The Bloody End…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 11, 2010

A few days ago I was asked about my favorite RPG of the last decade. Not remembering that Baldur’s Gate II counted (it was released in the fall of 2000), I almost chose Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. It was a flawed gem, but I played through the whole game twice (and part-way twice more).

The Escapist has an article this week about Bloodlines, entitled “The Last Masquerade.” It’s a well-written piece explaining why the game was such a flawed masterpiece. Read it. Especially if you haven’t played the game.

There were a lot of reasons I loved the game, in spite of its glaring flaws. In no particular order:

• The License. They captured the flavor and feel of the Vampire the Masquerade license extremely well. I’ve played the pen & paper game quite a bit, and while I’m sure purists can find lots to quibble about, the game moved… right. It was dark, sexy, seedy, and desperate. And actually making The Masquerade a real part of the gameplay.
• The valid alternate paths – to a point, the game was incredible about rewarding you for choosing different paths of progress. Were you a social vampire, a thaumaturge, a stealthy hunter? There was cool things to be done in all of those areas.
• The awesome, awesome, AWESOME haunted hotel. Everybody I’ve talked to has commented on how awesome the hotel was. This was the one and only game to do a “haunted house” right.
• Therese and Jeanette’s little family squabble. Once I knew they were Malkavians, I’d figured out what was going on. But it was still cool to see it in action.
• The little reference to Trogdor.
• Fairly complex quests with lots of options.
• Ghouling Heather
• Teaching the player why vampires fear werewolves…
• Not shying away (too much) from the challenges of allowing the player to be a Nosferatu or Malkavian.  Those radically changed the game experience all by themselves.
• The endings. Or in particular, the ending if you side with the Anarchs or go your own way. Just watching a video of it doesn’t do it justice… you have to understand the plot and the big ol’ struggle leading up to that scene, and the magnitude of what Smiling Jack has just pulled off…

All those made for a magical experience of RPG awesomeness. If only… if only… if only… it didn’t have…

• The bugs. Oh, all the horrible bugs…
• The first-person shooter gameplay. Especially towards the end, where it became really nothing more than wandering through mazes shooting things. If you happen to be an RPG fan who likes FPS games, then I guess it’s okay. (Like, *cough*Mass Effect*cough* – oh, wait, that’s more third-person shooter….).
• Inconsistency. While so much of the game emphasized a broad range of potential skills and builds, you’d get to sections that were purely running-the-gauntlet FPS battles. Or worse, the boss battles, which  were exclusively brute-force action games that relied upon your character’s combat stats. It  really sucked if you’d focused your skills on things like Seduction, Persuasion, and Research.
• Really interesting physics with absolutely no use in the game.
• As the article suggests, it felt — rushed. Especially towards the end. Some of the brilliant, deep quests of the beginning fell into the pattern of being pretty much straightforward gauntlet-running. The Nosferatu caves. The Sabbat building – ugh!

Still, in spite of glaring flaws, it proved to be one of the most memorable RPGs of the last decade. I still have a stack of RPGs from the last several years that I have never finished — but that was a game I played through twice.  That says something. Perhaps more of an indication of my own weird tastes, but I guess that’s something, too.

But for me, what won me over was that they truly shot for the moon. I’ve little doubt that underneath the surface, the game was a mess of special-case and exception driven code that was a nightmare to navigate. But they tried, dang it.  There were a lot of things they could have done to have been more “safe” with this game, but they chose a gutsier path. And I guess that’s what impressed me.

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