Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A while back I posted about the tragedy of games like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Following that one of the original Troika team, writer Brian Mitsoda, got in touch to talk about the project. A veteran of Troika and RPG-devs Obsidian, he’s had plenty of experience in the words that make up videogames. What follows is a discussion of Bloodlines, Troika, dialogue, character design, and inaccurate porn geographies.
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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.
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[This is an extended version of something I wrote for PCG. Well... I didn't write it for PCG. I wrote it for myself after something had moved me in the flawed-but-oft-magnificent Vampire: Bloodlines and I sold a cut down version of it to PCG months later, as it's spoiler central. It's very much my personal experience with a memorable section...]

“Power Corrupts” has never been true. In my experience, Power Seduces. “Corrupt” implies it’s akin to sprinkling a little shit in an otherwise immaculate meal. The problem with power is that it just makes everything better. And when someone’s staring up at you, saying you’re the best person in the world and they’d do anything – anything – you ask, could you say no?

I thought I could. I was wrong.
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