Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines gets villainous in the Clan Quest Mod 4.0
We are DEFINITELY the baddies now
You could be pretty naughty in cult RPG favourite Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines before, but now you can be downright evil in the Clan Quest Mod, a massive fan-made expansion. While the mod has been around for a while, today's release - version 4.0 - is the biggest yet by far. It adds a whole new quest hub, a cast of fully voiced characters and the chance to join the murderous Sabbat. There's a new humanity system that lets you do some awful things and deal with the consequences later, plus the chance to diablerize (cannibalise, vampire-style) your rivals. Tasty.
The mod's 'Clan Quest' title refers to what it previously added - a new quest for each of the vampire clans, plus some additional side-adventures and new solutions to old problems. The new Sabbat-focused version has all that, plus the chance to switch sides once you're up to speed and building up a reputation as an undead badass. There's a bundle of new characters with new jobs for you to do for them and three new endings. The Clan Quest Mod installer also lets you pick and choose from a bundle of other community projects to install, most of which seem recommended.
The mod's voice-acting isn't bad. Chewing the scenery a bit, but that's what the Sabbat do.
I admit that I've not played Bloodlines in ages, and for some reason I've always passed on the Clan Quest Mod until now. The opportunity to defect, explore a whole new chunk of LA and fang it up with the bad guys is tempting, so I've got this gigabyte-sized transfusion of fangorious fun downloading now. With a little luck I'll even be able to play it by Halloween. I'm eager to see just how different the game is with an entire community's fourteen years of hard work all installed at once, as this is effectively a combined mod bundle.
While I'd never recommend playing the notoriously bug-laden original release, those wanting a slightly more vanilla Vamp 'Em Up should look no further than Werner "Wesp5" Spahl's Unofficial Patch. The Clan Quest Mod uses an earlier version of it as foundation, but it's been updated many times since, with the most recent version coming earlier this month. It comes in two flavours. Vanilla is bug fixes, for the most part, but Plus (my pick) features tweaks, rebalances and a lot of reinstated missing content left floating around in the game data due to eleventh hour cuts.
You can find the Bloodlines Clan Quest Mod on Mod DB here, or its official page here, which also contains an installation guide and a guide to the (optional) integrated mod package.
Credit to vampire wordsmith and RPS pal Richard Cobbett (currently working on his own bloodsucking RPG, Nighthawks) for pointing out the new release. You can find Vampire: Bloodlines on Steam, Humble and GOG, though you should expect it to go on sale closer to Halloween.