Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Prime Junta]

I'm just saying that Shakespeare also used a lot of "thees" and "thous" in tender love stories :p

And average medieval people talked shakespearean in real life.:D

Shakespeare wrote in a fairly popular idiom actually. His stuff was entertainment for the common people.

Now question for those, who have played it with wesp's (or what's the best patch) thing. Did they do away with coercing (those with the OCD) players to micro manage skill three by taking into consideration free skill points from books/quests? Because as i remember, there was always something like ''can use book, unless skill = 3 or higher''. Given that the cost of pips increase with each level, there was allways the sweet spot when to use free point.

Nope that mechanic is still there. Came across a book with a minimum Research requirement of 8 just now actually. Have had several where it's Research 5, <skill> 1 or 2.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Don't remember any books with requirements that high so it could be THAT is the change. I remember that at some point most books became useless, because they didn't rise stats beyond 3 or something.

Shakespeare wrote in a fairly popular idiom actually. His stuff was entertainment for the common people.

Yeah, but i thought he wrote poetry. Did mundane people spoke poetically in those days? I'm not talking about ''thees''. Those are just old forms of nouns, no?

 

[Prime Junta]

I doubt they spoke in iambic pentameter. Thou thee thy was just du, dich/dir, dein.

Few modern writers manage to pull it off though, it just ends up as ren fayre bullshit.

 

[Delterius]

I'm just saying that Shakespeare also used a lot of "thees" and "thous" in tender love stories :p

And average medieval people talked shakespearean in real life.:D

Shakespeare wrote in a fairly popular idiom actually. His stuff was entertainment for the common people.

Makes you think. Maybe Dynaheir was originally intended as a blue collar rashemi witch.

 

[Beastro]

Sick of all this Anarch love I'm seeing in this thread.

liberals

Excidium, do you realize that in every thread, you just trash everything? Do you really think that a constant contrarian stance makes you appear like a great esthet instead of a crazy clueless sociopath? Just asking, no need to answer, bro.

He pretty much is the living embodiment of this boards snobbish, curmudgeonly reputation.

He well earned his

 

[Prime Junta]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

It feels like they intended to put a branch here, allowing me to switch allegiance from LaCroix to the Anarchs. I could've gone to Jack, Skelter, or Damsel (<3) with my intel about LaCroix's interest in the Sarcophagus, and they could then have taken over driving the plot, by sending me to investigate it in the museum. Nines' disappearance could've been handled by him finding out someone or something was impersonating him, and he would go underground to investigate that.

From there on out, the actual missions could've progressed just like they do in the actual game.

Speculating obviously, but it feels like this. I'm sure the writers are smart enough to have seen the problem at least.

 

[Lhynn]

Excidium is a quality poster and anyone that disagrees is a fucking dirty apologist. Hes occasionally wrong when he doesnt share my opinion, but otherwise hes always spot on.

 

[Zero Credibility]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

Yeah, the part where you rat out Nines is a bit clumsy. It does kind of make sense - LaCroix already knows who you have seen there, he just need you to tell it, and is ready to dominate you ("look me in the eyes: are you sure it was Nines?") to make sure you do. It could have been done better, sure, but if it was too obvious it would lead to question of how he knows you have seen anyone at all, and that would blow the entire frameup.

 

[wwsd]

Replaying Bloodlines now thanks to this thread. No need to repost the motivational.

And average medieval people talked shakespearean in real life.:D

Not medieval, obviously. Anyway, we can't actually go back and hear how people spoke, but there is plenty of reason to believe that the plays would have been understandable to a great number of people, as mentioned above.

Yeah, but i thought he wrote poetry. Did mundane people spoke poetically in those days? I'm not talking about ''thees''. Those are just old forms of nouns, no?

He often used either verse or prose in different ways. It should be noted here that blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) is thought to resemble natural speaking patterns anyway. The simplified explanation is that highborn characters speak verse and the lower classes speak prose, but there are so many exceptions to this that it doesn't really ring true. But the differences in form often make some point or another about a character. For example, here is Henry IV opening the first play named after him:

KING HENRY IV So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
Nor more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way and be no more opposed
Against acquaintance, kindred and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,
Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engaged to fight,
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose now is twelve month old,
And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go:
Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,
What yesternight our council did decree
In forwarding this dear expedience.

It's no wonder that he speaks in this elevated verse. He's the king, holding court, after all, and he's talking about high purposes (his intention to start a crusade in order to repent for the murder of Richard II in a previous play), which are being thwarted by constant wars and rebellions in the British isles. But meanwhile his son, Prince Hal, is probably just waking up from a night of heavy drinking, and the conversation with his companion Falstaff (both of them are "upper-class", by the way) goes like this:

Enter the PRINCE OF WALES and FALSTAFF
FALSTAFF Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
PRINCE HENRY Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.
FALSTAFF Indeed, you come near me now, Hal; for we that take
purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not
by Phoebus, he,'that wandering knight so fair.' And,
I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as, God
save thy grace,--majesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none,--
PRINCE HENRY What, none?
FALSTAFF No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to
prologue to an egg and butter.
PRINCE HENRY Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.
FALSTAFF Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not
us that are squires of the night's body be called
thieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's
foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the
moon; and let men say we be men of good government,
being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and
chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

It goes on like this for a while longer. It's prose without a regular metre, appropriate for the conversational style and the comic nature of the conversation. It is also well-used for cynical commentary, like Falstaff's speech on "honour" before the Battle of Shrewsbury:

FALSTAFF Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride
me, so; 'tis a point of friendship.
PRINCE HENRY Nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship.
Say thy prayers, and farewell.
FALSTAFF I would 'twere bed-time, Hal, and all well.
PRINCE HENRY Why, thou owest God a death.

Exit PRINCE HENRY

FALSTAFF 'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.

Some modern stage and especially film productions try to take out the verse and do all the lines in realistic, believable prose, but this delivery doesn't always work very well for me. It sometimes turns into "mumbling", like the actors don't understand the lines well enough to deliver them in the appropriate tone, so they just go for monotone. No matter how natural an actor tries to sound, the fact is that the lines are not in present-day English, and the use of stressed syllables in a more dramatic reading actually helps to focus and therefore understand the text. And iambic pentameter is already a very natural speech pattern anyway, unless you literally read every line in a very exaggerated 'Da-DUM-Da-DUM-Da-DUM-Da-DUM-Da-DUM'.

 

[Prime Junta]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

Yeah, the part where you rat out Nines is a bit clumsy. It does kind of make sense - LaCroix already knows who you have seen there, he just need you to tell it, and is ready to dominate you ("look me in the eyes: are you sure it was Nines?") to make sure you do. It could have been done better, sure, but if it was too obvious it would lead to question of how he knows you have seen anyone at all, and that would blow the entire frameup.

My memories of the rest of the game are a bit hazy, but I'm not sure having the frame-up succeed would even have been critical. It would still have worked if you had managed to thwart it and there had been no blood hunt on Nines; as I said above, he could just disappear to investigate it himself.

 

[Prime Junta]

In re iambic pentameter, I think one of the reasons for it was the necessity to speak loud enough to be heard over a sometimes-unruly crowd. One line is just the right length to belt out in a lungful of air.

 

[Roguey]

First of all P:T isn't even a proper vidya, it's an interactive story, so obviously, when 99% of the game revolves around teh redding, it better be good, otherwise it's a useless product. V:B is action game first and for most so writing should be concise and gud at driving the narrative.

Bloodlines's and Torment's ratio of combat:dialogue:walking is comparable. Extremely combat light, then they go combat-heavy near the end.

Bloodlines may use (bad) action mechanics, but I wouldn't call it an action game first. That would be something like Obsidian's Dungeon Siege III, which has role playing, but puts a lot more emphasis on killing things.

 

[the_1990]

Looks like Paradox has already got some competition:

http://www.vampyr-game.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampyr_(video_game)

Seriously, the mechanics sound eerily similar to Bloodlines...

 

[Maculo]

First of all P:T isn't even a proper vidya, it's an interactive story, so obviously, when 99% of the game revolves around teh redding, it better be good, otherwise it's a useless product. V:B is action game first and for most so writing should be concise and gud at driving the narrative.

Bloodlines's and Torment's ratio of combat:dialogue:walking is comparable. Extremely combat light, then they go combat-heavy near the end.

Bloodlines may use (bad) action mechanics, but I wouldn't call it an action game first. That would be something like Obsidian's Dungeon Siege III, which has role playing, but puts a lot more emphasis on killing things.

While the combat:dialogue ratio may have been comparable, the endgame situations were not all that comparable in my opinion. If I remember correctly, you could have a high charisma TNO and still crush the endgame with the powers and items you collected over the game. In contrast, the sewer level in VBM put non-combat oriented characters in a vice. One really needed at least a point or two in guns or melee.

 

[Roguey]

While the combat:dialogue ratio may be comparable, I would not call the consequences comparable. If I remember correctly, you could have a high charisma TNO and still crush the endgame with the powers and items you collected over the game. In contrast, the sewer level in VBM put non-combat oriented characters in a vice.

A difference between single character versus party-based.

You can sneak and/or run past a lot of that stuff in the sewers, same as Torment.

 

[laclongquan]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

It feels like they intended to put a branch here, allowing me to switch allegiance from LaCroix to the Anarchs. I could've gone to Jack, Skelter, or Damsel (<3) with my intel about LaCroix's interest in the Sarcophagus, and they could then have taken over driving the plot, by sending me to investigate it in the museum. Nines' disappearance could've been handled by him finding out someone or something was impersonating him, and he would go underground to investigate that.

From there on out, the actual missions could've progressed just like they do in the actual game.

Speculating obviously, but it feels like this. I'm sure the writers are smart enough to have seen the problem at least.

Never forget that they ship the game in an unplayable state and need several patches before even viable. The development time is not just enough~

You are asking for two, three extra months, which frankly is not possible.

 

[the_1990]

Unfortunately, the setting isn't as cool as 90's-00's USA.

Not only is it a very interesting setting, but the smog-choked streets of early 20t Century London are the perfect setting for any kind of Vampire story. The Spanish Flu element is also an interesting thematic element.

I always felt the location Bloodlines was set in was a bit inappropriate, I would have much rather seen it take place in somewhere like Manhattan (With it's imposing art-deco spires), Paris (with it's classy romanticism) or Budapest (with it's Gothic environment and East European locale)

 

[Maculo]

While the combat:dialogue ratio may be comparable, I would not call the consequences comparable. If I remember correctly, you could have a high charisma TNO and still crush the endgame with the powers and items you collected over the game. In contrast, the sewer level in VBM put non-combat oriented characters in a vice.

A difference between single character versus party-based.

You can sneak and/or run past a lot of that stuff in the sewers, same as Torment.

I agree on that aspect (although I never tried to just run through the sewers before), but I think VBM is far less forgiving than PST.

 

[Sjukob]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

The game is HEAVILY unfinished , you will encounter more of this as you progress .

 

[Prime Junta]

While the combat:dialogue ratio may be comparable, I would not call the consequences comparable. If I remember correctly, you could have a high charisma TNO and still crush the endgame with the powers and items you collected over the game. In contrast, the sewer level in VBM put non-combat oriented characters in a vice.

A difference between single character versus party-based.

You can sneak and/or run past a lot of that stuff in the sewers, same as Torment.

I agree on that aspect (although I never tried to just run through the sewers before), but I think VBM is far less forgiving than PST.

VtM:B has a bunch of unskippable and pretty punishing fights right from the start, and you're playing solo.

PS:T is party-based, so you can complete it even with a non-combat-optimised character without too much pain, just rely on the party members more.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I gotta wonder, was there a branch cut from the narrative?

I feel like I got railroaded a bit there. I absolutely would not have wanted to rat out Nines to LaCroix, and when LaCroix chucked me out on my ear, the only way to continue the game was to crawl back to him. This did not make narrative sense.

It feels like they intended to put a branch here, allowing me to switch allegiance from LaCroix to the Anarchs. I could've gone to Jack, Skelter, or Damsel (<3) with my intel about LaCroix's interest in the Sarcophagus, and they could then have taken over driving the plot, by sending me to investigate it in the museum. Nines' disappearance could've been handled by him finding out someone or something was impersonating him, and he would go underground to investigate that.

From there on out, the actual missions could've progressed just like they do in the actual game.

Speculating obviously, but it feels like this. I'm sure the writers are smart enough to have seen the problem at least.

Yeah, the lack of player agency there is disappointing, especially considering Nines saved your life twice (not to mention that there was clearly something off with him when you met at him at Grout's mansion entrance). Even the whole work for the Anarchs as a spy doesn't amount to anything save a bit of extra dialogue near the end, a missed opportunity. Probably lack of development time and resources.

 

[Roguey]

VtM:B has a bunch of unskippable and pretty punishing fights right from the start,

eh what

You know the sidequests are skippable

If you're referring to the thing you fight in the art gallery it's easy to just blood buff your way through that. wesp ~balanced~ that ability through an extreme nerf, but in the game Troika intended, it raises all your physical stats to their maximum.

 

[Tacgnol]

VtM:B has a bunch of unskippable and pretty punishing fights right from the start,

eh what

You know the sidequests are skippable

If you're referring to the thing you fight in the art gallery it's easy to just blood buff your way through that. wesp ~balanced~ that ability through an extreme nerf, but in the game Troika intended, it raises all your physical stats to their maximum.

Gallery fight is pretty easy anyway. You just need to use a knife or something with high lethality.

 

[Prime Junta]

K, progress report.

The sewers weren't anywhere near as bad as I remembered, possibly because I stumbled on a shortcut. Only had to cut my way through a bunch of those little scrabbling creepy-crawlies and two bigger guys. Shotgun worked. Also worked on the Tzimisce. The fights are still just plain not fun though.

The pace of the game is flagging at this point and there's less sense of exploration and self-driven play since I got to Hollywood; it's been more running from point A to point B to point C. Have tried talking to people but haven't gotten all that many sidequests, nowhere near as much as downtown and Santa Monica in any case.

Chinatown is atmospheric as always.

The characters are also starting to wear a bit thin. Mitnick was funny. Gary was cool but Bertram Tung was even cooler; having two Nosferatu that are so similar seems a bit redundant. There was also a touch of let-me-tell-you-about-my-mother about Gary; I didn't really need to know all about his past.

Still soldiering on but the shine is starting to come off. As is so often the case, the early part of the game is much better than the late part.

 

[Delterius]

Yeah, your soul was just saved by Wesp's sewer shortcut.

I think Gary's dialogue works slightly better if you are Toreador since his rant leads to a tirade against the clan being a bunch of corpses who like to pretend otherwise.