Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Prime Junta]

Cleared the warehouse which was a serviceable change of pace but fairly forgettable as levels go. Did some sneaking and stealth kills and noticed there would've been ways to murder people other than straight-up fighting but they were already dead so eh. Mostly just straight up bashing though. Got the fire ax from Ocean House and put another pip into Strength; with Potence I now meet its melee requirement, so I kind of blew through it like a wrecking ball. What with all those kine around it was really easy to keep my blood points and health maxed out even when I took some damage.

Made it to Downtown. Swung by The Last Round and kissed anarch ass as hard as I can, and got a couple of interesting-seeming quests from them which I plan to do first thing. Really dig the atmosphere there -- it is just like a financial district at night.

Then dropped by LaCroix -- really neat twist there with the dialog:

Spoiler

I flat-out refused to take on his quest, so he just Dominated me. That was several ways cool: it put me at the receiving end of one of those neat vamp mindfucks I like to throw around, and it quite chillingly showed the steel underneath that clownish self-important exterior. Gave me a little chill, that -- LaCroix clearly didn't get to where he is by playing nice, and it showed just how highly he regards me -- that is, purely as a disposable, ignorable tool. Very cool moment there!

Not much to add to my previous observations otherwise. Still really, really well written, voice-acted, and animated (the conversations I mean, not so much the rest), still really atmospheric, and while I wouldn't listen to the music outside this game, it fits here perfectly.

So, onward to the Downtown side quests...

 

[Prime Junta]

The movement in this game though. Not even Wesp could fix everything it seems.

Poking around, went into the basement of a certain abandoned hotel. Man all that junk lying around, passages to creep through, and so on. I had to stop because I got nauseous; it's just so fucking annoying to do basic stuff like move around or interact with things without getting stuck or disoriented. (There was an actual glitch too -- got stuck in the turnstile in Confessions and had to reload to get un-stuck.)

The writing and quests are really pulling me in though. Gonna continue later...

 

[DeepOcean]

Let me just leave this.. in how many games do you still remember a random black street merchant 10 years later.. they made so many characters memorable in this game!

Yo.

 

[Raghar]

The movement in this game though. Not even Wesp could fix everything it seems.

Poking around, went into the basement of a certain abandoned hotel. Man all that junk lying around, passages to creep through, and so on. I had to stop because I got nauseous;

Are you Asian?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

As I recall, that actually had gameplay. You had to search for things and find a way to get to where you wanted to go and in the end you have enemies to fight/sneak past. In the hotel, all you have to do is just keep walking.

Wasn't including enemies in the maze behind the house when I made the comparison, the house itself is empty which makes it an atypical level in the game. Point is I'd prefer more exploration and less scripted events in the Ocean House.

The accuracy on the guns in Santa Montica and Downtown is so bad that they're not worth using. The anaconda is the first good gun, yes, but not immediately necessary since the sledgehammer can also carry you through the Hollywood sewers (and you pretty much have to use it against the gargoyle).

I'll agree to disagree, guns not having perfect spread doesn't bother me in a game which has no locational damage (aside from slow as molasses zombies and one other specific case) and I clear Downtown easily (rarely missing/wasting ammo/getting hurt) using just Glock (most of the time) when I'm playing a Firearms focused character. I played the game many (more than 7) times and I stand by what I said, the only gun that I've found to be inefficient (relatively speaking) is Colt Special.

The movement in this game though. Not even Wesp could fix everything it seems.

Poking around, went into the basement of a certain abandoned hotel. Man all that junk lying around, passages to creep through, and so on. I had to stop because I got nauseous; it's just so fucking annoying to do basic stuff like move around or interact with things without getting stuck or disoriented. (There was an actual glitch too -- got stuck in the turnstile in Confessions and had to reload to get un-stuck.)

The writing and quests are really pulling me in though. Gonna continue later...

Wesp added the (very annoying) turnstile, you could tell Venus to remove it IIRC. Still, probably won't be the first time you get stuck in something (the game's still very glitchy), you can just type noclip in the console if/when you do.

 

[Roguey]

If you're playing it in a widescreen resolution, raise the fov to 90 or something.

I always play games in the aspect ratio they were intended (so 4:3 for this one), so I've never had motion sickness problems with Source games.

 

[Xor]

Well, reading through this thread has made me want to replay Bloodlines and Deus Ex. So thanks for that.

I'm still puzzled by the sudden shift in your vernacular when you speak with Regent Strauss. Seems so out-of-place to use phrases like "dude that's WACK", "gotta cruise, see ya", and "uh thanks DAD" when speaking with him in particular, and nobody else. Plus referring to him (one of the most formal and highly ranked vampires you'll meet) as "Max".

One area where the writing in Bloodlines actually fails is in characterizing the player character. You don't really get a sense of who the person you're playing was before they became a vampire, and unless you're playing a malkavian the dialog options don't really show much personality.

Looks like the plus patch breaks the intended progression (a sword doesn't drop in the base game). It's supposed to go unarmed>melee (downtown)>guns (can start in Hollywood but don't get great until after a certain point in Chinatown)

IIRC the sword you get from the asian guy isn't as good as the swords you find later.

 

[Prime Junta]

The movement in this game though. Not even Wesp could fix everything it seems.

Poking around, went into the basement of a certain abandoned hotel. Man all that junk lying around, passages to creep through, and so on. I had to stop because I got nauseous;

Are you Asian?

Nope. And I don't normally get that. Something about the movement in this game does it though, on those constrained levels where I'm tripping on stuff.

 

[Excidium II]

Was there ever a mod to fix prothean? To this day only clan I haven't played is Gangrel. (If unfinished counts, then also Malk)

 

[Mozg]

Let me just leave this.. in how many games do you still remember a random black street merchant 10 years later.. they made so many characters memorable in this game!

It kinda makes it hard for me to want to do a replay because I can remember the whole plot and all the characters even having not played it in 8-9 years. I did a KotOR2 replay this year and I'd forgotten most of it (although the restored content patch thing helped).

 

[Black]

What do you mean by fix?

 

[Excidium II]

What do you mean by fix?

Make it not so lame, but at the very least get rid of the red filter that makes eyes bleed.

 

[Black]

I don't think it ever got fixed. The animations of the final protean form in the game are horrible, they take too long and are easily disrupted.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Wow, I re-installed the best game ever and I'm enjoying it, weird

 

[Prime Junta]

Did Elizabethan Rendezvous. That was a quick and dull mission, just sneaking around for a bit and, bam, done. The stealth is only marginally less awful than the combat here. Got my pet ghoul, and got sent after the next breadcrumb in some Malkavian bigwig's mansion. (Yeah I remember that one.)

Not much to add at this point. Writing's still rad, moment-to-moment gameplay still blows. At least there are lots of paths through the levels, depending on what skills you've picked.

I've still been pretty frugal with combat investment, but my Unarmed Combat is up to 7 -- three from strength, one from Brujah, one point in Brawl from Nines, one I invested in order to read a book that gave me another one. The Brujah specialties are really pretty dull though; I can see why I didn't finish it with this one before. I think I've had enough for today, will decide later if I'll keep going with this one or try something else (yeah I am a serial restarter of games).

 

[Black]

I liked the Elizabeth Dane mission. If your character is good at hacking and 'diplomacy' you can end the mission in less than 5 minutes. If not, you can stealth through, bit longer but works too.

 

[Excidium II]

The Brujah specialties are really pretty dull though; I can see why I didn't finish it with this one before. I think I've had enough for today, will decide later if I'll keep going with this one or try something else (yeah I am a serial restarter of games).

My first playthrough was Tremere. My second was Brujah. Dull was the opposite of the experience for me.

Felt great to just rush in and PUNCH EVERYTHING instead of being a pussy.

 

[Prime Junta]

I liked the Elizabeth Dane mission. If your character is good at hacking and 'diplomacy' you can end the mission in less than 5 minutes. If not, you can stealth through, bit longer but works too.

I did end it in about 5 minutes. As I said, quick and dull.

 

[Excidium II]

Well that's the whole of VTMB's gameplay.

But the "setpiece" is nice. Specially first time around when you're just wondering wtf happened.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Looking for the Malkavian Primarch is one of my favorite missions aswell.

 

[Eirikur]

Oh my god. It was him all along. Kasich!

Listen to the first couple of seconds of each:

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Melee combat (whether unarmed or with a weapon) looks and feels so terrible in Bloodlines, like a budget arcade game. They probably didn't have much money for animations or the kind of motion capture that would be done now. No idea how anyone can play a Brujah build because of that.

Playing as a gunfighter is much better. The one redeeming jewel in the cesspool of Bloodlines' combat is that Colt Anaconda revolver, which not only looks sweet and packs a hard punch, but comes with the alternate fanning mode (where you fan the trigger mechanism with your off hand, wild west style) which essentially allows you to machine gun enemies, turning even difficult enemies into swiss cheese in a stylish way. The ammo is kinda hard to buy though, so I had to put in a few points into melee for trash mobs, otherwise I always ran out too fast.

 

[Turrul]

Melee combat (whether unarmed or with a weapon) looks and feels so terrible in Bloodlines, like a budget arcade game. They probably didn't have much money for animations or the kind of motion capture that would be done now. No idea how anyone can play a Brujah build because of that.

I kinda liked that arcade-ish melee combat, yeah it looks stupid when it comes to animations but nailing a mook midjump with a sledgehammer had a nice feeling.

 

[Starwars]

The upcoming Grout mission has some of the best writing (and voiceacting) in the game. It's such a shame that the level design is so fucking terrible, and that the Grout's "journals" are so neatly spaced out on tape-recorders or whatever that was. Such a shame they couldn't do more with that, seriously. Such a let-down.

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't think it's even the animations, or at least the quality of the animatinos. It's the lack of feedback, for want of a better expression.

A good brawler needs to telegraph its moves a bit, so I can time my moves -- block, riposte, strike when there's an opening, stagger and followup etc. There's just none of that. There's a hit animation that, say, throws an enemy prone or against the wall, but they're up and striking in an instant. Conversely, their hits stagger you, but they don't follow up. The hit animations are also very fast, which means there's just no time to block. This turns the whole thing into Yakkety Sax -- run, lunge to get a hit in, then run back or sideways again and hope that's enough to dodge the other guy's attack. It also takes a lot of hits to get the bosses to go down.

I'll have to look into guns when I get to Hollywood. Don't remember bothering with them when I last played it.