REVIEW: VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES (2004)

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a 2004 first person/third person RPG set in White Wolf publishing's "World of Darkness" tabletop RPG universe (first established in 1991). Having never played the tabletop game, I can't be entirely sure how accurately the video game translates the source material, but the benefit of having a decade old pool of characters and lore to draw from is apparent. The game is so rich in story that I was totally engrossed from the beginning, and became almost obsessive in discovering lore. It's good, really good.

White Wolf publishing is responsible for the traditional RPG

Guess what! Vampires are real. And they aren't the glittering pretty boys of the twilight universe, but closer to the nihilistic shadow empire of conflicting politics and backstabbing featured in the Blade series of films. Not only that, but all those bogey men you're mother threatened would take you away if you didn't finish your dinner? Yeah, they're real too. Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, Ghosts, Supernatural serial killers; not only do they exist, but you will have to contend with them throughout the course of the game.

This...

... Not this.

You are thrown into the the rich story of the game head first as a newly "sired" vampire, a "neonate". One moment, you're a regular human being involved in a romantic encounter; the next, you're the walking, talking undead. This a no-no. The "Camarilla", a vampire sect who are in control of Los Angeles, exist to enforce the laws of the vampire, known as "the masquerade", wherein drawing unnecessary attention to your kind is an offense punishable by death. Unfortunately for your sire, this includes "embracing" a random civilian without the permission of the vampire prince, Simon Lacroix; and, the game opens with the execution of your sire for violating the masquerade. You are reluctantly spared due to the objections of Nines Rodriguez; folk hero, freedom fighter, and influential member of the "Anarch" movement. The Anarch's are a political faction of some prominence who work against the rule of the Camarilla, styled after classic resistance movements and figures such as Che Guevara. The Camarilla and the Anarch Movement have an uneasy truce; they both abhor the killing of innocents, and any action that will draw unnecessary attention to the Vampire community. The tension between the two groups arises as a result of the Camarilla's desire to enforce their will over others, as opposed to the premium that the Anarch community places on individuality and self-determination.

Smiling Jack and Damsel, two Anarch revolutionaries

Hands where I can see 'em!

The Sabbat, on the other hand, are wild animals. Totally opposed to Camarilla rule, but without the moral restrictions of the Anarch movement. They kill indiscriminately, shoot up buildings, and otherwise disregard the rules of the masquerade with no fear of the consequence. They sire new vampires at will to inflate their ranks, and often these new recruits have no idea that they are vampires. They exist solely to die as foot soldiers for the cause. The Sabbat are the unambiguous bad guys of the game. They don't really have any redeeming qualities. They aren't freedom fighters like the Anarch movement, but rather seek to usurp the authority of the Camarilla to supplant it with their own totalitarian rule. The Anarch movement and the Camarilla movement are better, but measurably so. They still seek to manipulate the protagonist for their own means, and you have to take whatever they say with a grain of salt. If you ask the newly minted "thin-blood" seer on the beach who you can trust, neither of them will warrant a mention, and ultimately you'll need to temper any political alliance you develop with a desire for self-preservation.

The leader of the Sabbat in VtMB... Hmmm, I wonder if he's a bad guy

The Camarilla, the Anarchs, and the Sabbat are all known as "sects"; basically, broad political affiliations whose members hail from a variety of vampire "Clans". The old adage "You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family" comes to mind when thinking of the difference between Sects and Clans. Clans are basically what type of vampire you are. What you look like, what your special abilities are. Each clan can trace it's lineage to an "Antediluvian" (pre-biblical flood) vampire, who themselves diverged from the original vampire Caine (yes, the biblical Cain). How much of this ancient vampire origin lore is accurate is questionable, but what is clear is that in modern times your vampire clan determines your unique vampire traits, your strengths and your weaknesses. The clans are based on existing archetypes established from vampire literature and media. The Ventrue, for example, are the aristocratic, aloof vampire nobility that would be right at home in an Anne Rice novel. Simon Lacroix, the vampire prince of Los Angeles, is a ventrue. The ventrue are able to "dominate", that is, they wield the ability to bend other beings to their will through the force of their mind.

Simon Lacroix is the Vampire Prince of L.A., an aristocratic "Ventrue" in the vein of an Anne Rice novel

The Nosferatu, on the other hand, are a monstrous looking clan of vampires who inhabit the city sewer system, based on (you guessed it) the 1922 German film Nosferatu. For them, to even be seen by a mortal is a violation of the Masquerade; as such, their abilities are focused on stealth. They stick to the alleys, have the ability to turn invisible (obfuscate), make use of a shadow internet of their own devising called SHREKnet (presumably named after the actor Max Schreck who portrayed Count Orlock in Nosferatu), and are basically the intelligence branch of the vampire world.

Count Orlock, from "Nosferatu" (1922)

A member of the "Nosferatu" clan in VtMB

Which clan you choose, and which sect you align yourself with will alter the course of the game and gives the game a massive amount of replayability. When I played through, I chose to align myself with the Anarchs. As such, the final stage of my game involved inflitrating the Lacroix tower, and defeating the foreboding Camarilla enforcer known as "The Sheriff", a massive, oaken vampire with a final-fantasy-sized sword who can turn into a gigantic bat, before blowing up Lacroix tower. If, on the other hand, I had formed an alliance with the Camarilla, the ending of my game would have been different. Similarly, the clan you choose will open different dialogue options and different paths to completing the games objective.

The Sheriff, flexing a muscle

Not so smug now, eh Lacroix?!

If you play as a "normal" looking vampire, you may find the Nosferatu clan off-putting, and are given the option to critique their appearance. If you play as a Nosferatu, you will be granted unique dialogue options to help you deal with the insular, secretive clan. Playing as a Malkavian, a group of vampires defined by their insanity, will grant you dialogue options from out of left field, the result of your diseased mind. When I initially started the game, rather then directly choose my vampire clan I underwent the game's questionnaire to determine who I should play as. It selected the Nosferatu clan for me, and while they were undoubtedly awesome looking, and I do enjoy the stealth aspects of the game, I chose to return to the menu and select my clan manually wishing for a more typical gameplay experience for my first time. I wanted to be able to walk among the mortals, and didn't want to stick to the sewer system eating rats.

Jeanette/Therese. A... Multifaceted Malkavian

One of the problems with the game is a flip side to the game's strengths. Namely, the game grants you all these opportunities to customize your character strengths and weaknesses by allocating the experience points that you earn by completing missions. So you can spend all your character points crafting yourself into a stealthy, lock picking, computer hacking savant, but eventually you are going to have to fight a gigantic slug boss against whom stealth and computer-hacking are useless. You'll be kicking yourself and wishing you had built up your firearms and damage resistance then. I put most of my skill points into making my character a melee menace, extremely capable with a sword and with a high defense rating, but their were some boss battles where it was just extremely unwise to get near your opponent, and I ended up machine gunning them from a distance despite my piss-poor firearm rating.

   

Maybe I can sneak past?

The game excels at blending the age old conventions of gothic horror with the modern twists we've come to expect in RPG's, creating a truly unique gothic-punk environment that is a pleasure to discover and explore at your leisure. Biblical references, and vampire tropes that have existed since "The Vampyre" was published in 1819 blend seamlessly with computer hacking and gun-toting violence. The streets of Los Angeles serve as the game's central hub. You will communicate with the various characters who populate the world to uncover new quests, necessary for earning experience. Many of the side quests in the game are yours to discover, and the game will not force feed them to you. For example, I had forgotten entirely to check my computer in the Santa Monica apartment that serves as a home base until late in the game, when I discovered a series of unfulfilled quests relayed through e-mail. At one point, I decided to talk to a bartender who I had previously overlooked, only to discover another new quest. These quests aren't necessary to complete the game. You won't find the experience points you've missed all-essential for defeating the final stages of the game. Instead, these hidden side quests serves as rewards for your own curiosity, and it's nice to be rewarded in this way. If there's no point to exploring the nooks and crannies of a game world, the world can quickly get stale and you'll find yourself playing through the main quest with blinders on. This is not a problem in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

An atmospheric horror environment

I'm no doctor, but this seems sanitary

You aren't granted total freedom to do whatever you want in the game. Their are a few game mechanics which exist to police your actions - namely, humanity points, and Masquerade points. The vampires in the game are engaged in a constant struggle with their animalistic nature, which they personify as "the beast". Succumbing to the beast is a negative thing. A vampire will basically give up all self control, attacking and feeding on anything within range, all thought of upholding the vampire moral code totally flushed down the toilet. The more humanity points you lose, the less control you will have over your inner beast, but it's entirely possible to enter a frenzy even without a low humanity rating. You will lose control over the player character, and watch passively as it beats someone nearby into a pulp and drains their blood. It's comparable to getting black out drunk. One second, I was talking to a bail bondsman; the next, he was on the ground, dead, and the police were looking for me for a "criminal violation". You can obtain a criminal violation by doing anything illegal, regardless of whether it costs you a humanity point or a masquerade point, but it's easy to give law enforcement the slip by disappearing into the sewer system. The cops won't follow you down there. You lose masquerade points when you reveal to the public that you are a vampire, mainly if you are caught feeding by a bystander. The person you feed on seems to fall into a trance, so it's only by being spotted by a third party that you risk losing masquerade points. If you lose all your masquerade points, the game ends; but, the game provides you various opportunities for "masquerade redemption" by eliminating a problematic vampire, or convincing a mortal to forget what they've seen.

Police officers patrol the streets of L.A., but that's okay because I'm sure you're a law abiding Vampire...

The combat in the game is simple, but fun. On your part, it mainly involves aiming at the enemy and clicking the mouse button, whether you're wielding a melee weapon or a gun; but behind the scenes there is math going on that takes into account your stats, and the stats of your opponent. Utilizing your vampire powers will give you boosts to stats and affects combat in a variety of ways; Celerity, for example, increases your speed, allowing you to hit an enemy as he's flying through the air and effortless avoid attacks. You're vitae meter serves as a kind of mana pool: it drains as you use special abilities, and is refueled by drinking blood.

A tasty midnight snack is a good "pick-me-up"

Occasionally the game will take you away from the action on the main drags of Los Angeles, and deposit you in "Special Stages" where you will need to complete a mission. These stages serve as a refreshing break from the regular action of the game; they're almost mini games within the game itself. Early on you are tasked with visiting a haunted hotel, and their are some genuine scares as you explore your way into the basement. Doors will slam shut behind you, painting will fly off the wall as you come near, and the ghostly apparition of a murdered woman will guide you into the bowels of the building as you uncover the dark history of the hotel through journal excerpts and diary entries.

A chandelier falls in the haunted hotel. Is it too late to cancel our reservation, dear?

Infiltrating "The Dane" a boat which is crawling with police officers, will require you to use all your vampire stealthiness. Later, you will be sent to investigate the mansion of a Malkavian vampire named Grot, where you will have to read obscure riddles in order to solve puzzles and progress deeper into the mansion. To me, this was the most frustrating part of the game, as I have a barely suppressed hatred for puzzles. I just don't enjoy them that much, even if they're not particularly difficult to solve. But, many online commentators have stated that this is their favorite part of the game, which goes to show that the game has something for everyone.

A candle stick puzzle in the Malkavian Mansion

When all else fails, stab a book shelf in frustration

Despite the dark subject matter that goes hand in hand with being a blood-drinking creature of the night, the game is actually jam packed with irreverent humour. Like many of the side quests, the humour isn't jammed in your face and can often be found off the beaten track of  the game. Some of the jokes are subtle, some are ridiculously brash. As part of your character creation, you can choose a special "History" trait regarding what your vampire did as a mortal, which will influence your characters strengths and weaknesses. The Nosferatu have a history called "Video Game Publisher" where "you relish a sad pleasure in ruining promising game developing studios with impossible deadlines". On a computer terminal in the back of a smut shop, you can read some hilariously graphic and ludicrous pornographic scenarios for video tapes the shop has on back order. An address next to a locked doorway reads "1337", a reference to the leet-speak prevalent in some parts of the Internet. At one point while exploring a museum I turn a corner and nearly have a heart attack as I'm face to face with a velociraptor. It doesn't move, and it dawns on me that it's stuffed. A nearby note reveals that the night staff of the museum left the raptor there to frighten the day staff.

AHHHHHHHHhhh.. ahh... Oh.

LEET!

Activision arcade games! Pitfall, Call of Duty, Rampage!

The soundtrack is fully fleshed out and incredibly appropriate to the environments. The main theme that plays over the menus is ominous and inviting, hinting at the depth of the game itself. Even the stuff that I wouldn't necessarily put on my ipod, like gothic-scream-metal from groups such as "die my darling", is totally appropriate when you're in a gothic-punk night club run by vampires. Yes... This is exactly what I would expect to hear if I were to enter a club called "confessions" in what appears to be an abandoned cathedral. I found myself developing a taste for musical genres that I hadn't really explored in the past. The only problem is that there is ONE song per environment. If you enter a new bar, it will have a cool song playing, but it will be playing on a loop repeatedly every time you enter the bar. Maybe it's fitting, as the club-goers who populate these bars have ONE dance move. They look utterly ridiculous, jumping frantically and waving their arms like they've caught on fire. I couldn't help but laugh every time I saw the spastic, unfamiliar movement; especially when a group of dancers got together on the floor, flailing like a group of half-lit synchronized swimmers.

  

Cutting a rug! Look at those moves!

Should I call an ambulance?

The game certainly does have it's flaws. For one thing, modern gamers will be disappointed at the almost total lack of appearance customization for your character. Whichever vampire clan you choose to play with, you're basically stuck with the default appearance for that clan, and some of them look downright goofy. Throughout the game you will be able to purchase new armor from the vendors scattered throughout the game, and this goes a ways toward making your character look cooler, but you will have to play for several hours before this even becomes an option. That's really what it boils down to though, the ability to make your character look... Well... Cool. It seems vain, and somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but when I'm going to sink multiple hours into a game I want my character to look cool. I don't want to be forced to look at a semi-silly default character skin, and I'd be lying if I said that my character's appearance didn't influence my choice for which vampire clan to play as, as much as their stats and clan history did.  

This problem carries over to the non-player characters of the game. The streets are teeming with homeless people, and I'm pretty sure that the entire homeless population of the game shares two character models (male/female). This extends to all the areas of the game. If you're in a goth/vampire bar, you're going to see the same three or four club kids dancing with... themselves. If you're on the streets, you're going to see the same three or four yuppies walking by you again and again. I'd like to think that this is the game's way of delivering some biting satire on the homogenization of culture and the very human need to conform and assimilate, but that's giving it way too much credit. In reality, it mostly has to do with the limitations a decade old game had to work within due to time constraints, budget constraints, and the constraints of the hardware that was available for gaming back in 2004. If I was reviewing this game in 2004, I very well might have been praising it for the diversity of the NPC's rather than the lack thereof.

You two must be sisters...

A glitch in the matrix, perhaps?

To be perfectly honest, the lack of diversity isn't even that distracting. I noticed it, but it wasn't a sticking point, and the variety of environments open for exploration were ample distraction. It's when it happens in the cinematic cut-scenes, which are few and far between, that it's really distracting. Really? There are five people in this cut-scene, and you're going to make two of them the exact same character model? The first time this happened, I was willing to overlook it. Maybe they were Matrix-style "creepy monster twins", that's not beyond the realm of possibility, right? But by the second time a cut-scene didn't bother to ensure that identical character models weren't present, I had to admit that it was some lazy work.

Creepy vampire twins, or lazy game design?

Beyond that, there is some random glitchiness in the game which will, momentarily, harm the immersion you experience. At one point in the game, two random NPC's collided while walking on the sidewalk and became... Trapped inside each other. If I left the area and returned hours later, after completing quests somewhere else entirely, the unwillingly conjoined twins were still there. They remained in that spot for the rest of the game, struggling to disentangle themselves.

  

Killllll usssss.... Killlll usssss.....

The supposedly isolated alleyways of the game, where you can corner an NPC and feed on their blood to restore your vitae levels, sometimes randomly became party central, filling up with random pedestrians and homeless people as you are feeding. This became an annoyance, as being caught feeding on a human being is a violation of the Masquerade, and a criminal offence which the police will come after you for.

A restaur- er, an alleyway.

The thing is, all of these flaws and glitches that compile throughout the game don't really matter much in the grand scheme of thing. There's so much good in this game that it offsets the bad; but, it's not even about that. It's not as though I was willing to overlook the bad things because they were counterbalanced by the good things; to be honest, I barely noticed the glitches and repeating character models. They just weren't that distracting at all.

I had a blast playing this game, and would recommend it to anyone who asks. It's steeped in such interesting lore that you will feel compelled to uncover it; to explore and interrogate until you get a grasp on the history and politics of the vampire world. The environments of the game are beautiful in their grittiness and simplicity. It's not a "busy" game world, visually. It's straightforward, but with a remarkable amount of depth. You won't get lost, it won't take you an hour to find your objective, and you won't be needlessly frustrated. But, you'll actually want to go off the beaten path to see what's out there, even though you aren't forced to. If you like the modern incarnations of franchises like Deus Ex, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls, then the gameplay of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines will be familiar and pleasing to you. It's a crime that the game hasn't spawned a series of successful sequels like those other titles; if the "World of Darkness" setting were translated to modern times, with modern graphics and character modelling, I truly believe that it would be a blockbuster. It's important to note that I played the game with the unofficial patch developed by the fan community in the decade since the game was originally released, and that upon it's initial release the game was considered to be buggy, so I have to recommend that if you play this game, you should download the unofficial patch, which isn't hard to find after a cursory google search.