Games of the decade: Bloodlines

Vampire or chearleader?

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is without a doubt one of my all time favorite games. The game was rushed through its final stages of development, which resulted in having a lot of bugs. Luckily the game was patched by the community that quickly sprung up around the game.

The game takes place in the table-top RPG World of Darkness setting, more specifically the Vampire the Masquerade setting. It is a roleplaying game that i have always loved. It is incredibly difficult to play as it is intended, but when you get it right, its just awesome. Bloodlines managed to actually get the setting just right. Even though the video game focuses a lot on combat an vampire powers, it also shows the World of Darkness as it was intended. Humanity is slowly slipping away, and the world is in the gutter. Humans are focusing on core desires; sex, drugs, violence, all the while mythical beings like Vampires hunt the streets at night.

The video game managed to mix a good narrative, with an awesome sense of actually being able to affect the setting. The visual style was unique and dialog is everywhere, and it is very well written. Not only do you get the sense that your dialog choices actually matter, you also get an abundance of dialog options to choose from. These options help define your character, both to your self, and to the world you inhabit. It is this mixture of an awesome setting, a good narrative, and the feeling that you are actually right there in the world (some call this ‘immersion’…others ‘presence’).

The game did have a lot of flaws. One being that it was nearly impossible to beat the end bosses. Also it had crash bugs in abundance, one which was so bad that no one could play the game past a certain point unless you had the community patch installed. The game simple crashed every time you completed a specific level. But even though the game had these faults, i still think it was one of the most visionary and awesome games of this decade.

A few days ago i discovered that several mods have now been released to the game. Some even changing the core gameplay completely. I haven’t had time to play any of these yet, but i know i will be spending a great deal of January doing just that.

If you want to read more about the development process, and why it went wrong, you can read this awesome interview over at Rock, Paper Shotgun.