November 16th 2004, one of the most influential video games to ever be created hits the stores: Half Life 2. That same day another game was released also on Valve’s brand new source engine called Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines.
Valve’s Half Life 2 which felt innovative, fresh and was like a step ahead in the video game industry. On the other end, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines came out full of bugs and poor performance to probably the hardest release day competition for any game ever as it came out the same timeframe as Half Life 2, Halo 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3. VTMB was a diamond in the rough (and there was A LOT of rough) and despite the jank it created a cult following rarely seen in video game communities and fandoms.
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is action RPG video game developed by Troika Games and published by Activision based on White Wolf Publishing’s tabletop role playing game “Vampire: The Masquerade” based on their “World of Darkness” setting.
The game follows the adventure of a vampire fledgling through the dark and sleazy streets of Los Angeles in the early 2000’s to find out the truth behind a mysterious archeological artifact that may or may not unleash a vampiric apocalyptic prophecy while dodging metaphorical (and sometimes physical) bullets navigating through vampiric politics of the 3 large factions in LA.
The World of Darkness setting does vampires a little differently. Kindred, as they prefer to be called, are diverse as there are vampire archetypes in fiction, combining most vampire tropes into different clans each representing some familiar vampire archetypes you may know. A vampire who turns to a bat and controls animals? That’s Gangrel. Some aristocratic nobility in a european castle drinking only from the finest vintage blood? You’re probably thinking about a Ventrue. Do you imagine some alluring Twilight-esque vampires? They’re called Toreadors (they don’t sparkle though). Maybe you think about the ghoulish Vampire from the 1992 film ”Nosferatu”? Well now it's a clan called Nosferatu and they all look as ghoulish and even more. Dracula? He’s real in the World of Darkness and is a member of the eastern european based clan Tzmicise.
But in a world of early cellphone cameras and the internet how do these kindred stay hidden in the shadows? They make secret sects to infiltrate human society, and play along the rules of survival they made after the spanish inquisition called “the masquerade”.
The masquerade was established after the convention of thorns in the year 1493, after the anarch uprising where young kindred rose to rebel against their elders to fight against their abuse of power and led to the rise of the inquisition and the large scale hunting of vampires throughout europe.
The convention was a meeting between the elders of the Camarilla and the leaders of the Anarch movement and Clan Assamite, that ended with returning order by having most of the anarch clans return to the fold, while others went on to create a new faction to oppose the Camarilla, called the Sabbat.
Fast forward to to modern days, The Camarilla and its masquerade still stand, the Sabbat grew larger and more depraved with its customs, and the Anarchs tried quite a few times to separate from the Camarilla, such as the Anarch free states rising in the american west coast in the 1940’s.
The development of Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines was turbulent to say the least. The game was developed on the Source Engine that was later used for Half Life 2. Because the game was being developed at the same time as Half Life 2, Valve only gave Troika an early version of the engine, which wasn’t on par with the version used for HL2, but was advanced enough to still give the game that signature Source engine vibe, but different enough to not feel like a HL2 mod. The scope of the original game far exceeded the dev team’s resources they had and with no end in sight and overpushing their budget, Activision set a hard deadline for November 2004. The problem with that was that one of Valve’s conditions for Troika to use the Source engine was that they could not release the game before HL2, and with the overstrung development time Activision forced Troika to release VTMB the same day as HL2.
That deadline proved a death blow to Troika Games, as the game came out a buggy mess not getting mixed reviews and poor sales initially, and without being able to secure any more projects Troika Games disbanded early 2005.
Starting the game you pick a character that reflects on each of the clans playable in the game. Each clan has its own unique disciplines and weaknesses, affecting gameplay and how some characters may interact with you in game.
Between the characters available are seven clans: the rebellious Brujah, the decadent Toreador, the wacky insane Malkavian, the aristocratic picky eater Ventrue, the monstrously deformed Nosferatu, the blood wizard Tremere,or the beastly Gangrel. Each character represents a somewhat stereotypical look of each clan, offering a unique look and feel for each character as you stalk the streets and sewers of LA.
If you think the choice of clan here is important to the overall plot of the game, you’re wrong. This game offers what is considered now as the classic Bioware style linear story telling where you get some superficial choices along the game but the overall plot is the same whatever you choose along the way. very progressive for its time.
The game starts with your embrace, and as soon as the process is over you and your sire are captured and taken to stand trial. In the trial you stand in front of the LA Camarilla and Anarch kindred, and you all watch as your sire is beheaded and dusted for turning you into a vampire. Just as the blade is about to drop on your neck the head of the local Anarchs, Nine Rodriguez, interrupts the trial and with that you are spared death.
You are instructed by the prince of LA, prince Lacroix, to go on a suicide mission to get yourself killed, only for you to somehow pull it off against all expectations and make it back to tell Lacroix about your success. On the way there you get jumped by three angry sabbat members looking for payback for the warehouse you just blew up, only to once again be saved by Nines.
As Lacroix learns of your success he understands you might be worth more than he thought, so he sends you to get him the Ankaran Sarcophagus, rumored to contain an ancient powerful elder vampire. That sarcophagus has all the kindred in the city on edge, as some claim if the elder vampire awakens a prophetic disaster would fall upon the city. As you make your way through the city to find the sarcophagus and its key on behest of Lacroix, you need to navigate between the local political schemings of the Jyhad as well as the eastern demons in Chinatown known as the Kuei Jin who encroach on the city, trying to drive out the kindred.
Despite the linear build of the story of the VTMB, the game is filled with a diverse collection of characters. From intriguing players of the Jyhad like Lacroix, Andrei, Nines and Smiling Jack, to funny one off characters like Fat Larry and the retired hitmen in Chinatown. And that is one of the game’s strongest points, the writing of the game is so diverse and strong that it eclipses all the janky gameplay and somewhat dated graphics. Combined with the source engine’s very advanced facial movements of characters when speaking and superb voice acting throughout the game like John DiMaggio as Smiling Jack or Grey Delisle as Jeanette/Therese the game just keeps sucking you in again and again. There’s a reason it's a meme that every time Bloodlines is mentioned someone has to reinstall it.
Overall, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is one of my favorite games of all time. It released a buggy mess during the worst time to release a video game and yet it still was able to build it self such a cult status that even today people still release fan made updates for bug fixes and never uninstall the game because they know they will need to install it again at some point.
So should you play it? If you got the itch for some blood sucking adventure then yes, you won’t regret it.
Aight, peace.
