My Thoughts on Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines
Let’s review a vampire game…
A friend and I were watching the various 2019 E3 panels online and we discussed in great detail about what games we were looking forward to in the coming year(s). One of the games I was looking forward to was ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines 2’. My gamer friend had never heard of ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ (VtMB from here onwards) before and I was borderline ashamed with him, as he has a great knowledge of games. It is a cult classic that causes people to reinstall it onto their computers, and yet he had never heard of it.
“With VtMB 2 just around the corner,” I began. “there’s no better time to play the original! Trust me X., you’ll love it…if you can get past all the…consistent inconsistencies that is.” I chuckled as I began showing him bits of gameplay on YouTube.
With a confused glare, X. went to purchase the game on GOG at a beautifully cheap price and began downloading it, as I reinstalled it on mine.
He finished his playthrough sometime last week and has not stopped talking about the good, bad and the ugly of his experience as he begins his second playthrough. Now I wish to do the same, in the form of an educational blog, with a slightly different layout to my previous blogs, as I couldn’t force this game into my previous formats.
As such, there will some SPOILERS for this game throughout this blog. This game also has some ADULT/MATURE content in it, some of which will be discussed/teased in this blog. Consider this your warning folks!
VtMB was developed by the now-defunct Troika Games and was released in 2004 and is based on the lore and characters from the original table-top, role-playing game ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’, developed by White Wolf Publishing. VtM is similar in style to ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, where one person acts as a storyteller, and the other players are a party of adventurers. With VtM (and VtMB), you can play as one of seven vampire types that have their own powers and disadvantages that make for each playthrough unique and challenging, with each of their stats similar to a standard character sheet for the table-top game (see above). VtMB is a role-playing game, but not like it’s source material.
Five of the seven playable clans in VtMB are recommended for new time players. They are:
- Brujah, who have a reputation as fierce warriors; their affinity for war is carried in their blood, causing them to frenzy (which I will discuss later on) more frequently.
- Gangrel are similar to the Brujah, in that they are among the best vampiric fighters. Unlike the Brujah, their ferocity stems from their animalistic instinct and rage, rather than anarchic anger, with one of their powers being able to turn into a wolf.
- Toreador, whose clan has long been associated with art and socializing, which is incorporated into their weakness. They are the weakest fighters but the best talkers.
- Tremere are effectively the mage option in VtM (and VtMB) and have the best combat advantage in VtMB. Lore wise, they are not liked very much by others. This doesn’t really matter in VtMB however.
- Ventrue are a class associated with nobility, aristocracy, company CEOs, wealthy individuals, politicians. They ruled as mortals, and rule as immortals and have powers that dictate such motives.
The last two clans should really be used once you have played the game and have a good understanding of how the game works and where quest items and characters are:
- Malkavian vampires are referred to as lunatics, for they are either a little bit strange or bat-shit crazy (your breed of Malkavian is somewhat eccentric). In the game, all of their dialogue choices are cryptic to the NPC you are talking to you, and yourself, that is presented in a different, wonky font that is unique only to them. You will also hear whispers that only you can hear, that acts as eerie foreshadowing that newer players may not get, and gain special powers during dialogue to make certain NPCs say and do really weird things.
- Nosferatu are disfigured and have a frightening appearance, thus looking like monsters. This means that they can only use sewers to traverse and can’t be seen by humans for reasons I will cover shortly. Playing as a Nosferatu means you will be playing VtMB as a stealth game throughout, which does mean your ability to hack into computers and pick locks is genuinely better than other clan types.
Lore, Story and Writing
It is difficult to properly review and appreciate this game without learning it’s already established lore, so I will do my best to describe that to you, within the context of VtMB.
The game begins in Downtown, Los Angeles, where you take a lady/man to your apartment for a one-night stand before he/she embraces you, with no awareness that he/she is a vampire. A group of vampires called the Camarilla bust in through your apartment door and throw a stake in your and sire’s heart. In VtM, stakes to the heart paralyse you.
You wake up in a theatre with a load of other vampires, all of which are important characters from the VtM universe (called the World of Darkness) who are clan leaders (called Primogens), who are audience to a Prince Sebastian LaCroix, the leader of the Camarilla, who reminds everyone the importance of upholding the Masquerade, which is a organized campaign enforced by the Camarilla to convince normal people that vampires do not exist. The Masquerade is an important strategy for Kindred (their word for vampire), without it, kine (humans) would rise up and kill all vampires. This is obviously not good.
Kindred must have LaCroix’s permission to create vampires, which is why your sire is then executed. It is heavily implied you are to share that fate, but Nine’s Rodrigues, leader of The Anarchs (a group of vampires who are rebels and don’t like most of the Camarilla rules, not including the Masquerade) interrupts the execution. Not wanting a riot and wanting to appease his people, LaCroix spares you, sends you to Santa Monic to speak to his ghoul (a normal person (sort of) but with some vampire powers and the need to feed off his/her sire’s blood forever) and sends you on a suicide mission.
You step outside of the theatre where you are greeted by the laggy tutorial screens and Smiling Jack, an Anarch who is clearly not keen on the Camarilla or the Sabbat (another group of rebels who basically want to enslave the mortals and give no fucks for the Masquerade), who have just started to attack the theatre. He is sympathetic to your circumstance and wants to help you out if you so want it. This is where some of the other tutorials are introduced. Whether you choose to go through Jack’s tutorials or not, you arrive at your Haven (your safe place) in Santa Monica, where begin to get your bearings and able to meet a whole host of interesting characters.
From interacting with Jack, you can see the attention to detail given in the facial animations and the voice acting, which I still think to hold up today (do a Google search on the voice actors, I’m sure you’ve heard of a few of them). I am in the mindset to believe that the facial animations surpass a lot of modern games, such as ‘Fallout 4’ and ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’.
In fact, every character in this game is well written, with believable natural dialogue, even when profanity and jokes are thrown in.
The writing is philosophically eloquent, satirical with subtle undertones of social criticism. It is funny and witty, and yet incredibly poetic, taking pride in its command over the English language. It is the only game I have played that makes the task of reading emails and documents on a computer (which is compulsory for many quests) fun and enjoyable, which is worthy of merit, for this game was released in 2004, so computers in this game also replicate that now ancient black and white screen and 8-bit font type.
The writing makes every character, be it minor or major, filled to the teeth with lots of story and individuality, far more than you will ever be able to learn about, for better or for worse.
Talking to characters is just as much as a reward as experience points, or a weapon, or money as it covers many different issues, some of which are rather delicate and have never really been done before or since. The Voerman twins (see below) who rule The Asylum club in Santa Monica being a particular favourite example of such a sensitive topic.
VtMB makes fun of stereotypes without it coming across as offensive, for there is a strange level of realism to it. When they are exaggerated, it doesn’t make fun of those group of people, but how absurd these cliches are and how they are portrayed in media and the shallow mind of those who see such portrayals, ie, the world. Such social commentary may rush past you during your playthrough(s), but you should be able to enjoy its writing and presentation without feeling offended, which is something I write as fact and something as a blogger in 2019.
So much of the world and quests of VtMB are so memorable and fun to explore, with exceptions to Griffith Park and The Warrens, which I will get onto later. Each of the four hub worlds creates the impression that they are big when in reality is rather small, which means that backtracking is not as frustrating as it may be in a larger game like ‘Skyrim’. But with winding backstreets that provide shortcuts and under passages for you to commute your way, as you would in real life make the streets of this tiny, boxed-in interpretation of LA authentic.
VtMB is a game with multiple endings, which depends on who you side with, at the final chapter of the game when you are in at the back of a taxi, running for your life for reasons I will avoid for spoiler reasons. It is something I have very mixed feelings about.
The game gives you many ways to respond to characters, depending on the circumstance on the encounter said person and your stats at the time that can cause you to persuade (highlighted with blue text) intimidate (green text), seduce (pink text) or to use the dementation option to hypnotise or drive someone mad (red text) if you are a Malkavian.
The problem with the ending is the factions you can side with. LaCroix is an asshole and is definitely manipulating and lying to you to do his dirty work, even to use his Ventrue power Dominate to force you to help him if you decline any of his missions (which he shouldn’t be allowed to do, as he is in Elysium, which is vampire neutral ground where no one can use their disciplines/powers). The other Camarilla representative in the game, Maxim Strauss is pompous and stuck up, which is standard Tremere behaviour. I made up my mind pretty early on what I thought about LaCroix and the Camarilla, but any interaction with any other character prior to the game’s final hours that comes close to this is ‘I haven’t made up my mind about the Prince yet’.
This would mean that The Anarchs are the easiest to sympathise with, right? No, not really.
They are insufferable whiny teenagers and there is no real incentive to work with them. Skelter and Damsel just mock you for going to LaCroix (who you only do because he is the primary main quest giver) and are incredibly confrontational, with their leader, Nines being rather stuck up also. You can report to Damsel later in the game what you do for LaCroix, acting as a spy of sorts, but nothing comes of it.
The Kuei-jin are condescending and stab you in the back when they try and convince you that they mean you no harm. Fortunately, siding with no one is an option. It provides the most satisfactory ending, for me at least. With more thought and planning, choosing sides and factions would have felt more natural, rather than the rushed last hope at survival it actually becomes. That being said, would defeating LaCroix feel so great if being forced to work with him was removed? Probably not…
Gameplay and Bugs Galore!
You can play VtMB in either first and third-person, but it forces you to enter third-person when you enter combat (unless you are using guns). Combat allows the player to use their disciplines, melee and ranged weapons and there is a strange juxtaposition constantly switching between these two perspectives, as it never felt like the game was meant to be played in third-person like this.
There is no mini-map of quest markers in this game, so you are left to your own devices to work out what to do. The game does offer in-game maps and streets signs for you to use, and you will have to actually remember where things are and make your own landmarks in your head. Some players used to being spoon-fed everything by modern gaming standards may not like thinking for themselves, but I have made it more daunting than it actually is. You will actually feel a sense of achievement when you have worked out where someone is through a series of clues and conversations that you have had to look for and not being led too.
As touched on briefly, your character’s abilities also affect certain ways of dealing with a quest. For example, the ability to sneak efficiently and avoid detection is influenced by the character’s Dexterity and Stealth ratings; however, if the player does not stay in the shadows while sneaking past enemies, the character can still be detected and shit hits the fan.
You can gain experience points by completing quests and quest objectives, which can be used to make your character’s skills stronger. This is the only way to gain experience points, so there is no reason to play each quest. You will find that you may have completed most, if not every single quest by the end of a playthrough.
Your powers are determined by your blood pool, which is this games mana. To refill your blood pool, you either drink from three different types of blood pouches or have to drink the blood of mortals. Doing the latter in public will remove one of five Masquerade points. If all five are gone, it is game over.
To get around this, you have to seduce a person, pay/seduce a hooker (that is a thing) and take them to a dark alleyway to feast on them. Feeding on rats is also an option, but some vampire clans throw up the blood of harlots and rats they just devoured. Draining humans completely kills them, which costs you a Humanity point. Lose too many of them and/or have no blood for too long and your character will go on a Frenzy and kill everyone, with no input from you, affecting one’s standing with the Masquerade. This is the Beast within each vampire that just wants to be let out.
In short, try not to be a cunt and uphold the Masquerade!
Each quest is varied in design and never feels repetitive. One such quest has you explore the Ocean House Hotel to collect an item to ward off a ghost for someone who is interested in buying it. It is presented as being a standard fetch quest, with some cheesy scares, but the scares and the general atmosphere is superb. In the context in the game, it feels very out of place but works incredibly well. It even won an award for Best Level of The Year.
It is considered so frightening, that there is a console command to skip the quest altogether!
For most of your first playthrough, it is highly likely that you would not have put a lot of points into your combat skills, as the game teaches you that the best (or most engaging) way to deal with the world is either to talk your way out of sticky messes or to employ the extremely over-powered stealth kills, which is what my friend X. did for the most part. He didn’t enjoy the quests found at the latter half because they all required him to fight waves upon waves of enemies and he was just not prepared for it. I struggle with these latter sections too, and I have been playing VtMB on off since it’s release. The Warrens and Griffith Parks are two such areas that are unbalanced buggy messes that clearly were not planned or tested efficiently. You will also find that using melee weapons are the slightly more comfortable approach when in combat as none of the guns are particularly effective. My friend X. just punched his way through his enemies, which also a viable route to take.
Whatever your approach, none of it is particularly enjoyable, especially when the game encourages you to invest most of your stats into your talking abilities and how compulsory combat is for a lot of the quests. It is impossible to be (legitimately) good at everything, so if you are not a good fighter at the beginning of the game, you are going to have a really tough time from Chinatown onwards, due to them being fight after fight.
VtMB was in development for four years when it’s publisher, Activision, decided that Troika Games was going to release that game on the same day as ‘Half-Life 2’. Not only was this arrogant and bad planning, but VtMB was released unfinished and was, and still is, considerably buggy, with only one official patch being issued before Activision closed the studio down some three months later. The only reason why the game is playable on modern PCs is down to the fact that people have been doing unofficial patches for the last 15 years! Some of these added in previously deleted content via the ‘Plus Patch’, which I have never wanted to play because said items were removed from the game for a good reason, usually because they weren’t finished or the implementation didn’t work.
Whilst a lot of these bugs have been annihilated, many bugs remain, which may be down to some of these unofficial patches. In my most recent playthrough, certain quest specific items didn’t spawn like they were supposed to, such as a card key to enter the back of the museum, forcing me to use a console command to force said key into my inventory. Phones never stay in your character’s hands and the camera can also be stuck in third-person constantly, which is really annoying if you are trying to aim the camera to pick up items. There are other examples, but I wish not to go on about it.
Other Things, Mostly Sight & Sound
VtMB has a more cartoony look when compared to ‘Half-Life 2’, which is something I don’t have a problem with, as it looks impressive for a game released in 2004 (in my opinion anyway). That being said, your character’s eyes will never know what to do during cutscenes and will either look off to the side or just roll around in place, as if they are getting aroused or something. The walking animations of most of the NPCs (especially that of LaCroix) are particularly goofy, as are the infamous dancing animations found in the nightclubs and bars. I believe this was an attempt at more realistic animations at the time, but that is mere speculation.
Some of the explorable bars and nightclubs look a bit sparse too, but I am putting that down to a combination of the rushed release date and an attempt for a more realistic approach in the time available.
The sound design and music were composed by Rik Schaffer, who is fulfilling those roles in VtMB 2. I love the use of ambience in some of the earlier areas of the game, such as the hospital which is filled with chit-chat, phone rings and just general ill-people noises, reminding me of literally every hospital and local doctors in the UK. Some cutscenes happen in these places and yet there is no music to accompany said scenes, which I find oddly pleasing, as not everything needs to have dramatic stingers all the time. It adds to the ‘real-world’ vibe to some of these moments. I will admit that some will feel stilted during such moments.
The rock and electronic ambient cues do a good job at setting the scene and making you feel in an urban and dangerous environment that, at times, can feel a little bit sexy. This includes ‘Vampire Theme’, which plays on the main menu, which is pretty much a ripoff of ‘Angel’ by Massive Attack.
There are a load of licensed tracks that did make their way into the game, and they work really well, despite the fact you will hear the same tracks in the same places in the game. Again, with more time and planning, there could have been some more variety to what you can hear in these dark, gothic venues.
Coda
If video games were relationships, then ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ is the lover from your past who you still sigh for, the one who took your world by storm and drove you crazy with yearning, the one who makes every relationship thereafter mediocre in comparison. ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ writing is the kiss, the combat and glitches are the stabs in the back and heart with a dose of lead poisoning.
And yet, I love this game all the same, for isn’t that the definition of true love, to love their flaws as much as their perfect qualities?
If I have probed your curiosity just a little bit, I highly recommend you buy this game on GOG, as you won’t have to install the unofficial patches yourself if you purchase it on Steam. It is usually cheaper on GOG as well!
If I were to rate this game out of 10, I would rate it Don’t Open It/10, which is just as helpful as a proper out of 10 score.
If you already a fan of VtMB and it’s characters, I also recommend you watch the ‘LA By Night’ series on YouTube or Twitch, which is an ongoing series of the table-top VtM that uses some of the already established characters and places, as well as some top-notch acting and Jason Carl, who is storyteller and part of White Wolf Publishing, which means it is technically canon to the VtM and VtMB timelines.
Finally, if you are looking for another vampire game to try, I did a blog about 2018’s ‘Vampyr’, which quite the marmite game.
What do you think of this game? Whose side are you on? Do you have a favourite quest? Which is your favourite vampiric clan?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
