I don't know how to start this LP, so feel free to skip to the good stuff down below. I've sat here for a good 20 minutes, trying to formulate something interesting to say, but all I can think of is boomer memes and Jeanette's rack, so read the preamble at your own peril.
So, Vampires eh? Truth be told, my knowledge of these miscreants is scanty. Going into this game, my mind can conjure up but two anchor points of vampire media I'm familiar with: Stephen King's Salem's Lot and the 1985 classic Fright Night.
The former, although hampered with questionable pacing, remains one of my favourites from King's works. The latter, though much more humorous, revolves around a teenager's existential angst when he realizes that his new neighbour is a vampire: a vampire who has maxed his charisma and can now charm his mother and steal his girlfriend with nothing more than a chad strut outside their home.
Great film.
And then there's Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, populated by a bigger-than-life cast of devilish deviants that don't take long to stamp a big imprint on your auditory cortex and your retinas. A bit bit like this pic:
My first experience with Bloodlines was, I admit, a disappointment. I had no real concept of what constituted an RPG and went into the game completely blind, expecting some quick thrills. What I got was a lot of stats, dialogue, world building, lore and bugs that were far removed from what I had come to expect of games. I was quickly overwhelmed by the game's density. Sabbat? Camarilla? Elders? Malkavians? Masquerade? Auspex? Humanity? What?
The fault was mostly mine, of course. With no prior experience of complex rpgs (or any rpgs, for that matter), my character build tried to chase content rather than carve out a viable play-style. Half way through the game, I was being relentlessly bullied in combat, with insufficient social or security skills to obviate any of it. I slogged my way through and was quite relieved to be done with it, but memories of this humiliating play-through lingered in my mind for months.
Eventually, I decided to revisit the game, but arm myself with a few reviews and helpful tips before making the jump. What started as a little googling for vtmb would eventually lead me to discover the treasure trove that is the rpg genre. I had hoped to take another stroll through Santa Monica, but wound up in Shady Sands and Sigil. For that alone I hold VtMB in high regard.
But let's get back on topic: vampires. Bloodlines, an outgrowth from the World of Darkness PnP setting, fleshes out the vampire with an impressive amount of lore. I am of a much simpler mind, so the questions that plague me whenever I'm subjected to vampires in media are never really answered. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the lore than I am can dispel some of the mysteries?
If you suffer from periodontitis and all your teeth fall out and then you get 'sired', do you grow new teeth or are you truly fucked?
Under strict laboratory conditions, if you get sired by two vampires at once, do you become a cross-breed? Can you be a Malkavian-Nosferatu?
Sunlight is very dangerous for vampires, but not starlight? Is there something special about the sun, or simply the intensity of the light? Do vampires become ubermensh on the dark side of the moon?
Vampires can obviously survive daylight if they're not subjected to direct rays. Can they survive daylight if they wear a large, protective suit? Are furries really vampiric clans moving amongst us in broad daylight?
************************************************************************
PART I: BABY SITTER
BOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
So, Vampires eh? Truth be told, my knowledge of these miscreants is scanty. Going into this game, my mind can conjure up but two anchor points of vampire media I'm familiar with: Stephen King's Salem's Lot and the 1985 classic Fright Night.
The former, although hampered with questionable pacing, remains one of my favourites from King's works. The latter, though much more humorous, revolves around a teenager's existential angst when he realizes that his new neighbour is a vampire: a vampire who has maxed his charisma and can now charm his mother and steal his girlfriend with nothing more than a chad strut outside their home.
Great film.
And then there's Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, populated by a bigger-than-life cast of devilish deviants that don't take long to stamp a big imprint on your auditory cortex and your retinas. A bit bit like this pic:
My first experience with Bloodlines was, I admit, a disappointment. I had no real concept of what constituted an RPG and went into the game completely blind, expecting some quick thrills. What I got was a lot of stats, dialogue, world building, lore and bugs that were far removed from what I had come to expect of games. I was quickly overwhelmed by the game's density. Sabbat? Camarilla? Elders? Malkavians? Masquerade? Auspex? Humanity? What?
The fault was mostly mine, of course. With no prior experience of complex rpgs (or any rpgs, for that matter), my character build tried to chase content rather than carve out a viable play-style. Half way through the game, I was being relentlessly bullied in combat, with insufficient social or security skills to obviate any of it. I slogged my way through and was quite relieved to be done with it, but memories of this humiliating play-through lingered in my mind for months.
Eventually, I decided to revisit the game, but arm myself with a few reviews and helpful tips before making the jump. What started as a little googling for vtmb would eventually lead me to discover the treasure trove that is the rpg genre. I had hoped to take another stroll through Santa Monica, but wound up in Shady Sands and Sigil. For that alone I hold VtMB in high regard.
But let's get back on topic: vampires. Bloodlines, an outgrowth from the World of Darkness PnP setting, fleshes out the vampire with an impressive amount of lore. I am of a much simpler mind, so the questions that plague me whenever I'm subjected to vampires in media are never really answered. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the lore than I am can dispel some of the mysteries?
If you suffer from periodontitis and all your teeth fall out and then you get 'sired', do you grow new teeth or are you truly fucked?
Under strict laboratory conditions, if you get sired by two vampires at once, do you become a cross-breed? Can you be a Malkavian-Nosferatu?
Sunlight is very dangerous for vampires, but not starlight? Is there something special about the sun, or simply the intensity of the light? Do vampires become ubermensh on the dark side of the moon?
Vampires can obviously survive daylight if they're not subjected to direct rays. Can they survive daylight if they wear a large, protective suit? Are furries really vampiric clans moving amongst us in broad daylight?
************************************************************************
PART I: BABY SITTER
BOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
Few warnings about this LP. First, I can't capture the game in full screen, so I'm playing in windowed mode. Annoying? Yes, but I'm wasting my time cropping the top bar out of the full screens.
Secondly, unlike Arcanum, which had a neat way of presenting the dialogue through big paragraphs, Bloodlines has the annoying tendency to hide half of its dialogue and feed it to you piecemeal. What would take one 1 screenshot and 1 crop-to-size in Arcanum now takes 5-10 screenshots. There will be repeating dialogue, but I'm not fixing it.
And we go straight to the character creation screen
That's pronounced BROO-HAH if anyone's wondering
No thanks Kaepernick
Jeff Goldbloom
Degenerates
This looks like our guy. We'll be one with the way of the Thau
Fuck me that's a lot to take in. Alright, let's see. Hmm. Well, we're picking up Thaumaturgy since I feel like we're under obligation to do it. Scholarship, I think, lets us read books to max out other stats, so sinking points there gets you a bigger bang for your buck. Computers and locked doors are all over the place in the game, but we'll make do with just computers for now. There should be books for bumping your firearms stat, so I'll go with melee and dodge. Strength gives us better fighting abilities, and Intelligence lets us intimidate and get better at scholarship.
Let's do this!
The game kicks off with us getting laid.
Viagra
We hear a female voice telling us she 'will show us something'. Then we scream and black out. When we wake up, we're changed, somehow. Before we can get our bearings, the door is kicked open and both of us take a throwing knife to the chest
Did we forget to pay our TV license? Said something mean about Muhammad on twitter? Apparently not. We're taken to an undisclosed location and dumped onto a stage, where a 'Prince' gives the small congregation a long winded speech.
(I didn't catch that last sentence in this paragraph )
They chop her head right off with the anime sword. These guys are hardcore, whoever they are.
There's some commotion in the audience:
Good evening
The show is over and everyone files out of the hall
The Prince takes me behind the curtains to have a curt one-on-one exchange
Good evening
So that's it, really. We go outside where the haggard hobo accosts us
Who are you?
Ok, I'm in
What drink?
What do I do?
So.. uh......
Won't he turn then?
Jack says that's all just comic book crap and to forget about all that nonsense.
There's our guy, stumbling around in the dark
Great! When do I get my cape? Do i get to pick the colour?
Yeah, like what?
So I'm going to live forever?
Gunshots ring out from all around us. Automatic bursts.
We climb up onto the boxes and reach the upper floor
Jack is already there when we walk around the corner
So what's up?
Jack doesn't have time to give us an answer when the Sabbat storms the alleyway right underneath us
The guy who kidnapped us, apparently the Prince's right hand man, squares off on the other side
The Sabbat shoot up into the sky to intimidate the fucker. Doesn't work.
He conjures up some glowing wolves that tear the Sabbat apart
The last one standing charges and gets turned into dust with some other spell
We go around the corner and put our lockpicks to good use
Jack just breaks the window and climbs in that way
I had my moments
But I got some people from high school that need a good drubbing. Why not?
What could happen to me?
Camarilla? So they're the good guys?
This is a mini tutorial on the use of computers in the game. You can get the password from the note on the wall, or you can hack the computer directly. Either way, you can unlock the safe through the pc.
'safe'
And voila
And we run straight into a bullet storm from a Sabbat gang down the alley
Jack, meanwhile, jumps down behind them, snaps the neck of the first one and punches the other one. The latter lands on the other side of the alleyway, right beside me.
What's the difference? Blood's blood right?
What happens if I get overzealous?
The 'Beast'? What's that?
So I can't kill anyone? That seems .. restricting
He really does drain fast
I'll think about it
Err how about no? We talk to Jack again
Sneak where?
Alright then.
Now this part was a fucking nightmare on my first playthrough, primarily because it's an insta-fail if you get spotted, and in the patch-free version that I was playing, the Sabbat guy would turn 90 degrees and stare at the door I was supposed to reach.
It's still no Thief, I'll tell you that much. You have to wander around the crates until the guy patrols back to his little corner.
We finally reach it
What makes you think that?
How can that be?
I was born ready.
Powerful boomer swipes make short work of him
BANG! and the dirt is gone
Ok
The underground is the final part of the tutorial, telling you of the options when dealing with enemies
First up is the popamole stealth kill
The more, the merrier
Then we get the tutorial on our abilities. Bloodbuff, for example, buffs our stats that lets us get past locks that would be beyond our ability to pick otherwise
Don't see much use for it
Popamole numbers
Then we have the Blood Purge tutorial, which incapacitates enemies in our vicinity for 6 seconds or so
Then there's the sound mechanic, which lets you toss objects around to attract enemies to different places.
Jack, as always, is one step ahead
So what do we do?
Useless against vampires?
The shooting was too frantic and I didn't get any pics. Not much to see when it comes to shooting in Bloodlines though.
Last tutorial
I like the font and colour choices ffs.
That's it?
And this is normal?
A car horn sounds outside
And that is that. We get resettled in a tiny apartment in Santa Monica, with just one clue to tell us what to do
The apartment is a mess
Unfortunately I can't show you either the TV channel or the late night radio show, but they're all very good at setting the tone and the atmosphere.
Blood packs have been left in our fridge
And pills in the bathroom
A couple of notes stand beside the laptop on our desk
Money in the table
We sit down to take a look at our email
There's a bunch of nonsense on it, as well as some stuff we already know. Took me a while to capture the pics because the emails would keep quitting back to the main menu. I did get a pic of the last email, though. It's the most interesting one.
Alright, time to leave.
The apartment across from ours is locked. We use Bloodbuff to lockpick the door.
There's a book here that permanently increases some of our stats. I think it might be brawl? I've already forgotten.
We go back to the hallway and descend the stairs, taking a quick look at a newspaper outside our neighbour's front door
Not quite as engaging as Arcanum, it must be said
We go outside
I do. Not for you, though.
We get a little cutscene as our intrepid character walks out onto the street
Some guy is dragging his bloodied self up the stairs into another building down the road
Hmm. Before we go there, we pay a visit to Trip's Pawnshop
What's your name?
Cool. Do you stock weapons?
You lying to me? I'll kick your ass with or without weapons
We pick up another book as well. And again I can't remember what it is ffs. Anyways. That's it for today. We go back outside and take in our new surroundings.
Join me next time as we start chipping away at the numerous side quests and meet the vampires that run the whole show from behind the scenes.
PS: I'm not updating this lp as often as I did my previous one. If I'm not posting for 2 weeks doesn't mean I've abandoned the thing.
PPS: This whole thing is just a coping mechanism as the Swedes create the sequel for this game
Secondly, unlike Arcanum, which had a neat way of presenting the dialogue through big paragraphs, Bloodlines has the annoying tendency to hide half of its dialogue and feed it to you piecemeal. What would take one 1 screenshot and 1 crop-to-size in Arcanum now takes 5-10 screenshots. There will be repeating dialogue, but I'm not fixing it.
And we go straight to the character creation screen
That's pronounced BROO-HAH if anyone's wondering
No thanks Kaepernick
Jeff Goldbloom
Degenerates
This looks like our guy. We'll be one with the way of the Thau
Fuck me that's a lot to take in. Alright, let's see. Hmm. Well, we're picking up Thaumaturgy since I feel like we're under obligation to do it. Scholarship, I think, lets us read books to max out other stats, so sinking points there gets you a bigger bang for your buck. Computers and locked doors are all over the place in the game, but we'll make do with just computers for now. There should be books for bumping your firearms stat, so I'll go with melee and dodge. Strength gives us better fighting abilities, and Intelligence lets us intimidate and get better at scholarship.
Let's do this!
The game kicks off with us getting laid.
Viagra
We hear a female voice telling us she 'will show us something'. Then we scream and black out. When we wake up, we're changed, somehow. Before we can get our bearings, the door is kicked open and both of us take a throwing knife to the chest
Did we forget to pay our TV license? Said something mean about Muhammad on twitter? Apparently not. We're taken to an undisclosed location and dumped onto a stage, where a 'Prince' gives the small congregation a long winded speech.
(I didn't catch that last sentence in this paragraph )
They chop her head right off with the anime sword. These guys are hardcore, whoever they are.
There's some commotion in the audience:
The show is over and everyone files out of the hall
The Prince takes me behind the curtains to have a curt one-on-one exchange
So that's it, really. We go outside where the haggard hobo accosts us
Jack says that's all just comic book crap and to forget about all that nonsense.
There's our guy, stumbling around in the dark
Gunshots ring out from all around us. Automatic bursts.
We climb up onto the boxes and reach the upper floor
Jack is already there when we walk around the corner
Jack doesn't have time to give us an answer when the Sabbat storms the alleyway right underneath us
The guy who kidnapped us, apparently the Prince's right hand man, squares off on the other side
The Sabbat shoot up into the sky to intimidate the fucker. Doesn't work.
He conjures up some glowing wolves that tear the Sabbat apart
The last one standing charges and gets turned into dust with some other spell
We go around the corner and put our lockpicks to good use
Jack just breaks the window and climbs in that way
This is a mini tutorial on the use of computers in the game. You can get the password from the note on the wall, or you can hack the computer directly. Either way, you can unlock the safe through the pc.
'safe'
And voila
And we run straight into a bullet storm from a Sabbat gang down the alley
Jack, meanwhile, jumps down behind them, snaps the neck of the first one and punches the other one. The latter lands on the other side of the alleyway, right beside me.
He really does drain fast
Err how about no? We talk to Jack again
Alright then.
Now this part was a fucking nightmare on my first playthrough, primarily because it's an insta-fail if you get spotted, and in the patch-free version that I was playing, the Sabbat guy would turn 90 degrees and stare at the door I was supposed to reach.
It's still no Thief, I'll tell you that much. You have to wander around the crates until the guy patrols back to his little corner.
We finally reach it
I was born ready.
Powerful boomer swipes make short work of him
BANG! and the dirt is gone
Ok
The underground is the final part of the tutorial, telling you of the options when dealing with enemies
First up is the popamole stealth kill
Then we get the tutorial on our abilities. Bloodbuff, for example, buffs our stats that lets us get past locks that would be beyond our ability to pick otherwise
Don't see much use for it
Popamole numbers
Then we have the Blood Purge tutorial, which incapacitates enemies in our vicinity for 6 seconds or so
Then there's the sound mechanic, which lets you toss objects around to attract enemies to different places.
Jack, as always, is one step ahead
The shooting was too frantic and I didn't get any pics. Not much to see when it comes to shooting in Bloodlines though.
Last tutorial
I like the font and colour choices ffs.
A car horn sounds outside
And that is that. We get resettled in a tiny apartment in Santa Monica, with just one clue to tell us what to do
The apartment is a mess
Unfortunately I can't show you either the TV channel or the late night radio show, but they're all very good at setting the tone and the atmosphere.
Blood packs have been left in our fridge
And pills in the bathroom
A couple of notes stand beside the laptop on our desk
Money in the table
We sit down to take a look at our email
There's a bunch of nonsense on it, as well as some stuff we already know. Took me a while to capture the pics because the emails would keep quitting back to the main menu. I did get a pic of the last email, though. It's the most interesting one.
Alright, time to leave.
The apartment across from ours is locked. We use Bloodbuff to lockpick the door.
There's a book here that permanently increases some of our stats. I think it might be brawl? I've already forgotten.
We go back to the hallway and descend the stairs, taking a quick look at a newspaper outside our neighbour's front door
Not quite as engaging as Arcanum, it must be said
We go outside
We get a little cutscene as our intrepid character walks out onto the street
Some guy is dragging his bloodied self up the stairs into another building down the road
Hmm. Before we go there, we pay a visit to Trip's Pawnshop
What's your name?
We pick up another book as well. And again I can't remember what it is ffs. Anyways. That's it for today. We go back outside and take in our new surroundings.
Join me next time as we start chipping away at the numerous side quests and meet the vampires that run the whole show from behind the scenes.
PS: I'm not updating this lp as often as I did my previous one. If I'm not posting for 2 weeks doesn't mean I've abandoned the thing.
PPS: This whole thing is just a coping mechanism as the Swedes create the sequel for this game
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