Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines Retrospective

[Music] there's an old meme about vampire the masquerade bloodlines that says every time you mention it someone will reinstall it and that's for good reason unique in setting unmatched in atmosphere and highly replayable in design bloodlines was a rare breed of soon to be extinct rpg that put its main focus not on combat or branching narratives but instead on open-ended quest design and the interactions between a character's skills and the game world there aren't many games quite like bloodlines and as a result it defied its poor sales and good but not great reviews to become an endearing cult classic with a passionate fan base almost as undying as the game's nocturnal subjects it has received criticism for its technical problems poor combat and some questionable late-game design decisions but with characters this memorable playstyles this diverse and dancing this expressive bloodlines is a hard game to dislike and maybe a hard act to follow as we might find out in the not so distant future because after years of waiting a sequel is at long last almost within fans grasps which makes looking back at the original even more worthwhile in order to understand just what set this game apart from so many of its peers there's more to that meme than voluptuous goth girls spooky hotels and talking stop signs but we'll get to that first though like all good vampire stories we need to begin with the subject of death and what comes next originally released in late 2004 bloodlines was to be developer troika games final offering to the world a swan song for an acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful studio who had cemented their reputation amongst rpg fans for their ambitious but flawed titles and bloodlines was no exception for all the games good ideas and positive features it released with plenty of bugs luckily what is dead may never die so long as modders are involved and so bloodlines has since risen again harder and stronger or at least less buggy in fact bloodlines has received continuous support from its modern scene with the creation of an unofficial patch that is still regularly updated the last version of which was released as recently as june 2020 this patch comes with fixes for a great number of the game's problems and transforms the experience from a buggy mess into something polished enough to put many recently released rpgs to shame in fact this patch is seen as so important that the gog version of bloodlines comes with it already installed by default and that's clearly for the best as it greatly improves the experience in addition to the basic patch there's also an optional plus patch that focuses on restoring missing content and includes new quests weapons dialogue and more for this video i did a playthrough of both the base patch and the plus option and new players should probably consider installing the plus patch from the get-go just be aware that not every additional change is for the better and there might be some areas that are more janky or unbalanced as a result a good example of this can be seen in the character creation where changing the newly added option to choose your character's history after spending your skill points can allow you to gain a new set of skill points to spend which you could potentially do repeatedly to break the game before you even begin also one time in the plus patch toilets suddenly appeared everywhere so that was weird in general however the plus patch is probably the best way to experience bloodlines although if you're more of a purist or just feel unsure on whether you want to add non-official content the basic unofficial patch is all you actually need to jump into the game but before you begin your journey into this world of darkness you'll need to create your character bloodlines is based on the vampire the masquerade tabletop game an rpg known not just for its setting but also for being less combat oriented than many other games of its kind where instead of delving into dungeons you're more likely to pass time participating in the nightlife and where sparring with words is just as common as with weapons the result of this is that the systems used in this game are quite easy to understand there's no need for number crunching or an over reliance on uninviting acronyms instead you can get to grips with its core systems relatively easily and the list of feats which determine your character's aptitudes comes across as logical and straightforward at this stage you'll have some opportunity to customize your build but the most important choice you'll make is your clan there are seven playable clans in bloodlines and choosing which your character will be is a little like choosing your class in other games you can think of each clan through their fantasy equivalent bruja are more physical like a traditional warrior gangrel are more beastial like maybe a berserker barbarian nosferatu are forced to focus on stealth so i like rogues tremere would be the vampire equivalent to mages tori adore are more social so sort of like a bard ventrue are more focused on nobility so maybe a paladin and malkavian are just insane and where this already struggling metaphor breaks completely so while you can think of the clans as corresponding to those classical rpg archetypes this comparison doesn't really do them justice because each clan also has their own role within the game's law as well as their own modifiers which affect your playthrough and their own mostly unique selection of vampiric powers called disciplines your choice of clan is impactful both on your play style and how other characters will react to you in the game but of these seven clans two of these take this even further by radically altering the experience the first of these are the nosferatu who are hideously deformed and so no longer have the luxury of walking amongst humans unnoticed instead having to spend the entire game skulking in the shadows and sewers in order to avoid being spotted in the world of bloodlines vampires must keep their existence hidden from humans so they can maintain their position at the top of a food chain this makes sense because while individually a vampire might be far stronger than a human humans are still far more numerous and if humanity was aware that there are creatures of the night feeding on their blood and controlling their minds their response might not be in vampire's favor but by keeping this secret vampires can ensure their complete dominance over humans and this secret is the masquerade that gives the setting its name and it isn't just a general rule for vampires to follow the masquerade is an organized conspiracy strictly enforced by vampire society and even those who disagree with it on principle will still often follow it in practice because to do otherwise will put you at risk from your own kind as much as from others violating the mass grazing game will cause you to lose masquerade points which can lead to vampire hunters and worse for most clans this just means you need to make sure not to be careless which means don't feed where people can see you and keep your powers to yourself this is simple enough unless you play as nosferatu in which case the masquerade becomes an everyday part of your life objectives as simple as walking down the street might now come with their own risk and obvious routes through quests may no longer be available to you conversations might also play out quite differently it can feel worthwhile playing as nosferatu just for these responses but if new dialogue is what you're after the other unique clan may be even more appealing ray bradbury once wrote that insanity is relative but he clearly didn't spend much time around malkavians because in accordance with the law they are all crazy and the player character is no exception most games in this position would represent this by adding occasional unique dialogue options and a few rare moments of npc reactivity bloodlines instead takes a more substantial approach by rewriting every single dialogue option in the game so as to be through the eyes of a malkavian which basically means nothing said is straightforward but is instead delivered with a mix of insight insanity and wit that is an absolute joy most of the responses from npcs are the same as they would be for other characters although there is still a really impressive amount of npc reactivity and acknowledgment of your condition and speech choosing to play as a malkavian doesn't have as large an impact on the gameplay but the writing is still consistently clever and it's surprising just how likable the malkavian main character seems as a result it's a unique experience for sure and that's without even mentioning the whispering in your head or talking road signs the conventional logic of bloodlines is not to play as either a nosferatu or malkavian on your first playthrough and instead save these options for when you replay the game this advice makes a lot of sense but you don't need to follow it after all if you really want to play as a malkavian just how important is following conventional logic anyway the important thing is that these options exist your choice of clan goes a long way at making your experience feel like your own and both the nosferatu and malkavian options go much further than almost anything in other games to make your playthrough feel unique this is a big part of why bloodlines is considered to have such great replayability the nosferatu and malkavian experience feels so different that it might be easy to look at the other five clans and find them lacking by comparison but to hold that against the game would be wrong the reality is bloodlines doesn't have five weak clans it just has two clans that are really great and that's two unique options more than most other games would offer so bloodline's character creation is really good the only downside is that there's no way to customize your appearance each clan and gender has a set model and that's what you're stuck with whether you like it or not which will surely be disappointing for some some clan and gender combinations can look a little out there too but you'll spend most of the game in first person anyway and so with your character decided your adventure through this cd supernatural underbelly of los angeles can begin regardless of whether you're ugly crazy or some more conventional flavor of kindred the story will start the same way with the player character getting more than they bargained for after hooking up with a vampire you wake up post-embrace as a creature of the night but soon find yourself in trouble with the camarilla the largest vampire sect who maintain the status quo by punishing transgressions such as converting a human to vampire without permission for this crime your sire is executed but the player's character is instead spared on the condition that you work for the camarilla leader in la the machiavellian sebastian lacroix aptly referred to by his title of prince and so you begin your new vampiric life as an unimportant lackey with little understanding of this new world of vampires that you've been thrust into against your will this setup is very similar to the classic cliche of waking up with amnesia both the player and your character are unfamiliar with this new society and way of life so you get to explore that together which is an effective foundation to pull you into the experience as a setting vampire the masquerade is quite political its vampire society is deeply divided with competing clans sects and individuals with their own beliefs and objectives and this naturally leads to conflict in bloodlines you find yourself in the middle of a power struggle between the camarilla the rival anarch movement and the asian similar but not quite the same type of vampires the question the catalyst for this struggle is the arrival of an ancient sarcophagus that many believes holds an elder vampire of untold power which ties into rumors of a prophesized end time for vampires called gehenna most rpgs with multiple factions tend to put the player in a very empowered position where you effectively get to play the part of kingmaker the key player who goes between groups freely but ultimately gets to decide everyone's fate as you pick your favorite group to fight with on the way to victory bloodlines doesn't do this the main story remains linear right up until the very ending and as far as vampires go you're pretty much a nobody someone who just finds themselves towards the bottom of this new power hierarchy and has to do what they're told whether you want to or not if you do try to disobey orders lacroix will simply use the dominate ability to keep you in line and so you have no choice but to play the role of porn as you travel the streets of la doing tasks for your superiors as the story stakes slowly rise the lack of narrative choice can easily be considered a weakness of bloodlines this is an area that most other rpgs particularly those released afterwards place a greater focus on but bloodlines makes up for its lack of narrative choice with open-ended gameplay and quest design there's also something effective about this approach the world of vampires in this setting is hierarchical likely to a fault as a fully fledged vampire that belongs to a clan you're not even at the bottom of this hierarchy below you are catif which are clanless vampires thin bloods ghouls and of course those at the very bottom that are so unimportant they're barely worth recognizing humans but by forcing the player into the role of an unimportant vampire forced to be a simple lackey as he does errands for his betters you get to participate in this hierarchy in a way that makes sense this is the new vampire experience if instead vampires were sucking up to you in an attempt to court you as you moved through the night deciding everyone's fates in accordance to your whims it wouldn't be true to the setting and the fact that this really is what most other rpgs choose to do makes bloodline's rejection of it refreshing there's nothing wrong with just being a part of a fictional world as opposed to being the star but everything else seems to just orbit around and there's nothing wrong with not deciding the fate of every character you meet because as long as the world and characters are interesting enough that alone is all that's needed and much to bloodline's credit its world and characters are many things but they're never boring graphically bloodlines hasn't aged that badly it has its weaker moments like in cut scenes with any amount of character animation but in other areas it still shines quite bright for example the character models and facial animations look far better than they had any right to for a game from 2004 thanks largely to the use of valve's at the time brand new source engine when combined with high quality voice acting this goes a long way to making moments of dialogue stand out but bloodlines also deserves praise for its atmosphere its take on the streets of la is so dark and overwhelmingly sleazy but there isn't much else quite like it even a location like the local hospital feels as if it's plastered with a persistent layer of filth and grime and there's plenty of locations dirtier than the hospital this is also a world that seems to be overflowing with dark secrets just waiting to be unearthed and not just those of the supernatural for example the basement of the hospital has a blood harvesting operation the owner of the prosthetic shop collects human limbs the downtown apartment building has cameras installed in everyone's rooms in order to spy on people and so on some of these dark secrets are part of side quests but sometimes they're just there for flavor just parts of this world sitting there for you to stumble upon as for the streets themselves they feel surprisingly active and lived in it helps that their inhabitants like to move around and interact with each other or the environment as a vampire these streets are also your main feeding ground and while the mechanic of sucking blood from unexpected victims is quite simple it's also undeniably satisfying to walk the streets and find people to feed on when you need to still even better than the world are the characters that inhabit it bloodlines is full of memorable npcs there's never a sense that a character just exists to give you a side quest or dump some lore in your lap everyone you speak to is overflowing with personality and even unimportant characters like the incompetent security guard or local weapons vendor leave a lasting impression when you spend so much of a game speaking to people the fact that everyone feels worth speaking to goes a long way and there's lots of good moments of humor mixed in too and that's also something that should be acknowledged in terms of tone bloodlines isn't a very serious game it doesn't go quite far enough to be described as straight up satire but it's close and everything comes across as deliberately exaggerated from its character's personalities to its depiction of america to the way it handles the supernatural or its overly sexualized outfits everything is presented as larger than life it feels like there was a much larger focus placed on fun than on realism and i don't think that was a bad direction to take because trying to take a setting that combines things like vampires werewolves ghosts zombies mummies and whatever else haunts the knights and then present all that as realistic seems doomed to fail anyway and so often bloodlines has the feel of a cheap horror film from a bygone era it can be spooky when it wants to be spooky and locations like the ocean house hotel stand as testament to that however it can also be camp when it wants to be camp or childish about its adult content when it wants to be childish that does mean that there's plenty of things which can seem a bit cliche there's one quest where you team up with a katana wielding japanese schoolgirl to go fight a shark monster in a fish market and there's no doubt in my mind that the writers know this isn't very original but bloodlines also doesn't try too hard to be ironic about its subject matter either as you can just imagine a more modern game might be tempted to bloodlines doesn't feel the need to take time to wink at the camera and remind you that it's in on the joke instead it just sticks to being straightforward delivering its mismatch of cliches without pretense and letting you enjoy it for what it is and it is easy to enjoy if there's one criticism i have with this approach it's that the game's fourth and final location of chinatown doesn't quite hit the mark embracing horror cliches is one thing but the heavy reliance on asian stereotypes accompanied by bad accents just feels at best a bit lazy and you could easily be less charitable apart from this bloodline's desire to have fun with its subject matter just feels like the right approach and there aren't many other rpgs that commit so heavily or successfully to being light-hearted in this way it also makes for a nice change of pace to many other depictions and vampires in media which usually seem to want to wallow in mellow drama and teenage angst that said bloodlines doesn't avoid the more serious side to the vampiric condition entirely a number of characters and interactions touch on the negative consequences to this new way of unlife for example the thin bloods you meet at the santa monica beach who are miserable and alone lacking both purpose and direction or the chance encounter with a woman who recognizes you from your former life a small moment that suddenly reminds the player that you have lost something even if you don't remember it and that there are other people suffering as a result of this change too people who used to mean something to you the best example however is heather a critically injured woman you can meet in the santa monica hospital who will die without assistance and as a vampire you can provide that assistance by way of your blood through this likely well-intentioned deed you can become responsible for this person and that's a responsibility you might not have wanted i went fishing today and i caught a big one can you hear him flopping around the bathroom that's how you can tell he's fresh this is not only an interesting exploration of these darker aspects of the setting it's also an effective moment of choice and consequence where the player's actions might come back to haunt them in a way they didn't anticipate and that's the kind of thing that i think many people want from a vampire rpg but the thing about bloodlines is it shows you this darker side to its subject matter yet it leaves it up to you to make your own conclusions you can see these moments as poignant and sad you can reflect on their broader ramifications and what that means for yourself and others or you can reject all that stuff entirely in true rpg fashion and even go further by embracing your inner depravity the thin bloods who are lost and confused can be taken advantage of for some easy money your old acquaintance can be mind controlled and disposed of and heather can be your own subservient goal catching you suffer and offering you a free drink whenever you're feeling a little thirsty and so just as you can choose to see the sadder side to these moments you can likewise choose to see the funny side or just choose to take advantage of these characters vulnerabilities for your own benefits and that's nice having that choice which brings me to the quest design a lot of rpgs pride themselves on the choices they offer to players but usually this refers to narrative choice do you want to side with faction a or faction b do you want to turn this guy in or let him go do you want to be nice in this conversation or be an [ __ ] bloodline still has these choices although that's not what this game is praised for the real depth of choice in bloodlines comes from its skill system and the way quests are designed to take advantage of it quest objectives in this game rarely have a single way of achieving them instead they make frequent use of your character's skills called feats which can be used to interact with the world and unlock new possibilities you can use your social skills to persuade other people as well as to intimidate them seduce them or if you play as the right clan to just straight up mind control someone if you fancy a less subtle approach hacking can be used to gain valuable information from computers as well as plenty of less valuable information lock picking will get you past locked doors sneaking will get you past enemies and inspection will highlight both items and ways to interact with the environment these skills themselves aren't that remarkable plenty of games have some equivalent but bloodlines puts them to better use than most as a result exploration of the environment is heavily rewarded and you're going to have to explore whether you want to or not because there are no quest markers or omniscient mini-maps in this game to tell you exactly where to go instead quests give you a problem and leave you to find the solution but there's often more than one solution or just multiple paths to take you to the same destination there are other rpgs that excel in this area but there aren't very many and that's probably because this kind of open-ended game design is hard so hard in fact that a lot of modern rpgs don't even attempt it it's not a simple task to make all of these various skills feel useful and to incorporate them into the world in a way that allows characters of different builds to still be able to advance the game without falling into the trap of making everything so easy but your individual skills and character builds no longer feel rewarding but bloodlines gets this right and that makes completing quests very satisfying that said these skills aren't very balanced there's clearly an attempt to make each skill useful in its own way but like animals on a farm some skills are obviously more equal than others for some of these this is okay because while they might be better than average there's still a strong sense but you can play without them if you want this is true for persuasion and sneaking both very useful but neither feels absolutely necessary on the other hand lock picking and to a lesser degree hacking are also very useful but if you don't have at least some points invested in them the game becomes a lot more difficult and some side quests will just be locked off to you this is somewhat helped by the vampire ability blood buff which is available to all clans and can be used to boost your dexterity which boosts your lock picking this has its own problem in the blood buff is clearly overpowered but it at least helps prevent players who don't invest into lock picking from getting stuck making the near broken blood buff feel like a necessary evil still the fact that lock picking feels so essential isn't great design and when compared to many of the weaker skills the imbalance can seem extreme haggle for example is basically useless research isn't much better and intimidate and seduction and nice in theory but in practice just seem like worse versions of persuasion you also need to consider that each skill becomes more expensive to increase the more points you invest into it this means the game actively discourages you from specializing your character because by spreading your points out more you'll be able to increase more skills more times than you'd be able to by heavily investing in a select few the consequence of this is that character builds will often tend towards being jack of all trades because outside of combat skills that feels like the objectively best way to play and this also means outside of the two clans mentioned earlier that repeated play-throughs may not end up quite as different as you might expect bloodline still has great replayability and its skill system is still better than most but it would be even better if the skill system provided more rewards for unique or specialized builds and that could easily be achieved by creating more uses for high level skills and better integration of the weaker skills still any problems with bloodline skill system are far less important than the elephant in the room named combat bloodlines features both third person melee combat and first person ranged combat and neither are very good melee combat is shallow there is a system where you can do different attacks by using different directional inputs while pressing the attack button but there's no need to do this as it's no more effective than just spamming the attack button over and over and that's about the extent of melee combat in this game as a result basic enemies pose no real threat and even some named enemies can just be easily stun locked as long as you keep hitting that attack button ranged combat is arguably even worse because your accuracy is based on your ranged stat skill and aiming at enemies but missing because of rng is never fun by the game's ending your bullets might be going to the places you aim them but you have a while to go before you get there and even for a ranged focused character combat in the early and middle sections just feel like an unsatisfying mess the one thing that does add a bit of spice to all this are the vampiric abilities you can use in combat by right-clicking there is quite a large range of different abilities in game although each clan only has access to a limited selection but there's still plenty of interesting effects that can be fun to play around with these range from making enemies commit suicide to summoning animals or making people explode in a shower of blood however while these effects are pretty cool they're not very mechanically complex because most of these abilities aren't situational they tend to just be useful in all situations and because you use a shared blood pool to cast these abilities there's no reason to use a diverse range of them instead of just sticking to one single thing that works well and spending all your blood on that the fact that you change abilities by scrolling the mouse wheel which is slow and awkward just exacerbates this problem still just seeing some of these abilities in action can be pretty fun so at least there's that anyway as combat isn't the focus of bloodlines its weakness doesn't hurt the experience as much as you might expect well until you get to the game's later sections where things will start to come crumbling down it starts with the sewers in hollywood which drag on far longer than they should as you're forced to explore these familiar looking maze-like locations filled up with uninteresting enemies things get back to normal after this until you get to the final series of missions which are almost entirely long sections of nothing but combat this is bad for multiple reasons for starters it means the climax of the game focuses on the thing the game is worse at this is also the section where you might hope that having high non-combat skills would come into play and that's something that could reward specialized characters but because these sections are nothing but combat that doesn't really happen and that's even more disappointing because for most of its duration bloodlines is a game that caters to non-combat focused builds and playstyles far better than most and so the fact that it completely abandons this for its ending is a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who enjoyed this about the game the only non-combat skill that can help with this is sneak which mechanically has a similar problem to the ranged combat stats in that doing something that's effectiveness is decided by a statistic on your character sheet instead of your in-game actions doesn't lend itself to good gameplay if you raise your sneak skill even remotely high you're turned into a stealth gods that enemies somehow fail to see even when they're right next to you and it just comes across as stupid but even if you do take this approach and try to avoid combat through stealth bloodline still has several unavoidable boss fights one of which is a nightmare without a good ranged weapon [ __ ] this fight i could happily spend a long time complaining about this slimy sack of [ __ ] but i won't because i don't think that would benefit the video still i want you to know that deep within my heart i truly hate this encounter and killing this [ __ ] without a ranged weapon made for one of the worst boss fights i have ever experienced in a video game some friendly advice to any new players just pick up the flamethrower before coming here you may think you're some cool melee vamp dude with your trench coat and katana but just by a good gun or at least stuck up on some blood packs because the time this can end up taking otherwise is just not worth it as for the story it ends with its own anti-climax that i don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't played it but i think the ending is in many ways underrated it's the kind of conclusion that will rub some players the wrong way but i think it's a great fit for the setting and matches the tone of the rest of the game well while even providing some nice commentary on vampire society and its flaws anyway bloodlines is more about the journey than destination and combat and late game problems aside that journey is great i've always been of the opinion that over the years bloodlines has aged like the finest of wines in large part because a lot of the things it does so well are things that modern rpgs barely even attempt anymore like the radically altered playstyle your clan choice can have or the interaction between your character builds and the game world as well as the open-ended quest design and the way you're forced to discover things for yourself there have been many games released since that are bigger or have more graphically impressive worlds or better presentation or more dialogue options or a greater degree of narrative choice but there's still a lot to be said in favor of bloodlines from a design perspective and this type of rpg isn't very common anymore as such it's an easy game to appreciate and the original setting the memorable characters and the great atmosphere all add a lot to the experience as well there's depth to this game too if not in terms of gameplay then at least in its world you can play bloodlines multiple times and still find plenty of new things to enjoy each playthrough and there are many reasons for why you would want to play this game multiple times bloodlines firmly deserves its reputation and soon after many years of waiting this rpg classic will finally have a sequel and if it captures even a fraction of the magic bloodlines was able to so cleverly store up its sleeve rpg fans are going to be in for a treat and if it doesn't then hopefully at least the increased amount of attention on the original will remind people of what good rpg design is i mean there has to be some silver lining right anyway until next time and a big thank you to everyone who has and continues to support me on patreon this is the second video i've made now as a result of a poll where patrons could choose what game i'd tackle next and there will be a new poll next month to decide what entire series retrospective i will start working on shortly and i have to say i've got two pretty good options lined up here particularly for any fans of this game so maybe consider supporting me on patreon if you know if you want to and otherwise thank you all and good night

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 259,028

Keywords: vampire the masquerade bloodlines, vampire the masquerade bloodlines review, vampire the masquerade bloodlines retrospective, bloodlines review, bloodlines retrospective, vampire the masquerade bloodlines gameplay, vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2, vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2 review, bloodlines critique, bloodlines analysis

Id: GZSHdCyIfZU

Length: 33min 39sec (2019 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020