My Thoughts on Vampire: The Masquerade-Redemption
Let’s review ANOTHER vampire game…
Introduction
Some may have stumbled onto this blog potentially mistaking it for ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ (VtMB), and for that, I apologise. However whilst Bloodlines has achieved cult-status amongst fans of VtM and PC gamers alike, it was not the first video game set in the World of Darkness (WoD). That accolade goes to ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Redemption’ (VtMR), which means it is as arguably just as, if not more important than its successor.
‘But is it as good?’ you may be asking yourself at this point. That is a question I am going to attempt to answer in this blog!
NOTE: There will be SPOILERS concerning the plot and characters from here onwards, so if that sort of thing bothers you, turn back now! Consider this your warning folks!
The Blog Proper
Developed by the now-defunct Nihilistic Software, ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Redemption’ was published by Activision and was released to the world on June 2000.
VtMR has the player assume the role of a Christof Romuald, a French knight of the Eastern Crusades, member of the Order of the Sword Brethren, which I believe is a slight in-game variant of the actual The Livonian Brothers of the Sword, a Catholic military order established by Albert, the third bishop of Riga, in 1202.
During the game’s opening cinematic, Christof is felled by an arrow in battle and is left behind by his fellow soldiers (you do not start as a vampire in the beginning). He awakes in a convent in Prague, where he is nursed back to health by the young novice nun Anezka, who quickly becomes the game’s love interest, perhaps a little too quick for my personal taste. I am not a huge fan of the ‘love at first sight’ plot device.
He discovers that Prague is infected with ghouls known as Szlachta, which are ghouls created by the Tzimisce, one of thirteen vampire clans/breeds in WoD, who have made their home in the nearby Silver Mine. Christof heads off to the mine and defeats the vampire and ghouls there, whilst recovering from his injury. This doesn’t convince the Archbishop that Christof is a good person, so he punishes him by making him protect Prague at night. The convent is attacked and Christof saves the night before fleeing said convent, to protect Anezka from any more harm. This is when he is embraced by a local Brujah (another vampire clan) before any other clans can do so. He then partakes in a handful of tasks before a certain in-game event puts Christof in torpor and wakes up some 800 years later in London, a transition in presentation, lore and language that is rather cool.
As it begins in what is called ‘Vampire: Dark Ages’, you will have to get your head around the ‘ye olde’ English that much of the game’s writing is filled with. I would recommend learning the difference between ‘thine’, ‘thy’, ‘wenst’ and ‘canst’, otherwise you may struggle to understand what’s going on.
But this isn’t a complaint from me mind you, as I am a huge fan of this sort of period dialogue. It is also one of the many ways that VtMR delivers on its incredible atmosphere, especially in the first half of the game. You wonder the streets of this fictionalised Prague, with civilians (mostly peasants to be honest), who you can engage some degree of small talk with, should you choose. Despite being fairly sparse (for technical hardware issues), the city does feel fairly authentic to explore. In addition, each footstep on the cobbled paths, muddy roads and caverns are slightly different to the last, so one will never feel that you are listening to the same sound over and over.
The voice acting is fairly inconsistent, meaning that some characters are more believable than others. Pink and Christof are two particular favourites of mine, whilst the actor(s) that assume the role of the Society of Leopold ‘grunts’ (for lack of a better word) is incredibly amateur. The quality of some of the lines themselves is also irregular, as the trained ear would notice the occasional ‘crack and pop’ in the audio, implying that the gain set for the microphone level was too high.
It’s visually impressive, something that many critics remarked upon the game’s initial release. It’s somewhat dated by today’s standards, but I was impressed by how the facial expressions of your party change when you are just minding your own business in a street or a building, to combat, to feeding (by sucking off the body of blood) and torpor, although, I found those particular facial animations to be rather silly, for they are dated. Even so, character models and the surrounding environments are surprisingly detailed, with clear defining details, which is punctuated by it’s modest lighting and shadows, which reminds the player that this is somewhat of a horror game, be it a more personal one. This is most effective during the portion of the game set in the Dark Ages, where almost all light sources are lit by candlelight.
I usually don’t remark on these sorts of things in reviews it is expected for games to be visually impressive with our modern systems. I also don’t see graphics as a highly important aspect when it comes to games, which isn’t to say I don’t like it when a game is in 60fps or has photorealism unlike any other. I do remark on these things if I believe developers go above and beyond to provide something outstanding, and I think VtMR has gone above and beyond what was expected at the time. Remember this is a game released in 2000. They didn’t have to push for such fidelity, but doing so adds to the overall emersion.
VtMR plays like a watered-down ‘Diablo’, with next-to-none of VtMR’s gameplay mechanics gelling well to the vision that it is trying to present. For those who haven’t played ‘Diablo’ or games like it, the controls are fairly simple. You point and click your way around the map to explore, fight and interact with the world. What makes this borderline insufferable is that said movement is incredibly clunky, and there is some serious pathfinding issues. I lost count to the number of times that Christof would not walk around an object to move forward, or a member of my party would not move out of my way. This isn’t helped by its camera angle, which is terribly limited, even in the game’s 1st person mode, which makes selections in combat a tedious minigame in-of-itself,
The only solution I found for this was with this mod, which didn’t fix the problem completely, but it made the gameplay a little bit more tolerable.
There are, however, some merits to be found with the combat. As a vampire of the Brujah clan, Christof has access to three Disciplines (vampire powers), ‘Presence’, ‘Celerity’ and ‘Potence’. To give a brief overview of the game’s interpretation of the Brujah disciplines, Celerity allows Christof to move at superspeed, Potence grants Christof extra strength (which ups his attack power) and Presence makes him the centre of attention, which can be useful to allow wounded party members to fall back and heal, should they remember to save some of their blood, which they rarely do.
In VtM lore, a Kindred can only call upon powers from their trio of disciplines (in most circumstances), but Christof will have access to almost all of the disciplines by the end of the game. It is impossible to use all of them through standard gameplay, which is where the game’s combat becomes more engaging, as you try various discipline abilities on your enemies and watch the havoc unfold in front of your eyes. It is for this reason that the combat is just about bearable.
Alarm bells should be ringing loudly in the head of any VtM and VtMB fan, as this plays very different from those games. Where VtM (and to an extent, VtMB) is a game that encourages stories to be varied, deep and complex, with the players solving problems in a variety of ways, VtMR assumes the themes one may find in a more traditional action game. It is a serviceable RPG, but each quest objective assumes the pattern of ‘fetch X’, ‘kill X’, with the moral choices the player can make having no real benefit to the grander plot. That is until you reach the very end, where the player can choose one of three dialogue options before fighting the final boss. These determine the game’s three endings, which I’m categorising as good, bad and REALLY Bad.
That being said, the two bad endings are only achievable if Christof’s Humanity is low enough, which is a number that determines how much of a monster the player is, so it is good to see that some of the role-playing mechanics from VtM are found in VtMR. Your Humanity rating is determined by how many civilians/guards you kill when feeding (which is not a requirement when feeding on them, but a player choice), which lowers said Humanity. Certain dialogue options raise and lower your Humanity as well.
Similarly to Bloodlines, VtMR has the player travel between four different cities, each one a unique hub world. The Dark Ages section has you explore Medival Prague and Vienna, whilst the Modern Nights section begins in 1999 London and ends with 2000 New York. Each hub has various vendors that can allow you to purchase weapons, armours and potions/healing items, each one themed to the time period (Prague and Vienna having swords and shields, London and New York having guns and bulletproof vests).
You can explore each of these cities at your leisure, but some areas are locked off to you until you have reached the right place in the story to enter them, which can ruin the suspense and mystery the game tries to set up. For example, towards the end of the game, you are able to walk up to a Cathedral of Flesh, which as ridiculous as a name it sounds, it is a thing that exists within the canon of VtM, and should not exist the way that it does. Seasoned VtM enthusiasts would immediately know that this would be connected to VtMR’s climax and know that this is an important area. In fact, this is the final area in the game for you to explore, and it is just sitting there, for anyone to access. But because it’s ‘locked’, one may not have permission to enter.
This isn’t the only attempt VtMR attempts to tie itself to the table-top game (VtM) by nodding to the source material. For example, the inclusion of Ecaterina the Wise (Christof’s sire) and Joseph Zvi (see below/left, depending on how you are reading this blog), who are canonical characters to the VtM metaplot. Their inclusion is contradicts said metaplot, as Ecaterina and Joseph Zvi appear as vampires in the game, but they were Embraced in 1150 and 1160, respectively (the game begins in 1141 AD, as seen in the opening cinematic).
Both the old and modern settings in VtMR tug at their respective takes on the struggle of the Kindred/Cainites (VtM words for a vampire, depending on the setting and faction), with the modern setting doing it the best, as it is here where such factions are strongest, both historically and narratively. Whilst I like this addition, I would have to point out that Christof should not have used the word Kindred immediately after waking up from torpor, as it did not exist during his embrace. That is perhaps the pickiest of my criticisms, as I would much rather have the developers attempt integrating the metaplot than not at all.
The game’s soundtrack was composed by a Kevin Manthei, who has created an incredibly varied soundtrack, one that spans across 800 years of real-world compositional and harmonic development. The Dark Ages sections act as good period music, with (almost) tribal percussion and simple string parts, not distracting from the gameplay, which the Modern Nights are dark and aggressive, driven forward by growly electric bass parts and punchy drums. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the soundtrack, even if the choice of panning threw me.
What I mean by ‘pan’ is where you hear the sound, an exercise I wish to demonstrate with you now. Listen to the following with headphones;
Much of the sounds, the strings, brass and percussion sound fairly close in the centre, as if they are right where your face is. Usually, an orchestral palette is much wider than this, with the violins mid-left and basses far-right, for example. Whilst this isn’t ‘wrong’, as this would be very similar to how orchestras before 1725 were organised (which makes the score all the more authentic in a way), I felt a little bit discombobulated for the first hour, having been used to the more modern approach. But given the average player wouldn’t be aware of that, it is hardly an issue, but one that I will mention nonetheless.
Coda
Perhaps the best way to describe my experience with ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Redemption’ is by comparing it to that of a rollercoaster. There were many ups and downs, that was both unbearable and engaging.
It is rare for me to finish a game that makes me feel as irate as this one, but I was fairly intrigued by its plot and inclusion of the many clan lores and characteristics, in addition to the duality of settings. Whilst I don’t think every RPG needs to have branching narratives, VtMR is strangely enjoyable with plenty of replay value, if you are willing to put up with is haphazard opening levels and broken gameplay. However, it is very difficult to recommend this game to the average player without the inclusion of a variety of fan-made mods. The only people I believe would want to give this game a go are dedicated fans of ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’, such as myself, or those who have played VtMB, and are curious what the predecessor was like, such as myself.
If I were to rate this game out of 10, I would rate it ‘To The Abyss With Thee!’/10, as that is just as helpful as a proper out of 10 score.
Whilst I think VtMR gives an interesting overview of the World of Darkness setting, there are better ways of experiencing such a world, like playing a game of ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’. I personally recommend V20, for reasons I discussed in a previous blog, found in the link below.
And for those who want to know what ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ is like, I wrote a review about that as well, which I will also include below.
What do you think of Redemption? Yay or nay? What disciplines do you use when playing the game? Whose you’re favourite party member?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
