MegaRhettButler
Literate
I was going to make this it's own thread but I don't know if I can post those yet so I'll just put this here:
Bloodlines is one of my favorite games of all time, but I often ask myself why? The combat was clunky and awful, half the PC models looked like absurd hipsters. The character progression and skill system were... fine? Maybe? I mean I probably couldn't make a better one myself but I never found myself agonizing over what to do with my next level or planning builds. It just didn't make enough practical difference to warrant that level of engagement.
Sure different characters would experience the gameplay differently but not to a degree that fundamentally altered the experience of gameplay, at least not for me. Playing a Malkavian had some neat moments, and dementation was fun but... the differences felt superficial for the most part. It's a linear game and there's nothing wrong with that per se, but given it's based on a tabletop RPG, don't players have the right to expect more? Different builds really just meant a different colored dialogue options. These lead to different responses from NPCs but generally identical outcomes. I'm exaggerating a bit here. There were plenty of quests that allowed the player to resolve them in multiple ways, but the vast majority weren't like that and the results of whatever the player did were almost always identical. Most quests were totally linear with only flavor differences for different races and builds. I never actually played a Nos but I watched a playthrough on youtube a while back and I was disappointed by how similar a Nosferatu playthrough was to a normal one. It really just amounted to comedy dialogue options, and despite the game saying it was necessary to use the sewers to get around (which was why I didn't play one because that sounded boring as shit), the guy didn't even really sneak much. He just avoided standing too close to NPCs and the game played very similarly for his nos as it had for my Malks and Toreadors back in the day. Most of the gameplay was shitty combat too. I like action in my games, but the combat in this game cannot be called good, not even for the time. It was janky as hell and disciplines were way too limited in range compared to what Redemption gave us.
Redemption... such a forgettable game, and yet so significant to me. I got in the early 2000s to play on my mother's Compaq Presario... only it wouldn't run. I'd never had a computer before, just a Sega Master System and a Playstation, so I didn't know that not all computer games ran on all computers. I'd never heard of a graphics card before and when I found out our PC had an "integrated graphics card" (give me a break ok? practically nobody had a home PC pre 2000) and couldn't run advanced shit like VTM: Redemption. I was pissed. It ran Max Payne, Deus Ex and Age of Empires 2, so why not this? I tried to exchange it but they wouldn't let me. What I ended up doing was reading the manual, again and again. The game came with an excellent, detailed manual that explained the setting, the factions, clans, and disciplines. 13 year old me was enthralled by that fucking manual.
I later played the game through GOG, having long since lost my original copy and its fantastic manual. It was almost completely linear (which can be great, but again this is based on a tabletop system) and filled with endless, tedious and mind numbingly easy dungeon crawling. The story and dialogue were corny to the point of almost seeming like a parody. But I loved it because World of Darkness vampires are fucking cool. I daydream a lot and the games I have fixated on most over the years have been the ones that gave me a world that I could easily explore in my idle moments, adventuring in my escapist daydreams. Some of these games are masterpieces like the aforementioned Deus Ex (not the new ones, Adam Jensen is a douchebag), Escape Velocity Nova or Fallout. Others are more debatable, like Oblivion or Bloodlines. Yes I just put those two together, as they are both haphazardly made games with poor gameplay and crippling technical issues that I fell in love with due to their captivating settings.
I will acknowledge that Bloodlines had more than just setting going for it. It had style, wit, atmosphere and excellent voice acting. But that wasn't what made me love it. After all Redemption had none of those things and I loved it too. For this reason I will buy Bloodlines 2 and I will likely play the shit out of it. Probably dozens of times over the years, or at least until a Bloodlines 3 comes out. I will likely do this regardless of whether the game is well made or not, because to fuck up a setting as intoxicating as the World of Darkness is to me they'd have to be actively trying.
Bloodlines is one of my favorite games of all time, but I often ask myself why? The combat was clunky and awful, half the PC models looked like absurd hipsters. The character progression and skill system were... fine? Maybe? I mean I probably couldn't make a better one myself but I never found myself agonizing over what to do with my next level or planning builds. It just didn't make enough practical difference to warrant that level of engagement.
Sure different characters would experience the gameplay differently but not to a degree that fundamentally altered the experience of gameplay, at least not for me. Playing a Malkavian had some neat moments, and dementation was fun but... the differences felt superficial for the most part. It's a linear game and there's nothing wrong with that per se, but given it's based on a tabletop RPG, don't players have the right to expect more? Different builds really just meant a different colored dialogue options. These lead to different responses from NPCs but generally identical outcomes. I'm exaggerating a bit here. There were plenty of quests that allowed the player to resolve them in multiple ways, but the vast majority weren't like that and the results of whatever the player did were almost always identical. Most quests were totally linear with only flavor differences for different races and builds. I never actually played a Nos but I watched a playthrough on youtube a while back and I was disappointed by how similar a Nosferatu playthrough was to a normal one. It really just amounted to comedy dialogue options, and despite the game saying it was necessary to use the sewers to get around (which was why I didn't play one because that sounded boring as shit), the guy didn't even really sneak much. He just avoided standing too close to NPCs and the game played very similarly for his nos as it had for my Malks and Toreadors back in the day. Most of the gameplay was shitty combat too. I like action in my games, but the combat in this game cannot be called good, not even for the time. It was janky as hell and disciplines were way too limited in range compared to what Redemption gave us.
Redemption... such a forgettable game, and yet so significant to me. I got in the early 2000s to play on my mother's Compaq Presario... only it wouldn't run. I'd never had a computer before, just a Sega Master System and a Playstation, so I didn't know that not all computer games ran on all computers. I'd never heard of a graphics card before and when I found out our PC had an "integrated graphics card" (give me a break ok? practically nobody had a home PC pre 2000) and couldn't run advanced shit like VTM: Redemption. I was pissed. It ran Max Payne, Deus Ex and Age of Empires 2, so why not this? I tried to exchange it but they wouldn't let me. What I ended up doing was reading the manual, again and again. The game came with an excellent, detailed manual that explained the setting, the factions, clans, and disciplines. 13 year old me was enthralled by that fucking manual.
I later played the game through GOG, having long since lost my original copy and its fantastic manual. It was almost completely linear (which can be great, but again this is based on a tabletop system) and filled with endless, tedious and mind numbingly easy dungeon crawling. The story and dialogue were corny to the point of almost seeming like a parody. But I loved it because World of Darkness vampires are fucking cool. I daydream a lot and the games I have fixated on most over the years have been the ones that gave me a world that I could easily explore in my idle moments, adventuring in my escapist daydreams. Some of these games are masterpieces like the aforementioned Deus Ex (not the new ones, Adam Jensen is a douchebag), Escape Velocity Nova or Fallout. Others are more debatable, like Oblivion or Bloodlines. Yes I just put those two together, as they are both haphazardly made games with poor gameplay and crippling technical issues that I fell in love with due to their captivating settings.
I will acknowledge that Bloodlines had more than just setting going for it. It had style, wit, atmosphere and excellent voice acting. But that wasn't what made me love it. After all Redemption had none of those things and I loved it too. For this reason I will buy Bloodlines 2 and I will likely play the shit out of it. Probably dozens of times over the years, or at least until a Bloodlines 3 comes out. I will likely do this regardless of whether the game is well made or not, because to fuck up a setting as intoxicating as the World of Darkness is to me they'd have to be actively trying.
