244: The Last Masquerade

Recommended Videos

CD-R

New member
Mar 1, 2009
1,355
0
0
I've been wanting to play this game for awhile bu I heard it doesn't work on 64 bit operating systems though. Is that still the case?
 

CD-R

New member
Mar 1, 2009
1,355
0
0
The Random One said:
It's available on GoG, ain't it? I might pick it up. Then again, my computer complains at ten-year-old games (Deus Ex). I'm afraid a six-year-old game might push it over the edge.

I need a real video card...
They have Redemption on GOG not bloodlines. http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/vampire_the_masquerade_redemption Redemption plays more like a Diablo game. I couldn't really get into Bloodlines. I wouldn't worry about video card issues with Good Old Games. They patch the games so they run on modern systems, hence the real appeal behind GOG.com. I never noticed any problems playing Arcanum though. The best steampunk game ever made because it doesn't say the words steam punk once. There need to be more rpgs set in 19th century fantasy settings.
 

bobknowsall

New member
Aug 21, 2009
819
0
0
Doc Cannon said:
I must name Borderlands then for the minimal amount of freedom I expected back then. I mean, there was a lot of hype when I found out about the game, so I was kind of imagined some serious free roaming (to be honest I wanted a smaller GTA-like city, but what I wanted isn't relevant), a lot of buildings with innocent families to feed from and being able to break down wooden doors. Hell, I would have been horribly happy with Haloesque repeating-buildings as long as you could go in and suck the lifeforce out of a dude watching his TV at 10pm. You know, the kind of thing you could do in Oblivion if you were transformed into a vampire. That's pretty much what I expected: a Morrowind-like/Oblivion-like game.

And about the rules... it's mostly that I hated what they did with the disciplines. I mean, dementation makes people shoot themselves? Seriously? Not cool, man.
So wait a second, it wasn't choice you wanted, but freedom of movement? 'Cause Borderlands's "choices" extended to character customization and not much else.

Well, I thought it was a cute little touch on their part. Dementation's effects are a bit too subtle for game combat, so I think they adapted the source material fairly well. They made changes, but that doesn't make the game any worse.
 

The Madman

New member
Dec 7, 2007
4,404
0
0
Vampire: Bloodlines remains one of my all time favorite games.

I could go on a rant about why I love the game so much, but an article by Rock Paper Shotgun awhile back summed it all up better than I ever could, so I'll just quote that and add a link at the end.

Not many games bother with such wide open scope. Bloodlines does. And it does what a select few videogames have articulated: giving us sudden, direct access to something wonderful and alien. But it's drama, and pseudo-social, as much as it is videogame action. It is filled with brilliant artificial people. Bloodlines allows us - like a participant in some larger soap opera - to make decisions about what might happen to those individuals. In this case, it's always something wonderfully dark. Bloodlines manages to be funny, humane (if not human), brutal, horrifying, and thrilling, all at once. Its vampires are larger than life and yet nevertheless alive. Their twisted traits come tumbling out in excellent dialogue and strange quests. It is heavy on heavy themes, ideas that might otherwise pervert the purity of any other action game. Seduction, sedition, schizophrenia, propaganda, pornography, purgatory: these thematic notions are the lifeblood of vampire fiction, and they're essential what's going on in here. The struggle between the vampire castes is at once noble and despicable, and picking your route between its pitfalls is a delight. Ultimately, though, this is about exploration: about seeing something out of the ordinary. Toxic tourism in vampiric clubland.

Bloodlines is something like an action soap-opera. I truly wish I could say that of more games. So few games have attempted to access this most natural of game approaches: analogy of the real world, with conversation and violence intermingled, rather than simply delivering uninterrupted carnage, or endless management. These 'immersive sim' games are tough to make, granted, but when you play something like Bloodlines they also feel like they're the games we deserve. Game developers often talk about the strange sense of entitlement that gamers seem to bring to their hobby, but when you taste games like this, it becomes entirely understandable. To be to be stealthy or stabby, seductive or violent, well, it's almost like the game is spoiling us with options. After ten hours in Bloodlines you're struck by the nagging concern: why aren't other studios reaching for the stars like this? Even Bioshock and Stalker seem vapid in their shooter-obsessions.


http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/11/forever-young-the-tragedy-of-bloodlines/

I really, really wish this game had done better than it had, as I much prefer its take on the traditional rpg more than the more open-world style that's become the most common and popular with Bethesda's success. Bethesda focuses on making 'worlds' and 'environments' rather than people, which is what Bloodlines did.
 

Trivun

Stabat mater dolorosa
Dec 13, 2008
9,831
0
0
I never really played through any of the World of Darkness-set games or anything when I was younger. I wasn't a massive tabletop gaming fan, and so the whole series just passed me by. I never even bothered with it when I did finally start to show an interest in tabletop gaming, preferring to stick to the strategy battle route with Warhammer 40,000. So I never ended up playing Bloodlines, or it's spiritual prequel Redemption, either.

That said, both of the PC games set in the World of Darkness recently began to pique my interest as I decided that maybe they were worth a look, after all. I'll freely admit now that I am something of a fan of games that are broken in some way. I like to spot the flaws that could have been something great, for example, the slightly broken combat and vehicle mechanics of Enter The Matrix, or everything Yahtzee mentioned in his Alone In The Dark article.

As an RPG fan I still want to see what the Vampire: The Masquerade games have to offer. Maybe they'll be good, maybe not. Judging by this article I guess that Bloodlines really does fit the theme of being something that could have been great, but was sadly let down by some extremely avoidable flaws. Then again, in the modern day, gamers want so much in their games that the developers do end up on a thin line between disappointing the fans and trying to do too much with too little time. Troika are only partially to blame, at the end of the day, since they were somewhat forced to do what they could with so little time. Activision have a lot to answer for. But it's good to see such a dedicated fanbase willing to put their time, effort and money into turning a flawed masterpiece into one of the keynote games of the past decade.
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
Doc Cannon said:
And about the rules... it's mostly that I hated what they did with the disciplines. I mean, dementation makes people shoot themselves? Seriously? Not cool, man.
You want Dementation like it's in the rules?

Ok...Level 4 Confusion : I'm rolling PER+AWA on targets of your Willpower. So that's roughly 6d10 against targets of 6. Average rolls would get 3/4 successes - which means a week or so of being catatonic unless you can burn willpower per action to do something.

Or Level 5 Total Insanity: 5 Temporary Insanities for that same period, let's say Nictophobia, Schizophrenia, Quixotism, Gephyrophilia and OCD.

Now, these don't take blood to activate, just eye-contact.

Dementation is about shattering minds. It's taking all your savegames and skating a magnet over them.

Be thankful they didn't have Potence 6: Flick, or Vicissitude.
 

DistinctlyBenign

New member
Dec 24, 2008
127
0
0
holy uncanny coincidence batman.

I am installing Bloodlines as I post this and have been before I just stubled upon this article.

I spent the last week playing Arcanum, another great Trokia game, and remembered that I had the CD's for this laying around and I never finished it.

Actually my RPG group is starting up a Vampire game in a couple weeks 'cuz our last game just ended too. I'm gonna roll up a Malkavian just because bloodlines lets you talk to a stop sign if your a malk and that's all kinds of cool.

Finding this article on the Escapists homepage was all kinds of uncanny to me.

That all said, I love bloodlines, despite all its flaws. Then again, I'm a sucker for tone and story over gameplay, so I could mostly ignore them.
 

Doc Cannon

I hate custom titles.
Feb 3, 2010
247
0
0
bobknowsall said:
So wait a second, it wasn't choice you wanted, but freedom of movement? 'Cause Borderlands's "choices" extended to character customization and not much else.
I was actually naming Borderlands for the size of its maps and freedom to go back and forth, if we are talking about freedom of choices and freedom of movement I'd say I expected it to be a lot more like Morrowind.

The_root_of_all_evil said:
Doc Cannon said:
You want Dementation like it's in the rules?
No, but it's not a "killing" discipline, they should have gone with something like a random effect on the target (paralyze in fear, go berserk, etc).
The point is that I feel some disciplines were not handled as they should have. Maybe you do, but I felt some were oversimplified and they changed their real objective.
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
Doc Cannon said:
The_root_of_all_evil said:
Doc Cannon said:
You want Dementation like it's in the rules?
No, but it's not a "killing" discipline, they should have gone with something like a random effect on the target (paralyze in fear, go berserk, etc).
The point is that I feel some disciplines were not handled as they should have. Maybe you do, but I felt some were oversimplified and they changed their real objective.
It's a difficult task to transition. DDO & Balder's Gate takes HUGE liberties with the rules, (And both Bloodlines and Redemption uses Blood as Mana, basically) but Malkav's gift is actually far more useful in the game than it is in the TT. If you start a Malk in the TT, you've basically got Dark Fate for free without any benefits, especially when you're up against Toreador Aura-Charm, Ventrue Charm Per Second, Brujah/Gangrel DPS and Nos Summon/Info.

In the end, most Malk powers are used in Seduction/Feeding or Torture anyway, so cutting to the chase seems like a good idea.

(Rosemary always used to put her victims into Hysteria before she fed off them, just to help their minds break.)
 

Doc Cannon

I hate custom titles.
Feb 3, 2010
247
0
0
The_root_of_all_evil said:
Yes, if it was taken just like it was in the P&P rpg it would suck (or at least be terribly complicated), but I would still prefer a permanent paralyze, or making the guy run away from you in panic or an attack-your-friends effect (even with a random chance of suicide if you must), so it would be more in line with the idea of the power.
But it was not only about dementation, auspex was too simple, potence wasn't permanent and many other changes (especially regarding the different levels of the disciplines). Sure some things can't be done in the game, but I think many were meant to balance fights and social interaction, which should be balanced by making them equally important/difficult, not by making social characters stronger than they should be in combat.

But that's just how I see the game based on my experiences on the pen & paper game. (I always wanted to play a Malkavian though... too bad I moved on to nWoD now).
 

vortexgods

New member
Apr 24, 2008
82
0
0
Hi, there is a fan created patch that wasn't created by "Hitler" that will allow one of the best RPGs ever created to run under Win 64.

http://iain.cx/articles/bloodlines/

It works wonderfully and is a work of genius and artistry (that actually fixes a very simple problem, but I appreciate it none the less).

In regards to the True Patch, I know conservatives love to say everyone is Hitler nowadays (Thank you Glenn "Dusty Roads" Beck!) but it's not pizza made by Hitler. It's soup made by the Soup Nazi. The main reason because unpleasant as he was, the Soup Nazi never killed anyone. I would totally eat soup by the Soup Nazi and not feel guilty, I'd be like Kramer telling him how misunderstood he was.

Oh, and I would totally eat delicious pizza made by Hitler, but I would probably shoot the SOB before he could finish making it. But if he had finished it already, I would totally eat it next to his cooling corpse. I might even say something like, "You were an evil murderer, and I'm glad I killed you, but you make damn fine pizza."
 

The Madman

New member
Dec 7, 2007
4,404
0
0
Doc Cannon said:
But that's just how I see the game based on my experiences on the pen & paper game. (I always wanted to play a Malkavian though... too bad I moved on to nWoD now).
Your loss, the way Malkavian are done in the game is absolutely brilliant. Probably some of the best dialogue I've ever seen in a game, seriously, your character if you play a Malkavian is absolutely batshit insane and only gets worse as the game goes on. Add to that the vague prophesy hidden in your own dialogue options and you've got some truly brilliant stuff. The reactions you get are memorable as well, ranging from intrigue to frustration and even fear.

And you can drive people insane as a Malkavian. The most powerful dementation ability allows you to drive people mad, making them attack their own allies before committing suicide. Earlier abilities include simply making someone afraid or paralyzing them with terror.

But it's the dialogue that's best. There are a few occasions where you get to influence peoples thoughts in more subtle ways, and if you take the option to get a ghoul at one point in the game she'll slowly begin to go mad as well. Extremely well done!
 
Feb 13, 2008
19,430
0
0
Trying to do all the powers in V:tM would have been close to impossible though. If you look at the sheer work that went into Dark Corners, capturing Vertigo, Schizophrenia and Hysteria - trying to bring in certain "downtime" powers would have made things impossible for a newbie to understand. Changing them all to be EQ-like got it a lot more converts, despite narking some of the purists.

Doc Cannon said:
But that's just how I see the game based on my experiences on the pen & paper game. (I always wanted to play a Malkavian though... too bad I moved on to nWoD now).
Yeah, I loathed the idea of Requiem, especially when it turned out to be a re-boot with toned down powers (What was wrong with Temporis? :))

The major problem with WoD (apart from the insane problems at high/low end characters) was that the backstory spread over 7 different source chapters...which then got re-wrote, re-edited and everyone had the "We actually rule the world" bit. And excellent ideas like Clan Giovanni, The Syndicate, Soulforging, Pentex, Ascenscion got bogged down in stupid rules.

And that's before the sparkly vampires came in...can you imagine Cullen in WoD?

Actually...A Malkavian with Suicidal Obsession Mimicry Complex....Hmmmm
 

DistinctlyBenign

New member
Dec 24, 2008
127
0
0
Doc Cannon said:
But that's just how I see the game based on my experiences on the pen & paper game. (I always wanted to play a Malkavian though... too bad I moved on to nWoD now).
Wait, they removed Malk's in nWoD?

I don't pretend to follow WoD, all I really know about nWoD is now theres a source WoD book and a book for the game you want to play, but if they took out Malk's I'll stick with the Masquerade.

Actually, I'll stick with the Masquerade anyways, since that's the game my group is familiar with and we have the book for, but my point being now I'll stick to it in a 'won't even look into nWoD' sense.
 

AngryPuppy

New member
Feb 18, 2010
262
0
0
Gildan Bladeborn said:
Snip some more
Wow. Redfaced now. It's been so long since I been to that site I didn't even realize they were the same person. Thanks for pointing that out man.
 

rddj623

"Breathe Deep, Seek Peace"
Sep 28, 2009
644
0
0
I had heard this game had the potential to be a masterpiece but just never quite made it there. Nice to get a look as to why.
 

The Youth Counselor

New member
Sep 20, 2008
1,004
0
0
DistinctlyBenign said:
Doc Cannon said:
But that's just how I see the game based on my experiences on the pen & paper game. (I always wanted to play a Malkavian though... too bad I moved on to nWoD now).
Wait, they removed Malk's in nWoD?

I don't pretend to follow WoD, all I really know about nWoD is now theres a source WoD book and a book for the game you want to play, but if they took out Malk's I'll stick with the Masquerade.

Actually, I'll stick with the Masquerade anyways, since that's the game my group is familiar with and we have the book for, but my point being now I'll stick to it in a 'won't even look into nWoD' sense.
In the New World of Darkness Malkav isn't one of the first vampires who was diablerized by his children, he is just a Ventrue leader of a fanatical cult! The nWOD is an awful angsty mess that contracts several pathogen related illnesses to players.

....

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is one of my favorite games. "Flawed masterpiece" definitely describes the whole experience adequately. It is a great game, but it could have been the perfect game.

Among the many stupid decisions by executives it was released on the same day as Half-Life 2 which killed many initial sales by money conscious consumers. Upon release, many bugs aside I actually enjoyed it more than Half-Life 2. (I can't believe I just wrote that, because the Half-Life series is my favorite series.) During initial playthrough the only signs that the product was rushed and unfinished were the bugs that included cloth physics that made all fabrics shoot upwards as if characters were Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, everyday objects that killed characters upon standing upon them, expressionless faces during combat despite the advance Source animations, crashes, disappearing objects, and cutscenes that were clearly rough animatics. By the time I reached the last act however, it began to resort to repetitive sewers and copy/paste skyscraper mapping.

However the bugs and final act do not detract from the brilliantly presented story, proper use of a sandbox environment, best voice acting I've ever seen in a game, massive cast of characters that I cared about and will remember for years to come, and engaging gameplay that presents so many different options. It could have been the next Deus Ex. If only Activision had not pressed as hard as it could on Troika's gas pedal to predictably have them careening off the edge of a cliff, and then blame the car.

For those who have not played the game, it is definitely worth checking out. And for those wondering where to buy, a lot of people brought up its price on Steam. But I would say buy it used or pirate the game. Whoa! Did he just suggest an illegal action? If it breaks the rules of the forum, I will retract that statement. However in this instance I feel it is not only justifiable but more more morally sound than a legal purchase.

I bought the game brand new at full price. I was later sick to my stomach when I found out that my money didn't go to pay the developers who worked hard on this, but instead went to soulless businessmen who fired all of those developers then took their hard work. I fully know Godwin's Law and how nazi/Hitler comparison arguments potentially ruin discussions but we've already had a sucessful use of one in this thread so I'll make another. Paying Activision for Bloodlines is like making donations to the Nazi Party in order to enter a Bat Mitzvah. The purge of Troika, Kotick's sparkling personality, attempt to stop Brutal Legend's release, monetization of Battle.net, push to end dedicated servers and recent firing of Infinity Ward's heads have made me boycott Activision.
 

Saeko

New member
Mar 10, 2010
1
0
0
lockeslylcrit said:
I agree with you there. If I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I definitely (and always have since I started playing VtM:B years ago) pick the one that stays true to what the game was rather than what the game could have been.
Actually the unnoficial patch has the option(it has been doing it for a long time now) of either only fixing bugs, or fixing them and restoring missing content.
 

AwesomeNinjaPowers

New member
May 31, 2009
297
0
0
I love this game no matter what anyone tries to tell me =3 I got this game for christmas 2004 (thank you mother for listening to me for once) and I still play it. I mean how often does anybody still play a game nearly 7 years after you got it?

Don't get me wrong it's not the perfect game, but it's like the guy said a 'flawed masterpiece' and even though some of the flaws are pretty WTF? it still works, for me at least, I mean come on the writing was genius, the voice acting top notch and the quality of voice actors was simply astonishing, plus it built up a story and an atmosphere that could suck you in till you've been playing for 3 days straight and you can't even tell what colour your eyes are cause they're so bloodshot. I love this game and I wait in hope for that MMO that's supposedly in development, (according to wikipedia due for launch this year, yeah won't hold my breath on tha one), will be half as good.

Plus none of the vamps sparkle.

Yeah I went there