Eurogamer Retrospective: Vampire: Bloodlines

[Applegate's Breasts]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/retro ... bloodlines

It's a beautiful thing, and I've yet to play another game with such astounding attention to narrative detail. The script isn't just witty and intelligent; it's positively huge to boot. That each character delivers his or her lines so candidly, so effortlessly, throughout this mammoth spread of dialogue is nothing short of spectacular.

Yup.

Bloodlines falls from its pedestal after 15-or-so hours, but the journey to that point is as mesmerising as you're likely to see.

I didn't mind the later combat-heavy areas that brings out the nerdrage in some of you.

Bloodlines doesn't simply take your character's traits and re-juggle its numbers accordingly. It rewards you with whole new lines of dialogue that directly shape your relationships with various other denizens of the game. Though action-based stats function in a reasonably straightforward manner, the feedback provided for building your personality is miraculous. In other words, you're not just levelling up. You're actively playing a role.

:!:

Good writeup. Probably 10% of current Codexers have actually played it. The rest have Youtube let's play faked it. (waiting to see "FIrst time playing Bloodlines! What mods I should get? How I play the game for me?" threads pop up).

:wink:

 

[circ]

Only played it for a few hours. Killed some serial killer guy and got a human arm as a weapon. Combat is super annoying. Started noticing serious case of motion sickness but kept going a while longer but felt like shit for the rest of the day.

 

[Texas Red]

Only played it for a few hours. Killed some serial killer guy and got a human arm as a weapon. Combat is super annoying. Started noticing serious case of motion sickness but kept going a while longer but felt like shit for the rest of the day.

So you're saying that you're a weak man?

 

[Darth Roxor]

I played it until my save got corrupted and I uninstalled it in nerdrage.

Those are my four memories concerning Bloodlines: corrupted savegame, fucking awful performance, clunky as hell combat and the haunted house.

 

[asper]

Beautiful game, the prettiest 3d RPG. Excellent dialogue and voice acting. Top notch atmosphere and music. I would urge the posters above to give it another try.

 

[wrathofdog]

Beautiful game, the prettiest 3d RPG. Excellent dialogue and voice acting. Top notch atmosphere and music. I would urge the posters above to give it another try.

Yes. It was certainly the most engrossing game I've ever played, probably my favorite RPG evar, and I'm not even a huge vampire fan.

 

[Shevek]

Bloodlines was quite awesome. I almost gave up on the game when a bug killed my first playthrough (a plot critical npc script just refused to happen for me). I restarted a month later with the community patch and it was a much better experience. The world was extremely well realized. The missions were very well crafted and the characters were top notch. I mean, the facial expressions, the voice acting, the writing.. man, the whole character package was so damn good. Its a shame they didnt get to use a better version of the Source engine (thus improving performance, maybe making cutscenes less glitchy and increasing the ability of the community to mod more dramatically). Still, other than some niggling issues about the engine, I just dont see how someone who professes to enjoy cRPGs could find much fault with Bloodlines. Its easily right up with Deus Ex and System Shock 2. Ok, yeah sure, the combat takes some getting used to, but I found it ten times more enjoyable than typical 3rd person actioners like God of War (which people cant stop raving about) where all you do is button mash to beat.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Bloodlines has awful combat, horrible optimization, stupid amount of combat heavy areas and the most unhaunted haunted house ever. But goddammit, the writing and the characters are absolutely, one hundred percent fucking awesome and makes me ignore all the faults in a matter of few seconds.

 

[Black]

Doesn't matter if it gets recognition now, Troika is deader than my sexual life and that says something.

 

[Jasede]

I don't think the writing or the characters are that great. What I like about it is chiefly the voice-acting and the XP system.

 

[Texas Red]

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Troika overhype Bloodlines? I remember that they showed these videos supposedly full of C&C. You could kill plot important NPCs etc. Then I entered Mercurio's apartment and saw that it's a Haven.

I remember my disappointment when I joined the Anarchist and they just told me to do LaCroix's missions and report to them. You can tell him to fuck off but you still have to do his missions to progress.

 

[Black]

I haven't heard anything about Bloodlines' hype. In fact, I saw a commercial in a magazine once or twice and that's it. Even then I was certain it's a Redemption sequel so I didn't give a fuck.
Troika's marketing always sucked- same thing about ToEE.

 

[MetalCraze]

VtmB was a start of Troika's decline. The irony is that that even while VtmB was a decline - there is not a single aRPG in the past 5 years that could've reached its level (and even usual RPGs had even shittier combat at times)

It's hard to imagine what would've happened to a "Journey To The Center Of Arcanum" had Troika finished it. It was meant to be another Source game and it could've only ended in the further decline.

 

[racofer]

It's hard to imagine what would've happened to a "Journey To The Center Of Arcanum" had Troika finished it. It was meant to be another Source game and it could've only ended in the further decline.

I would take a cupful of Troika's decline over anything else though.

 

[Rosh]

Yeah, the combat and optimization were the worst parts.
The bugs, too.

Now that the fan patch has been out for a while, I would suggest that all of those who stopped playing try it again with those patches. The technical problems are pretty much gone.

The combat areas are really a joke. You can breeze through them a number of ways, but early on it can be annoying.

If you have a max stealth/obf character, then you can easily sneak and drain your way through the place.

If you're a clan with celerity, it's like what Enter the Matrix wants to be when it grows up. When you have a few weapons of choice, it can be downright disgusting.

Brujah, Gangrel, other melee. You ARE combat. Happy dusting.

This game, to me, is the current incarnation of what a RPG/FPS hybrid should be. It does both reasonably well though the speech is done extremely well. More "modern" games have shit for facial expression, which Fallout set forth as industry standard...back in 1997?

Bender Bending Rodriguez as Smiling Jack = pure win.

 

[JarlFrank]

VtmB was a start of Troika's decline.

If only they would have had enough time to decline further.

 

[SCO]

The best narrative moment of Bloodlines for me is

Spoiler

when you find your friend in Hollywood. The combination of the music, and the way you are forced to ignore or kill or run away is great pathos.

That the friend npc changed according to your clan was nice too.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

I don't think the writing or the characters are that great. What I like about it is chiefly the voice-acting and the XP system.

I think the voice acting goes into the characters folder quite nicely. Guy that did LaCroix was absolutely superb.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Beautiful game, the prettiest 3d RPG. Excellent dialogue and voice acting. Top notch atmosphere and music. I would urge the posters above to give it another try.

Yes. It was certainly the most engrossing game I've ever played, probably my favorite RPG evar, and I'm not even a huge vampire fan.

This and that. I did become a fan of vampire later.

 

[bhlaab]

Played this for the first time a couple weeks ago and it blew me away and hit me with that same fuzzy feeling inside that Fallout did when I played it last summer.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Bloodlines is the best game Troika made. Amazing. One of my favorite games of all times.

btw: It features some of the most badass Voiceovers imaginable. (Grouts audio-diary, Bishop Vick, Lu Fang, Yukie to name but a few)

 

[Gragt]

With the latest patch from Wesp, I manage to make Bloodlines runs nicely on an old computer, stil using a Geforce 4. It should run much better on a more modern computer, unless you fucking suck at taking care of it.

 

[Volourn]

Atmosphere: Awesome

Character System: Great

Story: Good

Role-playing: Above Average

Music/Sound/Graphics: Sweet

Combat: One Of The Fuckin' Worst Combats EVAR!


FINAL ANAYSIS: Great game brought down by it's major flaws hence why it misses out on any legit 'top 10' lists.

 

[protobob]

First time I played bloodlines it was with a guns user and the combat was pretty ass. Second time I played it with celerity (slow motion),high strength and brawling and it was a blast. There is this mission in a car park that I must have reloaded and replayed 20 times because it was so fun to dodge bullets and then pummel people till they flew 20 feet across the room (in slow motion!). Very satisfying. Damn, I tempted to play it again now.

The nice thing with high brawling is that you can drain people mid fight to keep the slow motion going as long as you want. Great fun.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

That does sound fun, I was planning on playing a toreador to try celerity for the first time but if you say going melee with it is even cooler I might try a brujah.