Vampire: Bloodlines

[Resvrgam]

How does one make a ghoul? Is it a potential dialogue option?

I think you can make a Ghoul by visiting a severely injured woman at the hospital/trauma center in the first city you enter.  I fed that woman to heal her and I evaded any dialogue involving me mentionaing that I'm a vampire (thought it was a trap to break the Masquerade so I kept the vamp part on the down-low).

As for the glitches: hell yeah!  The animations seem broken on my system: people walking and then suddenly sliding like Gumby and the textures are really bad in many instances (I'm a texture artist so I may just be nit-picking work I know I could do better than -- best texture mis-alignment is on a Tremere male during his opening cutscenes...is his neck/body supposed to be a dramatically different colour than the head?).  I'll try making some new textures that don't show off the UVWs when I learn how to MOD this engine.

[Riggswolfe]

So it is only limited NPCs you can do this to? I was kind of hoping you could make pretty much any NPC into a ghoul under the right circumstances. Then I could travel around and find the one I wanted.

The hospital you mention, is it that med center in the very beginning of the game? The one you have a couple of quests in, with the blood bank downstairs?

[Resvrgam]

The hospital you mention, is it that med center in the very beginning of the game? The one you have a couple of quests in, with the blood bank downstairs?

Yes it is.  The door on the left-hand wall just passed the service counter (and that annoying woman who calls the cops if you sneak passed her) has a young woman who appears to be dying while bleeding and crying.  If you heal her, you get some humanity back but I think there may be dialogue options hinting toward making her your ghoul.   Hope that helps.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, I'm gonna go there. I was going to go back to an earlier save anyway because of umm..something stupid I did having to do with the Haunted Hotel. I'll take a detour and check in there, see if she's still there.

[Riggswolfe]

Found her, fed her. Got chased off by the cops. Don't know if I'll see her again or not.

[Moroni]

You people made me go to EB today and purchase the game. That's $50 I needed for, uhh, something! Damn you!

[angry.bob]

Okay, here's the lowdown on the ghoul chick:

*** SPOILERS ABOUT THE GHOUL CHICK AND SOME OTHER VAGUE REFERENCEs TO CRAP THAT HAPPENS****

1) It's the red headed girl with glasses who's bleeding and crying in  the very first room past the counter in the hospital in the first area.

2) Give her blood to save here. I don't think the conversation options matter, but you CAN NOT tell her you are a vampire or she freaks and the cops come. I went with the faggiest drama king responses that didn't mention vampires.

3) She then dissapears until just before you get an apartment in downtown, after you complete the boat mission for the Prince. When she appears she'll be waiting right at the cab drop-off point. If you give her the responses indicating you want her around she'll say she'll wait for you at your place. She means your new place in the Skyline Apartments that the Prince will give you when you go upsatairs.

***WARNING SEXIST PIG NERD HORNINESS***

4) She'll be in your apartment dressed in that nasty hippy crap that has the saving grace of displaying her nipples very prominently. If you give her blood you have the option of telling her to do something about her appearance. If you tell her that, she'll change into a hot goth chick outfit with fucked up hair and makeup regardless if you tell her you want a nice suprise or have a new outfit by the time you get back.  the outfit is a latex tube top and some sort of latexy pants. You can tell her to change her appearance again and she'll change back into the hippy crap. However....

5) If you use the extra pricky dialogue the first time she's in your apartment, tell her to change her outfit, and then feed on her, it opens up a third outfit she'll change into if you tell her to change her clothes a second time - a tight shirt cut just above her nipples, panties, high heels, and sorority whore hair and makeup. All in all it's the the most aestheticly pleasing of the three, mostly because the other two versions of her head are hideous.

[Rasix]

3) She then dissapears until just before you get an apartment in downtown, after you complete the boat mission for the Prince. When she appears she'll be waiting right at the cab drop-off point. If you give her the responses indicating you want her around she'll say she'll wait for you at your place. She means your new place in the Skyline Apartments that the Prince will give you when you go upsatairs.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER!!!!

Ohh, you get a new apartment?  I guess that's if you don't wax a few cops during the boat mission.  Heh, they were in the way and using Vision of Death is too easy on humans.

[sidereal]

Reactions after about 15 hours:

Fantastic game.  The World of Darkness ambiance is perfect.  There is no sense that daylight has ever existed or ever will exist.  The character graphics and voices are top notch.  The missions are fun.

Few quibbles:
1. The intro song is stolen from Massive Attack, but modified just enough to make me think they didn't ask for it.

2. It isn't as open-ended as I was led to expect.  From the previews I was thinking Morrowind-style open ended.  This is more sub-KOTOR open-endedness.  It feels like a railroad with a few minor deviations on the side.

3.  Just play a combat character.  Every situation in the game can be solved with violence, and there are a significant number of situations that can only be solved by violence.  That latter fact is a real pain in the ass if you built a character that wasn't combat oriented.  If I started over, I'd go as a Brujah hacker, but since I want to keep going with my fancy-pants Toreador, I've come to terms with the need to die/reload a few hundred more times.  I've taken to storing up a bunch of experience points, and when I get to one of the bits where I have to fight, jacking up the relevant combat skill.  There was one fight in particular where the only reason I had even the slimmest chance to handle it was that I healed up over time and the other guy didn't (even though he was a vampire.  go figure), so I found a way to hide in a corner for 15 minute stretches of realtime until I healed up fully, then went back out to suck on his shotgun some more.  Rinse/repeat.   This was kind of irritating.  If combat is going to be that essential, make that clear at character creation.

But again. . overall it's a great game, and I'd recommend it to anyone not horrified by goth culture.

[Fabricated]

So far I'm rather enjoying Bloodlines, outside of the clunky performance and really fucked up graphics glitches.

To give you an idea I was at the beginning of the game, I walked down to the beach, looked at the sky, and noticed that the City of Heroes (which I had just played) login screen was plastered across the sky.

[geldonyetich]

Personally I prefer the roles within vampire games in which I am sticking stakes in them.   However, my bro bought it, and it does look fairly cool in that it implements stealth and a fairly good plotline.   Not to mention, OMG, the source engine.  I should probably give it a try.

[Lum]

No Lasambra, Giovanni or Assimite. Seems like they left out all the interesting clans. Also no Tzsmech. Blah..

Most of the ones you listed are in game as NPCs.

Well I am playing a Male Toreador and had the option to hit on a male thug at one point. That may just be because they're taking the art fag thing seriously though.

Nope, there are opportunities for coming out of the closet throughout the game. Doesn't have any lasting impact (unless to your psyche, if you're sensitive that way) Then again, vampires don't have sex anyway.

If you play a talky Toreador, you'll be hurting by the end of the game, as the combat required starts to ramp up pretty heavily.

There are 4 endings, but 3 of them are basically identical and amount to "who are you going to screw over at the end", and 1 is more of an easter egg than an ending.

[MrHat]

Then again, vampires don't have sex anyway.

I thought in this universe they did.

[schild]

These vampires have sex. Hell, the first cutscene has condom wrappers sitting on a counter doesn't it?

[MrHat]

These vampires have sex. Hell, the first cutscene has condom wrappers sitting on a counter doesn't it?

Yes, but maybe for a vampire that's just foreplay?

[Ironwood]

Quick, someone ramp up the decency in this thread before it goes totally downhill...

Page Bruce.

[Tebonas]

You are beginning to remind me of those perverts who always wanted to play Ventrue with feeding restrictions like "rape victims" or "postcoital redheads in bunnysuits". And that is NOT a good sign.

[geldonyetich]

Hello, Anne Rice influences.   Pesky vamp lovers and your silly ideas of the romanic undead.   Dracula, now he was a standup monster - he might get a lady interested on him as the tall, strong type, but he'd only be doing it to drain her empty or convert her to an undead minion.   He wouldn't complain about the neccessity or otherwise whine about it.  He did the things he did simply because he's a monster and his only purpose in his works was to be a fascinating foil for some stake-bearing hero somewhere.   He was everybody's favorite frankenstein alternative, life was good.

Now, these newer Vampires are more representive of teen angst than the seriously supernatural.    "AAIGH! MY VOICE IS CRACKING!  MUST DRINK BLOOD AND PRETEND I"M STRUGGLING WITH IMAGINARY RIVAL VAMPIRES RATHER THAN FACE THE REALITIES OF ADULTHOOD!"   I knew a kid like that in High School who said he wanted to be a vampire and was actively taking steps to achieve this.   Clearly, he had a summer home in Egypt next to De Nile at the time.

I suppose if you look past that the teen angst, the new vampire genre almost crediable on a "How do you think Drakula felt?" perspective.  Still, for reasons outlined above, the Vampire: The Masquarade RPG has always stunk heavily of rebellious teen goth angst for me.    

Curse them for taking the time to make a good Computer Role Playing First Person Shooters out of this genre I'm so biased against.   It's not like my choices of CRPFPS is all that big... I've only got System Shock and the original Deus Ex (since the DX2 is short, overly steamlined, totally berift of character development, and has zero replay value).   I'll just have to deal with my stigma against those goths and their crazy plotlines if it means playing a quality CRPGFPS.    It's a pity they didn't let you play a Hunter, now that would get my attention.

Hmm, wait a sec, I have the source engine... I could download the SDK and make my own silly CRPFPS and it would have physics that are even better than DX2's.... eeh, but who has the time?

[Big Gulp]

I suppose if you look past that the teen angst, the new vampire genre almost crediable on a "How do you think Drakula felt?" perspective.

Too late, Shadow of the Vampire already pulled that off.  Willem Dafoe, you da man.

As for the rest of your post, preach it, brotha.

[Rasix]

Ignorance loves company.  The game has faults but for none of the reasons you listed.  

Sure I rolled my eyes as some vampire chicks name, but that was right before I cut her two with my axe.  

I mean, common, it could be worse.  Would you rather the world be populated by shitheads in sagging jeans with a trucker hat on sideways wearing a lifebeater tucked into their boxers?  The world of the game is gritty, evil, and stylish.  Fuck, I just finished investigating a super natural snuff film, right after axing a vampire hunter that was working a nudie booth in a porn store.

It's not just artsy Goth angst shit.  That's just the stupid Toreadors.  They can't touch an axe weilding, Malkavian psychopath that strolls the streets in what could best be described as a heavy biohazard suit (his outfit before that looked like an insane blackjack dealer).

If you want to bitch about the game, pick apart the crappy combat and horrid use of the Source engine.  The setting, however, is just one the the best I've seen since Fallout 2.  These Troika guys know their shit when it comes to immersion.

[geldonyetich]

I admit, it's mostly my personal bias against the new age vampire genre that's inhibiting my enjoyment of the game.   So far as I can tell, Bloodlines is a really solid title fully worthy of being a classic CRPFPS despite it being a buggy piece of crap.

Like Daggerfall.

[Threash]

I cant get this stupid game to run, it hangs on the initial splash screen.  Quit making it sound so good damnit :/

[Soukyan]

Hmm, wait a sec, I have the source engine... I could download the SDK and make my own silly CRPFPS and it would have physics that are even better than DX2's.... eeh, but who has the time?

As a side note, Source is the graphics and facial emotion engine. Havok is the physics engine. Are the two tied together? I think they may be separate entities and I don't think the Havok engine is readily available. I know VTM:Bloodlines uses the Source engine, but they are (obviously) not using Havok physics.

[schild]

If Source is just graphics and facial engine, then they didn't do JACK SHIT to make Half-Life: Source. I want to cry now.

[Trippy]

As a side note, Source is the graphics and facial emotion engine. Havok is the physics engine. Are the two tied together? I think they may be separate entities and I don't think the Havok engine is readily available. I know VTM:Bloodlines uses the Source engine, but they are (obviously) not using Havok physics.

Havok is the physics engine in the Source engine. Even Source engine mod developers have access to the Havok engine.

[schild]

Man. Now the conversation makes me even more upset with how truly horrible HL: Source is. Is there a chance that HL: Source as it launches now isn't the new product but the old one until they're done? Has anyone else played it? Did I fuck up loading it or something? Nothing seemed improved. NOTHING.

[Megrim]

Man. Now the conversation makes me even more upset with how truly horrible HL: Source is. Is there a chance that HL: Source as it launches now isn't the new product but the old one until they're done? Has anyone else played it? Did I fuck up loading it or something? Nothing seemed improved. NOTHING.

Yea i think, their approach with HL:S was generally more the "here kiddies, come back to my van, i'll give you candy! ". It's a good thing they didn't charge extra for it.

On a side note though, i positively loathe them for not getting Bloodlines to Australia fast enough. Cowards.

 - meg

[schild]

Megrim, don't cry for Bloodlines. Wait for a patch to be released. Right now it's buggy as fuck. The Source Engine bugs from HL2 are amplified in Bloodlines. Why? I don't know. But it's damned terrible.

[Megrim]

Patch?! Ugh... knowing Troika's approach to patches some thorough cl_cry 1 may have to be in order =)

 - meg

[Ironwood]

Indeed.   This one is crying out for me to buy it.  (Since I completed HL2 in about 13 hours and it sucked nuts.)

However, by the sound of it, I too will be waiting for a patch before plinking money down.

[Soukyan]

As a side note, Source is the graphics and facial emotion engine. Havok is the physics engine. Are the two tied together? I think they may be separate entities and I don't think the Havok engine is readily available. I know VTM:Bloodlines uses the Source engine, but they are (obviously) not using Havok physics.

Havok is the physics engine in the Source engine. Even Source engine mod developers have access to the Havok engine.

Thanks for clarifying that for me, Trippy.

[Tairnyn]

While agree this game is a buggy mess, I have yet to find any game breaking problems outside the intermittent benign strangeness. The most common bug is probably that which has NPCs teleporting to their destination in some cases, be it across a room or through a building. Any time I thought I encountered a quest bug it was just me doing something wrong.

The voice acting in this game is just amazing. I'm perplexed that it took this long for developers to realize how much a voice actor with FEELING and PERSONALITY can add to the ambience of a game. Even the scripting is well done, making conversations something I actually *want* to participate in. The dialog is rich with humor and style, often eliciting a chuckle.

While I agree that there is a lack of free-form RPG elements a la Morrowind I am really enjoying the game regardless. The richness of the world and the characters really makes for a fulfilling experience, in my humblest of opinions. I actually feel like I'm interacting rather than just setting off triggers.

All things considered, a decent game. Far better than I had expected.

[Xilren's Twin]

I cant get this stupid game to run, it hangs on the initial splash screen.  Quit making it sound so good damnit :/

I had the same problem until I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers.  Works fine since then and overall thus far I have to agree; fun game and liking the atmosphere.  Deus Ex: Vampires is about right.

Definately can't play this one when the kiddies are awake though.

Xilren

[Hanzii]

Hello, Anne Rice influences.   Pesky vamp lovers and your silly ideas of the romanic undead.   Dracula, now he was a standup monster - he might get a lady interested on him as the tall, strong type, but he'd only be doing it to drain her empty or convert her to an undead minion.   He wouldn't complain about the neccessity or otherwise whine about it.  He did the things he did simply because he's a monster and his only purpose in his works was to be a fascinating foil for some stake-bearing hero somewhere.   He was everybody's favorite frankenstein alternative, life was good.

Heh.
When I still thought majoring in English lit. and language was a good idea I wrote a literature paper on Dracula, which mirrored this somewhat.
...  what I failed to take into consideration was that my female professor was also the official Danish translator of all that is Anne Rice.
We didn't agree on much.

I'll still play the game. It looks gorgeus and very full of atmosphere.
When I finish Half-Life 2.

[Sky]

Seems like a nice game so far, picked it up last night and got in about an hour after MNF was over. Took a few minutes to find out there is no widescreen support (boo, still haven't finished Thief: DS because of that), but there is a wonky 'anamorphic' support within the 4:3 ratio image. I haven't found a good fov value that makes the game feel right, though. I'm pretty unhappy that yet another 3d game, which should easily be able to support 16:9 ratio, doesn't. What's the worst that happens? Stretched UI elements? Better than the entire 3d port being wonky imo.

So after fiddling around and getting something playable (barely), I got in, notice I have the sound stuttering problem (and the odd footstep lag, keep thinking someone is following me!), but I do like the first guy you meet, Jack. My kinda guy.

I initially took the quiz, which said I'm a gangrel. Rawr. Went back and chose Ventrue, I like the domination conversation options in games (like KotOR).