World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs and Brian Mitsoda

Again, WoD lore aside, it makes more sense thematically within the confines of this game for Caine to be responsible for your power rather than anything else. I do not claim it to be anything more than my preferred headcanon though.

 

Also the ending and and Pisha literary mentioning *The Dark One* in regards to Smiling Jack hangout pal. Now who could that be in WOD canon? HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

I mean its hinted much more ingame than people give it credit for and it baffles me how this is even a question.

 

Why?

Like I said, it's "hinted at" because that was their actual original intention and that's what they made the game to support before White Wolf very reasonably stopped them. Making a licensed video game doesn't give you the right to shit all over established lore. Something I tried to express in the BG3 thread too.

 

You've answered it yourself.

 

Thematically and narratively are two different things. And even then, it's all only hints from untrustworthy sources.

 

Still more present than nothing at all, which is the case with any other explanation.

 

The whole lore of WoD counts for more than a few hints from devs who thought they could do better than the WoD lore.

 

Plus lines from the cab dialogue near the ending are commonly associated with Caine, plus cab driver has unique black aura in the ending cinematic (as lacrymas said).

 

Eh, that only matters if you care about the legitimacy of the game as part of the WoD universe. I prefer to treat it as its own thing.

 

It wasn't me who said that, but the black aura is a characteristic of diablerie, not Caine.

 

But it did fit within the lore of the WoD at the time! According to the Gehenna novel, Caine was locked inside a cave and sometimes left in spirit to check out the world. In my headcannon he impersonated the Cabbie and orchestrated the whole sarcophagus event to see how his childer would react. To help him decide whether to start Gehenna afterwards or not...

 

Caine doesn't "start Gehenna" and he would not orchestrate anything because it's very easy for him to manipulate events to a specific outcome, and that would ruin his motivation of observation even if that were true. He places the sarcophagus there AND empowers a random fledgling for no reason? When he empowers someone, it's obvious they are going to win, in this case access to the sarcophagus he himself placed there.

 

This is what Jack says to the Cabbie in the end: "Hey, it happened just like you said. [Jack laughs]They never even knew what hit 'em. Threw that sarcophagus out there and they just tore each other up tryin' to get to it." I know little about the Caine lore of the WoD, but why would some other random vampire do something like this? Besides the whole empowering thing to get the plan rolling...

 

Ahhh i was curious why this thread had pulled a few pages ahead,only to find another one of Lacrymas sperges.

 

You act as if there are no Joker wannabes in WoD, when it is clear they have more than a few in their lore.

 

Isn't it also VTM lore that there's a powerful Malkavian roaming about larping as Caine?

 

I think the idea is that Jack - who is a Brujah and Anarch - uses the player and the sarcophagus to weaken the established powers by having them fight each other in a bid for power.

 

Here's the thing. The sarcophagus and the empowerment don't have anything to do with each other. Or at worst they contradict one another. And there are a lot of vampires who would do this sort of thing, there's no shortage of motivation.

 

Such is the female brain. :^)

 

Who know maybe now white wolf allowing brian mitsoda to fulfill that power fantasy. Main character is son goku and you got to power up. Everytime you spend blood points the player gets stronger cause your caine daddy favorite little pozz baby.

 

not in the game made by Troika, there's only cabbie who is Caine

spergs' sense of lore and White Wolf's judgement on Bloodlines' place in canon and have no bearing on the writing of Bloodlines itself, a self-contained and complete work that features Caine in the guise of a cab driver

 

That makes it worse, however. At the very least because it doesn't make sense, along with it shitting on established lore. There's also no reason to have anyone orchestrating this thing.

 

you're confusing a very simple interactive story that introduces you to the scheming and manipulative world of VtM, lampshades the central point by revealing Caine to be the ultimate mover after spending a lot of its time building up his relevance and mystery, then tests if you've been paying attention and finally let's you decide how you feel about it

 

If it is indeed Caine that does this, it introduces you to the scheming and manipulative world of VtM badly. Actual VtM games and books don't go like this and don't involve Caine in such a manner. It cheapens the manipulative aspects by having them being done (again, badly) by basically an all powerful being.

 

The WOD team didn't write Bloodlines, though.

And considering we live in a time where shit can get retconned or outright erased 30-40 years after the fact, what the license holder says isn't really the be-end all.
In the context of the game. in the context of its writers, in the context of the developer its most likely Cain. There's nothing wrong with stating that.

Now if its bad writing. That's another story.