator in video gaming. Calling a FPS “game of the year” or hailing its story as “great,” or saying that it’s the best game because of the number of copies it sells is like saying Mariah Carey writes better music than Mozart because her sales figures say so.

With Bloodlines, I was so interested in the story, that I found the combat to be almost annoying, like it was a hurdle to the real fun — watching the story unfold, hearing the voice acting, and seeing how many cool ideas they had for giving a V:tM fan a simulated experience of the P&P game. It was a great adaptation, buggy or not.

By: solowd

solowd — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:00:17 +0000

also, there’s a quest that involves a prosthetic-maker

did anyone else think this was a reference to The Fugitive? The guy’s name is Gimble, which sounds like Kimble…and he has a definite resemblance to Harrison Ford (starred in the movie)

maybe I’m crazy though

By: solowd

solowd — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:49:11 +0000

I’d hope for a sequel, but it will never happen

Characters and writing are in a league of their own.

Combat needed a makeover, but this didn’t really show until the awful sewer/warrens sequence. Amazing game overall though.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:53:36 +0000

I finally got a copy of this gem and just finished playing it through for the first time, then I come on here and find articles still being written about it five years after it was released. “Deus Ex” popped into my mind very early on while playing, and that is really the only game you can compare Bloodlines to.

Before I was halfway through this game, I knew I was playing one of the best games I had ever seen. Of course I played it with all the community patches and on a newer pc, so the game never crashed and I noticed only the most minor of bugs.

I agree with a lot of the comments about the pros and cons of Bloodlines. I too was disappointed in the forced FPS ending to the game. I wish Troika had the time and the money to craft an ending that was in the spirit of the rest of the game. You could have had options, depending on your skills, to trick, blackmail, steal, or diplomatically finish the story. There was no need for the Painkiller finish.

The rest of Bloodlines, though, is a masterpiece. This game had me hooked like no other I have played in years, and yes, I finished Fallout 3 just a few months ago. No comparison.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:41:12 +0000

For a four year old game, it’s hella entertaining to play. I feel bad for Troika for not getting the support they needed to make the launch successful. And they’re not even getting any royalties now for all their hard work.

Fuck Activision. I download all their games and host the torrents to piss them off some.