Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Lambach]

To be fair there is no indication of how he did it, he could have bullshitted the fight the way you can.

Any PC without at least 3 dots in Celerity should've been Werewolf poop too. Garou can spend Rage to move at inhuman speed, there's no outrunning them (without Celerity, that is).

 

[Old One]

Knowing Nines he probably gave the wolf a tiresome lecture about virtues of the working class in the face of greedy jewish bankers until the wolf killed himself.

 

[Roguey]

Out of all the ways VtMB shits on the P&P lore, this is probably the biggest offender. There is no combination of words sufficient to describe the sheer impossibility of a 70-80 year old Vampire killing a Garou in a 1v1 fight, es-fucking-pecially when the said Garou had the jump on him.

To be fair there is no indication of how he did it, he could have bullshitted the fight the way you can.

There is, he stuck a grenade in its mouth. Chekhov's grenade (the one he points to in the cutscene where you meet him).

 

[Gord]

Well, considering his head looks quite intact later on, the werewolf must have swallowed this grenade...

 

[Goral]

I couldn't help it and replayed this brilliant game as a Nosferatu (haven't done that before). There weren't that many unique dialogues but it was still worth it and going through the sewers wasn't so bad. And during this playthrough I've noticed a new ending that must have been restored by Wesp5:

Spoiler

:D :D :D

Best easter egg ever made by best game developer ever.

 

[Beastro]

Maybe. I can see why you've drawn the conclusion that Jack had recklessly opened the sarcophagus for shit and giggles, but you don't know that for sure. Jack may have his own sources of information, including the mysterious taxi driver.

It's not a remote possibility that Jack was doing shit to prevent other Anarchs from getting their hands on something he knew was over their head. He believes in and supports his side but is smart enough to know there's a lot of idiots in it that need protecting from themselves.

LaCroix is not incompetent, or at least he doesn't give the impression that he's any more so than any of the contenders to replace him. He's the top dog of the area with multiple groups trying to take him down. Even though we don't see it there is a war going on that is referenced often by the end game, which is killing lots of vampires on every side. And despite the civilized Camarilla pretenses, it's still very much a "might makes right" system. Had the sarcophagus gone according to plan his side would have been one of the best picks.

The character is undermined by the fact that they don't make him even more competent to lure you into wanting him to be better than should expect. The opening shows too much that the guy is what he appears to be and nothing he does thins that out.

It would have been an actual twist if it turned out he was actually a level headed, decent leader (albeit vain, arrogant and pissed no one treats him like a Prince should be treated) that wants the sarcophagus safely bottled up by the Cam but everyone's mind is made up about him, thinks he's something he only is at a shallow level and the paranoid atmosphere you're dumped into makes you believe the same at first.

Camarilla is the "lawful good" path if you will, however its not clear exactly how strong the Camarilla minus LaCroix is. Strauss really seems like a shitty leader to take over, he's a background guy who couldn't lead the vampires in war. The Malkavian primogen is dead, the Nosferatu can't lead, the only other options are the unnamed primogen of clans we don't see. Without LaCroix its quite possible that the region will descend into chaos from which one of the other sides would easily snatch control of the city. I'm assuming that the Sabbat and Kuei-Jin aren't complete chumps that are going to give up and go home, and that the player isn't going to be able to just kill them all.

The assumption is that Strauss even gives a fuck about how the situation will pan out. He seems more like a high minded guy that only wants to involve himself like he did, and the Tremere over really important world turning shit and if LA becomes a war zone, so what? It's small potatoes.

 

[baturinsky]

Nines killed the werewolf sure but he barely survived that encounter and was out of commission for the final fight. The biggest advantage for Anarchs is having Jack the masterful troll on their side, he orchestrated the whole scenario in which LaCroix ended up with the sarcophagus and Kue-Jin with the key, with Sabbat left in the middle wanting to diablerize the sleeping ancient. He basically got all the power players that are a threat to Anarchs at each other throats (LaCroix-Ming Xiao alliance was temporary until Prince snatched the sarcophagus) and even riddled the thing with explosives to take out whichever power hungry SOB survived the struggle.

Whole plot being Jack's gambit for the sake of Anarchs makes much more sense than "Caine did it".

 

[Gord]

The question would be: Did Caine (or at least some other old and powerful vampire) influence Jack? After all he mentions the Cab-driver, iirc?

 

[Roguey]

Jack and the Cab Driver hang out with the antediluvian in the last cutscene.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I think it was just a regular mummy.

 

[Old One]

Or maybe the taxi driver is actually the antediluvian and he put a human corpse in his own sarcophagus thousands of years ago in order to create a false evidence trail for vampires like Lacroix.

 

[Lhynn]

To be fair there is no indication of how he did it, he could have bullshitted the fight the way you can.

Any PC without at least 3 dots in Celerity should've been Werewolf poop too. Garou can spend Rage to move at inhuman speed, there's no outrunning them (without Celerity, that is).

Stop thinking about this in terms of mechanics you dumbfuck. The whole point of this system is that the narrative approach always wins.
You dont need to be faster than something to outrun it, you only need to know how to stay out of its way until you have time to prepare. Its the kind of scenario this shit system was made for.

 

[Hegel]

The Taxi driver is heavily implied to be Cain.

To be fair there is no indication of how he did it, he could have bullshitted the fight the way you can.

Any PC without at least 3 dots in Celerity should've been Werewolf poop too. Garou can spend Rage to move at inhuman speed, there's no outrunning them (without Celerity, that is).

Stop thinking about this in terms of mechanics you dumbfuck. The whole point of this system is that the narrative approach always wins.
You dont need to be faster than something to outrun it, you only need to know how to stay out of its way until you have time to prepare. Its the kind of scenario this shit system was made for.

There's no narrative angle other than the same old deus ex machina. Nine (a tenth gen afaik) couldn't have won that fight, it would have required a coterie of 80-100 years old vampires.

 

[laclongquan]

All of the sides have some reason to go with them:

LaCroix is not incompetent, or at least he doesn't give the impression that he's any more so than any of the contenders to replace him. He's the top dog of the area with multiple groups trying to take him down. Even though we don't see it there is a war going on that is referenced often by the end game, which is killing lots of vampires on every side. And despite the civilized Camarilla pretenses, it's still very much a "might makes right" system. Had the sarcophagus gone according to plan his side would have been one of the best picks.

Camarilla is the "lawful good" path if you will, however its not clear exactly how strong the Camarilla minus LaCroix is. Strauss really seems like a shitty leader to take over, he's a background guy who couldn't lead the vampires in war. The Malkavian primogen is dead, the Nosferatu can't lead, the only other options are the unnamed primogen of clans we don't see. Without LaCroix its quite possible that the region will descend into chaos from which one of the other sides would easily snatch control of the city. I'm assuming that the Sabbat and Kuei-Jin aren't complete chumps that are going to give up and go home, and that the player isn't going to be able to just kill them all.

One thing you must take into consideration is LaCroix's personal arsenal, both military and political. He got Sheriff, which as we know is the Last Boss class. He probably has other resources to keep the rest in line. To name one thing, the huge number of human military personels.

In comparison, we have
+ Strauss, with his goof in Hollywood.
+ Nine with his reputation inflated thank to killing a Werewolf. As we know a tenth like him can not do it, which mean somebody must have lent him a helping hand behind the scene (kinda like our own MC's situation). Which mean he got reputation surpassed what he is and can do. Whichmean if he believe in his reputation he will get slip-up and get smashed down one of these days.
+ KueiJin is newcomer with no deep ties to the land.

A minus-LaCroix LA will be very unsettled.

 

[Average Manatee]

There is, he stuck a grenade in its mouth. Chekhov's grenade (the one he points to in the cutscene where you meet him).

The plus patch has Nines give you the grenade as the weapon for the final showdown. Would be funny if it was cut specifically because someone looked at it, said "but he's supposed to have used the grenade to kill the Werewolf", and then wesp restoring it is actually messing up the intended sequence of events. But doubtful since as mentioned the werewolf head is on display.

 

[SCO]

Continuity errors are a lesser form of criticism. Move along citizen, nothing to see here, these aren't the droids you're looking for.

(i think the head is supposed to be one of the 'other' werewolves). You took care of the big one, Nines had to deal with more than 1 'small' ones? Makes sense that the hunt is more than 2 *nods*

 

[Lambach]

Stop thinking about this in terms of mechanics you dumbfuck. The whole point of this system is that the narrative approach always wins.

No, moron, the point of this system is this that if you're a Fledgling Vampire and a Werewolf finds you alone and unprepared, you're dead. End of story, no debate, period. That might as well be the VtM equivalent of "rocks fall, everyone dies", regardless of mechanics. It's among the most popular ways Storytellers punish particularly shitty players. On the list of reasons why Kindred stick almost exclusively to cities, avoiding the Garou at all costs is probably top 2 or 3.

Not that I mind the Quest itself, it's definitively one of VtMB's finer moments, but again, it's pretty nonsensical lore-wise.

 

[Gord]

They could as well had you fight the werewolf 1on1 and let you win.
Instead they made pretty clear that you wouldn't stand a chance at that (despite the player being already fairly powerful at that point) and only had to bend the lore a bit (werewolfes were fucking overpowered anyway), having you use the environment.
Not that big an issue if you ask me, they could have definitely done worse.

What Nines did we don't know anyway.

 

[makiavelli747]

That's why it was a big deal when Nines killed him, and Damsel's dialogues reflected that. As a Brujah, with Potence and Celerity, to kill a werewolf is not a big tragedy for lore.
When you, as a fledgling killing everybody - that is a bigger problem. It's a dumb stereotype that in computer games you always have to play underdog who then becomes God-like, just to make it fun. Stupid progression. Quest-rewards which featured negative or trade-off effects on stats was so rare.

 

[Gord]

While they did at least acknowledge your awfully and unlikely fast rise-to-power, it would indeed make more sense for the player to stay relatively weak (relative to other, older, vampires that is) for most of the game, but it also would run in opposition to the typical cRPG conventions, where the reward center of the player's brian has to be tickled.

 

[Roguey]

The plus patch has Nines give you the grenade as the weapon for the final showdown. Would be funny if it was cut specifically because someone looked at it, said "but he's supposed to have used the grenade to kill the Werewolf", and then wesp restoring it is actually messing up the intended sequence of events. But doubtful since as mentioned the werewolf head is on display.

It swallowed it a bit obviously.

 

[Lhynn]

No, moron, the point of this system is this that if you're a Fledgling Vampire and a Werewolf finds you alone and unprepared, you're dead. End of story, no debate, period. That might as well be the VtM equivalent of "rocks fall, everyone dies", regardless of mechanics. It's among the most popular ways Storytellers punish particularly shitty players. On the list of reasons why Kindred stick almost exclusively to cities, avoiding the Garou at all costs is probably top 2 or 3.

Nope, mechanics are mostly to be ignored in storyteller, as long as the sequence of events is interesting you are suposed to go along with it. Instead of going for iniciative you let both characters act at rougly the same time and deduce what happens from there. To avoid interrupting the action, you only roll the dice to determine who of the two wins at something when they directly confront eachother. The fight against the overfeed dog is an example of this, you keep putting stuff between you and it, until you figure out a way to take him out. No need to be faster than it, just smaller.

Not that I mind the Quest itself, it's definitively one of VtMB's finer moments, but again, it's pretty nonsensical lore-wise.

No, its nonsensical mechanics-wise, lore wise is fine, weaker beings have beaten stronger werewolves.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Finished my Nosferatu run, I don't have anything substantial to add to the excellent and eloquent write ups provided in this thread, just a few random observations without any particular order:
While there's no doubt that Santa Monica and Downtown are the best parts of Bloodlines, the decline in quality in the second half of the game isn't nearly as steep as I remembered it or as it is often made out to be. I thought both Hollywood and Chinatown had an interesting cast of characters and and several good quests that can be tackled in different ways - although all this is true to a bigger extent for Hollywood than for Chinatown. Thanks to Wesp's shortcut the sewers have effectively become a non-issue and do no longer taint the experience as they did before. The second half of the game has also a lot of treats in store in terms of missions - the Giovanni mansion, the Society of Leopold, and the Werewolf encounter were among my personal highlights. I think where Bloodlines really drops the ball is the endgame with the Hoolbrook hotel, Ming-Xiaos temple and the Ventrue tower - it's just on big, long combat slog that seems to go on forever without anything to do in between. I even enjoyed Hoolbrook for a while because I could finally go batshit crazy with my combat skills, but it dragged on for too long. The Kuej-in temple was also too long with too much repetitive combat, and the Ventrue tower was just glitchy and confusing as hell.

I'm really surprised by how easy this game is. When I played it for the first time a decade ago it was on a shitty computer that turned every boss encounter into a lag fest, which made me remember the game to be much harder than it actually is. This time I played a melee focused character with a few points in firearms (but never used them for most of the time) and there wasn't a single fight or mission that gave me any trouble (edit: except the graveyard zombie mission). When my Nosferatu wasn't busy stealth killing anything that moved he wrought some serious melee havoc with Potence and Bloodbuff on.

I really liked how powerful Obfuscate was, especially when maxed-out which allows you remain invisible even when interacting with the environment. Some RPGs will give you a cool spell or power, but then they'll say "oh yeah, but you can't use that here really", ''you can't infiltrate the castle using invisibility because you have to drag you party along to every loading screen', 'all but the weakest enemies are immune to this'. I'm mainly thinking about the Bioware/Infinity Engine variety and its spiritual successor(s) here, with their static non-interactive setpieces and limited gamist approach. Of course Bloodlines has it's own share of limitations - Obfuscate doesn't work on most vampires and bosses, but seeing how the majority of enemies are humans it is still a very powerful and useful tool, allowing for fun stealth gameplay most of the time.

I went into the game determined to see a different ending than in my first playthrough, but ended up choosing the Anarch ending again. The Anarch/independent endings seem the most satisfying ones, joining LaCroix and being blown-up like a sucker or making common cause with the Kuej-Jin only to be backstabbed and taken captive by some weak goons seems like the equivalent of Fallout's "tell the master where you Vault is and watch its inhabitants getting slaughtered" 'ending'. I didn't know about the Camarilla sans LaCroix ending and will definitely try it out next time, seems nice as well. When I first played through game I thought the ending was rather anticlimatic with the sarcophagus turning out to be an elaborate prank by Jack and all, but I see the beauty of it now, truly one if the finer endings in video games.

 

[Goral]

I've finished my Nosferatu run myself yesterday:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ng-vtm-bloodlines.108242/page-34#post-4520251

This time I played a melee focused character with a few points in firearms (but never used them for most of the time) and there wasn't a single fight or mission that gave me any trouble.

Except You Only Die Once a Night quest which can only be finished with either good firearms (e.g. steyr gun or a sniper rifle and guns at 7 at least) or celerity at 5 (maybe 4) and melee/brawl. I'm not sure if thaumaturgy disciplines would be enough, in vanilla version most likely yes, in Wesp's plus patch I'm not sure.

I really liked how powerful Obfuscate was, especially when maxed-out which allows you remain invisible even when interacting with the environment.

In Wesp's plus patch it's not as OP so there's no reason to raise it above 4. That way game is a bit more challenging.

 

[makiavelli747]

I'm not sure if thaumaturgy disciplines would be enough, in vanilla version most likely yes, in Wesp's plus patch I'm not sure.

If you have blood boil then yes, any mass spell will do.