Preview Bloodlines peek at GameSpy

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

There's a <A href="http://www.gamespy.com/previews/february04/vampirebloodlinespc/">preview</a> of <A href="http://www.vampirebloodlines.com/">Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines</a> over at <a href="http://www.gamespy.com/">GameSpy</a> spanning three pages of stuff. Here's a part of one of those pages of stuff:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote> The first character he called up was a Nosferatu. Nosferatu vampires, as mentioned earlier, are hideously ugly, so most of the dialogue and persuasion options wouldn't be available. Nosferatu, however, are masters of stealth. Keeping to the shadows, he used his high "Auspex" ability to look through the walls and note the auras of the six surf punks lounging around inside. His high perception characteristic caused a board in the wooden fence to sparkle, so he moved to investigate. Sure enough, the board was loose. Using his strength, he was able to rip it off and throw it over the cliff into the ocean. Anticipating my next question, Boyarsky assured me that if the player screwed up his toss and dropped it onto the gravel, the surfers in the house would hear and move to investigate.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
Because surfers tend to be paranoid.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gengamers.com">GenGamers</A>

 

[Vault Dweller]

Do I have to throw it into the ocean in the first place? Can't I just put it aside?

 

[EEVIAC]

I liked this very much :

There's also no final penalty for whatever choices you make. If the player chooses to kill Mercurio and rob him of everything in his house despite his pleas for help, they can.

Yay! By the way, of all the punks I've met/insulted/played shows with, I despise surfer punks the most. That's a whole game for me right there - killing those poxy, genre-mixing fuckheads, preferably with blunt objects, on a pile of already pulped student-socialist-worker-newspaper-sellers, wannabe-college-boy-pimps, and hobos.

 

[Elwro]

. Keeping to the shadows, he used his high "Auspex" ability to look through the walls and note the auras of the six surf punks lounging around inside. His high perception characteristic caused a board in the wooden fence to sparkle, so he moved to investigate. Sure enough, the board was loose. >

So is it really perception, or are all usable objects surrounded by colourful boxes when you point your cursor at them?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Over the next few minutes, Boyarsky proceeded to walk through the level six times with vampire characters of different clans and abilities. While the goal in each case was to get into the beach house and get the explosives, the methods he chose to do that could not have been more different.

Sounds cool so far, let's see...

Nosferatu, however, are masters of stealth. Keeping to the shadows, he used his high "Auspex" ability to look through the walls and note the auras of the six surf punks lounging around inside. His high perception characteristic caused a board in the wooden fence to sparkle, so he moved to investigate.

So the first character is a stealth guy who has a very useful "notice a predefined path" skill.

As a Toreador, Boyarsky just walked up to the guard at the front of the house and used his persuasive and seductive abilities to talk her way inside the house.

The second character is a talker

Boyarsky had left the best for last, though. As a Tremere Blood Magician, he wasn't going to bother with charm or sneakiness -- these boys were going down hard.

The last but not the least is the fighter. So what's all the fuss is about? Btw, what's up with the old loose board trick? I'm playing Silent Storm now, and the ability to play with the environment as you see fit is very impressive. I expected the same from the HL2 engine.

 

[Whipporowill]

Well, the game shouldn't only be defined by what disciplines your vamp has... the Storyteller system has load of skills too. Pretty easy to make a sneaky brujah (although without obfuscate) and so on. You should be able to get persuasion skills without being a Toreador and so on...

 

[Transcendent One]

Let's see then... :shock:

Boyarsky told me that these dialogue choices are generated by your statistics, your clan, and your previous actions in the game

Lovely, reactivity is always a good thing. Now how much of it will be in Bloodlines?
I like how there's no right or wrong action. I'm tired of NPC's being flagged invincible cause they are important to advance plots or something. However everything else in the preview sounds nothing special. Oh wowserz, I can use stealth, persuasion, or brute force to solve a quest. Isn't that just sooo coool???

 

[Azael]

The fact that a bad ass vampire needs to find a loose board in a wooden fence in order to get in disturbs me. Whatever happened to super human strength, or for that matter climbing or jumping? It also seems from the previes like the different clans are pigeon holed into roles. I hope I can play a brutal Toreador or a manipulative Brujah (even if they can't be as effective in those rules as someone of the "right" clan).

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Oh wowserz, I can use stealth, persuasion, or brute force to solve a quest. Isn't that just sooo coool???

Well it was special some years ago. And it still trumps 100% brute force

The fact that a bad ass vampire needs to find a loose board in a wooden fence in order to get in disturbs me.

Perhaps there will be other means. I don't know. I hope that problem solving, wheter for side quests, or story-driven events, will be diverse, and won't throw this kind of thing on us.

Whatever happened to super human strength, or for that matter climbing or jumping?

They got replaced by cussing vampires. Being a vampire and expressing my new-found dislike of life by cussing while wearing goth makeup > gameplay possibilities.

 

[Whipporowill]

From what I can remember, climbing was supposedly meant to be in - but as for how it stands a t m. Dunno? Too complex for gameplay?

Date Posted: 5/9/03 1:21pm Subject: I want to be able to:
Scale sheer surfaces
Pounce on Hapless Victims from the darkness
Mesmerize Hapless Victims with my hypnotic gaze
Create an army of my newly undead Hapless Victims
Command rats by the thousands
Scope out the Hot Gothic Babes and turn them into my Hapless Victims
Transform into a mist to escape those pesky vampire hunters

Check on everything but the army. However, not all abilities are available to all clans -- each bloodline has its own strengths and weaknesses, and depending on whether you wanted to emphasize combat or seduction or stealth you would make that choice at the start of the game.

Originally from this thread here http://vnboards.ign.com/Bloodlines_Inn/b22439/49918379/?20

 

[Seven]

The fact that a bad ass vampire needs to find a loose board in a wooden fence in order to get in disturbs me. Whatever happened to super human strength, or for that matter climbing or jumping?

What's this supposed to mean, is moving an obstacle below vampires. It's just one solution, IMO. If you want the superhuman approach then use your powers to make everything explode in an river a blood, or just go in and tear everything apart with your barehands. From the preview it seems like these are also viable options, right?

 

[Azael]

No, I'm just suggesting that there should be those options available for the stealthy approach as well and also that it seems strange, considering the much hyped Source Engine, that the only board I can pry loose is the highlighted one (or at least that's the impression I get).

 

[Vault Dweller]

What's this supposed to mean, is moving an obstacle below vampires. It's just one solution, IMO. If you want the superhuman approach then use your powers to make everything explode in an river a blood, or just go in and tear everything apart with your barehands. From the preview it seems like these are also viable options, right?

The fact that the loose board exists tells you that you can't loose one yourself, i.e. you have to do things a certain predefined way which sucks. I thought that at least with this engine we would able to play with the environment instead of looking for the flashing clues designers left for us.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Most CRPGs have that problem. That level of environment interactivity isn't usually better than that. Thats why to counter it you get other options for the same situation, or different possibilities within one single event. I'm not exactly worried that i have to do things the "predefined way" (its always a predefined way, wheter intentionally or not), but rather, at the amount. Like Azael mentioned, we are talking of the Source Engine, after all - better and more options should be allowed.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm not exactly worried that i have to do things the "predefined way" (its always a predefined way, wheter intentionally or not), but rather, at the amount.

Silent Storm doesn't have a predefined way as far as the environment is concerned. Otherwise we are dealing with conviniently located ventilation shafts all over again.

 

[Azael]

I realize that this is all too common in the CRPG (and most other, adventure anyone?) genre, but I thought (hoped) that with the (supposedly) advanced engine this title is sporting, we'd see more possible means of enviroment interaction.

 

[Anonymous]

Also, the character pulling the board is a Nosferatu. Humans dont exactly react well when they see them, and Nosferatu are suited to lurking in the shadows and sneaking, over brute combat (for the most part).

And yes, the sparkels only show up if you have a high Perception stat, and in the demo I believe the 3 character types had their stats all maxed out for show-off-ability.

 

[Jed]

Looking for loose boards?! Am I a vampire or goddamn Dennis the Menace--why can't I just jump over the fucking fence?

 

[HanoverF]

I'm hoping you could, but despite what certain hong kong kung fu movies show you, a person leaping over a fence, isn't exactly stealthy.

I want the surf bums to find a mutilated body drained of all its blood and say "This was no boating accident!"

 

[Dhruin]

It all sounded pretty encouraging to me. Given that it's really a FPS hybrid I was happy to read the stats seem relevant and affect gameplay in a meaningful manner. Climbing and/or breaking the fence would be nice but every game has development limitations. If anyone can climb the fence there really isn't a barrier and you might as well just dispense with it altogether. That doesn't mean you should never have climbable fences but the loose fence post thing seems a reasonable way to make perception useful, assuming you want to use development resources elsewhere.

 

[Jed]

I'm hoping you could, but despite what certain hong kong kung fu movies show you, a person leaping over a fence, isn't exactly stealthy.

Person, perhaps--but we are talking about vampires here. They are at least a little supernatural, I would hope.

...and in terms of stealth, you've never pulled a nail before, have you? Makes a really loud groan usually; much louder than the thud of someone landing from a six-foot drop.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Let's see... Ways to get in to a guarded house..

Stealth.. check
Diplomacy.. check
Combat.. check

What more were you expecting on the ways to get in the house?

 

[Whipporowill]

Well... trickery could be a subsidiary of stealth (fool or scare people to leave), carnage might be a mechanical way to level the house, or gas people to death (breaking the gas pipes). It'd be interesting to see several solutions to a problem, the less obvious the better. Would work wonders for replay value wouldn't it?

The mentioned example of using the discipline animalism to empty a restaurant by flooding it with rats would be an excellent example of said trickery, and should be possible as it was used in an early demo (E3?)

 

[Vault Dweller]

Let's see... Ways to get in to a guarded house..

Stealth.. check
Diplomacy.. check
Combat.. check

What more were you expecting on the ways to get in the house?

It's not the number of ways, it's the "how". I'd expect not to look for that one sparkly board that could be removed, but to tear off the one I like. Same goes for the rest of the environment.

 

[Voss]

And heres me still wondering why surfers would steal explosives...


I like touches like being able to mess with the fuse box though. I'm not sure thats the best demonstration material, however. At best, the reviewers experiences is are misleading, the characters are clearly over-pumped.- a Nosferatu isn't necessarily going to have a high Auspex, and a Tremere isn't likely to have Celerity. (not even vaguely Clan disciplines), and if this is one of the early areas of the game, things will probably play out somewhat differently.

I'd definitely like to see if theres a difference between Dominate and Presence in the game, or if they functionally work out the same way. (For those unfamiliar with the game, Dominate is mostly allows for mind-dominated meat puppets and screwing with people's memories, while Presence can invoke a sense of awe, lust, and desire to serve the user, they love and worship you, and voluntarily do things to help you)

A note on the profanity too- I actually see this as coming more from the PnP game than Troika. The setting leans heavily toward dark and gritty, and White Wolf frequently uses it in the rule/source books... even to the point of in the 'Special Thanks' section of the title page. So its fairly appropriate for the setting and game. And for fucks sake, it is the shithole that is L.A., and with the whole 'World of Darkness' thing, you should figure it being 3 to 5 times worse than it is in the real world.