Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, what a masterpiece

masticina

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What I like it that we have the choice of what clan we are. Also the setting, gehenna, is pretty perfect for it as you can go all out. Every clan plays different and has a different feel. So play throughs can differ in how you have to solve the problems.

Some clans are suited to fighting and dealing with certain treats. Other clans are better at talking and getting things done their way. Some are hidious like the Nosferatu forcing you to play quite different. Forget sweet talking if you look like a movie monster.

But what I love the most is the Malkavians, we all played them, we all laughed. Oh they are so awesome in bloodlines. Yes why not have a stern talking to a post saying STOP. Why not! Or talk to the person in the television who also seems to know we did it. Make those people around you go like "oh not another malkavian what the hell"

Ah good times

But I found nossies fun to. Allot of fun! You are going to be a sneaky jerk about things with how you look. Isn't that the most awesome. That and you hit hard ;) Everybody is a monster.. you just look like it. And you have a nice bunch of friends.

Gangrel, well beyond the ability to grow claws and the likes I find them. Well :! I mean. Lets just say the Brujah also are good fighters and the transformation makes you slower. So sure claws do allot of damage but you get slower. At least brujah can be speedy fighters.

So yeah absolutely love the game. Even with its faults! For that we got the unofficial patch
 

Cerebrawl

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Blitsie said:
Also, playing as a Malkavian is the best thing ever, the added insanity almost turns it into a whole new game. Convincing a man to chase down the moon because its the love of his life, only to later on have an argument with a stop sign is something truly worth experiencing. Also, yelling out "I shall invade this orifice" as you proceed to pick a lock never gets old.
Using dementation to get some information(a password I think): I'm a mighty thesaurus! RAWR! Feed me!
 

Blitsie

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Cerebrawl said:
Blitsie said:
Also, playing as a Malkavian is the best thing ever, the added insanity almost turns it into a whole new game. Convincing a man to chase down the moon because its the love of his life, only to later on have an argument with a stop sign is something truly worth experiencing. Also, yelling out "I shall invade this orifice" as you proceed to pick a lock never gets old.
Using dementation to get some information(a password I think): I'm a mighty thesaurus! RAWR! Feed me!
That's my go to line for anything that asks me to put in a catch phrase\status or to describe myself or whatever, just absolutely love the sometimes confused reactions you get from people that read it.

Another favorite of mine is watching the news, the news anchor literally speaks to you through the TV and I remember once engaging in a conversation with him, ending it with a hilariously bad joke about tuna or something.

Also, no Bloodlines thread is complete without this:

 

DEAD34345

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I played it for the first time a few months ago and thought it was brilliant... Until the sewers. That sewer level was so unbelievably, shockingly bad I eventually just gave up, looked on the internet and found out how to activate the console and noclip. It still took me (what felt like) hours, and then the game failed to get better again afterwards so I just gave up altogether. Very disappointing considering how much I'd enjoyed the game prior to that.
 

Blunderboy

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I love this game. It got me into the World of Darkness in a big way. I'll agree that the end lacks the freedom of choice that the start does.
The atmosphere is amazing. I'll often spend hours wandering around a rain sodden Santa Monica, listening to Deb of Night.
Hell when I need to get in the right mood for writing, I use rainymood and the soundtrack/deb of night clips on youtube.
 

DoPo

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Jan 30, 2012
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Blitsie said:
Another favorite of mine is watching the news, the news anchor literally speaks to you through the TV and I remember once engaging in a conversation with him, ending it with a hilariously bad joke about tuna or something.
Actually, I haven't seen anybody mention it yet here, so I wonder how many people missed it. I'll be honest, I didn't find this particular detail until way, way, later - it's easy to overlook but it's just so awesome! I'm speaking of the Malks and the TV but not about the tuna joke. If you listen to the TV as a Malkavian, you will hear the news slightly differently. It plays so well, that it's easy to miss - while a normal clan would hear something like "there was a fight and the police is looking for the attacker", for the Malkavian, the news anchor says "there was a fight and the police is looking for you". Or at another point, the news anchor is relaying witness accounts for what happened in a shootout - normally, it is something like "they described it as very violent", but for the Malks it's "and they described like 'Bang. Bang. Boom. You wascally wabbit.'" And there is more, too.
 

Ratty

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DoPo said:
Ratty said:
PPS- Did it bug anyone else that there were no actual friendly dialog options with Pisha? She's one of my favorite characters.
Well, there are. Sort of. The ones at the bottom of the dialogue tree do agree with her and more or less can be considered "friendly". Your character does "warm up" ever so slightly, if they have low Humanity, too.
Yeah I always picked the closest-to-friendly options. I'd like to see those more "warmed up" options but I've never played the game with low humanity since I like to have a wide spectrum of dialog options.

dammets said:
I loved Pisha too. Her design and voice acting were so good. My last playthrough, I sent the girl in confession (Patty I think her name is) too her. Loved how she sort of thanked me for it later.
Yeah it bugged me for a long time, I knew I had heard Pisha's sultry voice somewhere before. Turns out it's the same actress who was "Hot Ice" Hilda in Outlaw Star.. And better known for being the English voice of Major Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

And yeah, it is always worth the hit to humanity to send Patty to a grisly fate while doing Pisha a solid. Talk about a win-win.

Lunncal said:
I played it for the first time a few months ago and thought it was brilliant... Until the sewers. That sewer level was so unbelievably, shockingly bad I eventually just gave up, looked on the internet and found out how to activate the console and noclip. It still took me (what felt like) hours, and then the game failed to get better again afterwards so I just gave up altogether. Very disappointing considering how much I'd enjoyed the game prior to that.
Yeah, the sewer is a slough. (Aren't they always?) But the game does get a bit better latter. Albiet a lot more combat focused, but hey, you are getting closer to the end. It should be more difficult.

Also guys I don't know I thought the ending(s) were pretty good. Especially considering Gehenna is coming. Speaking of which.

phoenixlink said:
just very sad we never got a sequal to this amazing game
Yeah, but that was never going to happen anyway. Part of the reason the game was rushed was that White Wolf was about to end their World of Darkness campaign setting[footnote]Which included "Vampire the Masquerade", "Werewolf the Apocalypse" and others http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Classic_World_of_Darkness[/footnote], now known as the "Old World of Darkness" since they "re-imagined"/rebooted it. The story of Bloodlines ties into that. That's why I and others think
that the cab driver is Cain. I mean your character gains the power of a vampire hundreds of years old over the course of a few days. Someone really powerful has to be pulling the strings. Canonically in the OWOD it wasn't Cain, but I think that was what the Bloodlines authors were going for.
 

DoPo

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Jan 30, 2012
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Ratty said:
phoenixlink said:
just very sad we never got a sequal to this amazing game
Yeah, but that was never going to happen anyway. Part of the reason the game was rushed was that White Wolf was about to end their World of Darkness campaign setting, now known as the "Old World of Darkness" since they rebooted/"re-imagined" it. The story of Bloodlines ties directly into that. That's why I and others think
that the cab driver is Cain. I mean your character gains the power of a vampire hundreds of years old in such a short time in that game that someone really powerful has to be pulling the strings. Canonically in the OWOD it wasn't Cain, but I think that was what the Bloodlines authors were going for.
While true that it's what Troika were probably going for, it wouldn't have made sense even without Gehenna: The Final Night - Caine has always been portrayed as having absolutely no interest in his children and staying as far away from them as possible. Most likely just sleeping in some dark cave somewhere away from everything (heh...). So it certainly makes very little sense for him to go out and help a random fledgeling and in the process influence the plots and schemes of his other progeny. He does, and I repeat, hate them in his guts, especially the plots and schemes.

But there is a much more plausible explanation for what happens in Bloodlines - Gehenna is coming. All signs point to it and it even does so canonically. And just before Gehenna hits, there is the Withering that sweeps through the vampire population. It's a condition where vampires start losing their supernatural powers - slowly at first, maybe they just fail in using a Discipline occasionally, but it gets worse and worse. And it starts from the top down - lowest generation vampires get hit first, the rest later, with the highest generation (and thin bloods) being last. Also, due to freak coincidences or whatever, some vampires actually gain power during the Withering. It's rare, and it's certainly a short lived boost, but it happens.

And this fits rather well with what happens in the game. The PC manages to kill multiple older and stronger vampires, LaCroix's failure to Dominate you also stands prominent, and the rapid growth in the PC's skills and abilities, especially towards the end.
 

neko1kitty

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It's my favorite game. I love everything about it, the story, the characters, the clans, even the combat heavy zones at the end, it's such a brilliant game.

Gangrel is my favorite clan, but Malkavian and Nosferatu are awesome for replays since the game is very different when playing them. One of my favorite quests is the one where you retrieve the suitcase for Fat Larry,
if you choose stealth you can spy on the gangs and hear them plotting to betray each other during the exchange, also there is a paranoid gang member that thinks he's being watched and another guy makes fun of him !

Blitsie said:
--

Also, no Bloodlines thread is complete without this:

Reinstall?? HA! It's always installed, always
 

Flames66

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Mangod said:
I still maintain that it is one of the grestest RPGs of all time, brought down by unfortunate circumstance to the levels of just being great. ;)

Ah, the fond memories of shooting the shit with Jack, listening to the TV news about all the shit you'd been getting up to, arguing with a stoplight... Malkavians; what game isn't improved by including one?
I agree. It is the best Vampire related game I have played and one of the best RPGs.
 

tehroc

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dammets said:
It also doesn't have a section where having a ranged build over a melee build, or vice versa puts you at a disadvantage. Nor does it take away stealth as an option. If you don't like the combat in the game, then I don't blame you for lot liking the final parts of the game. But I personally found the combat to be quite enjoyable.

But the sewer part of the warrens did suck.

What are your thoughts on Bloodlines?
I disagree on the sewers part. My main playthrough was a brawling Tremere and fighting against the Tzimisce was mostly suicide since I wasn't able to feed in combat due to lack of rats or human enemies. I had to bust out the shotgun (I only had 1 pip) to get past this section of the game.

Fantastic game though.

Edit: The game runs without the fan patch. I've completed the game with the vanilla build.
 

DoPo

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tehroc said:
Edit: The game runs without the fan patch. I've completed the game with the vanilla build.
It depends on your machine. If you have 4GB RAM or more, it would never run - it comes up with an error saying "Available RAM -15MB" or something along those lines. It's the most infamous issue with the game - the UP does include the fix but there are also other ways to get it. Other than that, the game also takes issue with some video cards (especially integrated Intel chipsets), though that has been slowly gone away by itself - it's rather old ones that were problematic - those that were around the time when it came out. The specs pretty much lied.

So yeah, it could run but it most likely wouldn't - I don't know many people who have less than 4GB RAM nowadays. I have played it with just 1.2 installed as well but I don't know why one would want to do that, instead of install a fan made patch - it runs but the bugs are too many. Some examples I can think of, are you don't want to save with any Disciples running, for it might corrupt your save, you don't want to put anything in the mailbox, unless a quests asks you to, for it might disappear forever (and maybe corrupt your save), area transitions with Disciplines running could crash your game, killing a lot of people in a hub could lead to Very Strange Behaviour (like NPCs being always in panic, also - random crashes while you're in the hub), and so on. It's always better to install another patch on top of it.
 

Augustine

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Ronald Nand said:
It was definately a great game, it had deep atmosphere and sucked you into its lore and characters. The only problem was that terrible ending which felt more like a joke ending (like the dog ending in Silent Hill 2) rather than an actual ending.
I believe I know the ending you are referring to, and want to point out that it is one of many endings. This game has an actual joke ending as well.
"Serious" resolution for the THIS specific plot line, by lore of the WoD, would lead to apocalypse. Considering that certain characters are cleverly foreshadowing the actual events I can't think of a better way to end this story.
 

TakerFoxx

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I absolutely adored this game. Yeah, the gameplay's kind wonky, the combat leaves a lot to be desired (though once you get the hang of it and start investing in some decent Disciplines, it actually becomes quite fun), and there were a couple levels that could have been done better, everything that matters to me (writing, characters, voice acting, setting, plot, and atmosphere) was absolutely stellar. I especially loved how nearly every character with dialogue all has their own fully-fleshed personality, from the big, arrogant prince in the tower to the pawn shop guy to the individual bums you question for information. The voice-acting is top-notch, with a special nod going to Andy Milder as LaCroix. Just listen to him every time he has one of his temper tantrums. I mean, damn. And then there's the atmosphere. Oh God, the atmosphere. Sure, the game may be a little dated by today's standards, but it still just sucks you right in. The Ocean House Hotel, for example, is video game horror at its finest, to say nothing of the flesh house.

So in other words, I highly recommend it. :D

DoPo said:
While true that it's what Troika were probably going for, it wouldn't have made sense even without Gehenna: The Final Night - Caine has always been portrayed as having absolutely no interest in his children and staying as far away from them as possible. Most likely just sleeping in some dark cave somewhere away from everything (heh...). So it certainly makes very little sense for him to go out and help a random fledgeling and in the process influence the plots and schemes of his other progeny. He does, and I repeat, hate them in his guts, especially the plots and schemes.

But there is a much more plausible explanation for what happens in Bloodlines - Gehenna is coming. All signs point to it and it even does so canonically. And just before Gehenna hits, there is the Withering that sweeps through the vampire population. It's a condition where vampires start losing their supernatural powers - slowly at first, maybe they just fail in using a Discipline occasionally, but it gets worse and worse. And it starts from the top down - lowest generation vampires get hit first, the rest later, with the highest generation (and thin bloods) being last. Also, due to freak coincidences or whatever, some vampires actually gain power during the Withering. It's rare, and it's certainly a short lived boost, but it happens.

And this fits rather well with what happens in the game. The PC manages to kill multiple older and stronger vampires, LaCroix's failure to Dominate you also stands prominent, and the rapid growth in the PC's skills and abilities, especially towards the end.
Well, given that White Wolf's official stance on it's own canon is "Ignore what you don't like," I guess it's more like this: if you like the idea of the cab drive being Caine, then he's Caine. If you don't, then there's the alternate Caine from the novel you can use.
 

Bleidd Whitefalcon

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Augustine said:
Brilliant plot, brilliant characters, even if gameplay is often lagging behind somewhat. Suspense towards the end was palpable. This game is a must for anyone who sees himself a purveyor of intellectually stimulating experiences and great stories.
What a film/book this game would make!

If one is resolved to play Bloodlines, I would recommend the Clan Quest Mod.
One of the most memorable stories (for me) in this game was one that was added by this mod ("Dance of a Thrashing Dragon", not for the reasons you think, o critics). Mod is so well done, that it is hard to tell which parts were modded in and which are vanilla.
That mod sounds like fun :) Any chance of a download link?
 

Maximum Bert

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I have wanted to play this game since it first came out I recently bought it on steam when it was on sale but holy crap the problems I have getting it running I cannot get it to locate steam or get it to boot in the correct resolution even. I will try again another day.

On a side note does anyone know how to get out of the screen that says resolution not supported? I usually mash my keyboard until something works but I have had to unplug the PC before and restart which is not good.
 

Blunderboy

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Also, if you want to get in the mood, this always helps.

[link]http://debofnight.andcuriouser.com/[/link]