Anyone hoping this game has Bloodlines "feel" ( when it comes to characters)?

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Anyone hoping this game has Bloodlines "feel" ( when it comes to characters)?

I wouldn't say they were ( outside of one or two exceptions) particularly deep and well written, some of them borderline caricatures. But they had memorable, vivid personalities that stood out in contrast to more bleak, dark setting of the game...Jeanette, Kimble, Fat Larry, Vandal, ( the one and only) Officer Chunk, and so on.
I think that's the main reason of why people love the game to this day ( in spite of many flaws).
You could see the writers were more interested into having fun instead of going for a more "serious" ( and a bit dull) tone you'll find in a lot of games ( last two Deus Ex in particular, Pillars, etc).
Hoping we'll have something similar here...adversity breeds eccentricity and a setting filled with charismatic individuals instead of 24/7 agonizing on what it means to be human? :p
 
good point
yes, ther is something special about characters in the story of Bloodlines, the game is dark, creepy, but it's not dull like the last two deus ex games as yu say,

and yes, now that you mention it, i'd like that cp has Bloddlines "feel", charismatic, unique individuals, and of course the dialog options to show the whle potential

 
Memorable NPCs are a huge part of any RPG.

Ask most RPG game players what they remember about a game, it's the NPCs and the story not the combat (unless it's horrible).
 
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cyberpunkforever;n7852700 said:
but it's not dull like the last two deus ex games as yu say,
You read Zagors line compleatly wrong... Zagor said that the last Deus Ex games, and Pillars, etc, where the dull ones.

Which I of course do not agree with... I like those games alot. But then again... what is not dull to me, might be dull to others. So really... saying "Don't make the game dull." does not actually mean that... what a person is actually saying when they say that is "Don't make a game which is dull to ME, because how I interpret a/the game is what matters most"... which it does not, since it's just an opinion, and opinions are not facts. XD


Suhiira;n7856880 said:
Memorable NPCs are a huge part of any RPG.

Ask most RPG game players what they remember about a game, it's the NPCs and the story not the combat.
Heh... *raises his hand* ... I think I am not "most RPG game players". Because for me that's a bit half and half, a bit so so, something which can depend a lot on the game... I think.

Combat and the whole "mechanical" thing of a game, the whole combat/gameplay loop thingy, is very importent to me as well. And for some games that is the main, and maybe only, thing that I actually remember the most when I think about them... because the combat in them was really good and/or fun, in my mind atleast. This especially, and mostly, tends to happen with turnbased games for me, since Turnbased Combat is my favorit kind of combat... but can happen with other types to. Of course, this is not the case with games which has both good combat and a good story and characters, in those games I do tend to remember the story and characters a lot more then the combat... it's more of the games which end up in the greyzone between being good and being allright (or worse) on the story and character aspect of it. But for games where I like it all, like my favorit FF games, Suikoden, Mass Effect, etc, then story and characters tend to pop out more to me in memory.


If I do not enjoy the combat/gameplay-loop in a game though, then it matters little how good the story actually is to me, because I will get tired of playing such a game a lot faster... compared to a game with an ok, to maybe bad story, but where the combat is atleast good. I will probably play that game for a lot longer, then a game with bad combat but good story... I might even finish it (which is something I don't do a lot, no matter what I thought of the different aspects of the game... this usually mostly comes down to the length of a game really, if I finish or not, and how much time I actually spend on the gameplay... some of my alltime favorit games during the last 10 years have been games which I actually never finished... beause I played my self tired on them, like literally hundreds of hours with some games without reaching the end... XD ).

I think it partly comes down to the sheer fact that I tend to spend an exorbitant amount of time on those sheer mechanical-, gameplay-, and combat-, -loops in games... compared to the amount of time I spend on the actual story of a game. I am a natural grinder after all... who has no problems in spending entire days on just grinding in a game, because I wanted to reach X level befor I went on to the next area, and/or find all the stuff I need to have the best equipment befor I leave the area, etc. I always tend to be very overleveled for most parts of RPG games in general.


Actually, I am not a very common Pen and Paper RPG gamer either... because amongst PnP RPG's the thing that I like the least, is the roleplaying aspect of the game... you know, the whole social and "actor"-like aspect of PnP RPG'ing and LARP'ing. The things I like the most in PnP RPG's tend to be character creation, my character getting better at what they do, combat, and the whole usage of skills and what not to achive wanted outcomes on things. XD

That whole social aspect of roleplaying is just not something I am good at... I am not very good at the social thing in "real life" either for that matter... it's not a part of life which I enjoy a lot really, and usually I need something else alongside it to enjoy my time more (like pnp rpg's). I mean I still do tend to have fun being social, playing pnp rpg's etc with people and what not... but if I where to compare it to the amount of fun I get out of playing a game all by my self, never talking to anyone as I am doing it... then I get more fun out of being alone, then being with others. XD
 
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Calistarius;n7863670 said:
If I do not enjoy the combat/gameplay-loop in a game though, then it matters little how good the story actually is to me, because I will get tired of playing such a game a lot faster... compared to a game with an ok, to maybe bad story, but where the combat is atleast good. I will probably play that game for a lot longer, then a game with bad combat but good story...

I agree. I think games are and should be games, first and foremost, and storytellers second. Good characterization and overall writing is but the icing over good gameplay; the cake can still be edible and good if the icing is lacking, but if the cake itself is bad, no amount of icing is going to save it. ( Sardukhar ... No piecakes this time around with this cake analogy, ok).

A good example, from my perspective, about this is Might & Magic X: Legacy. It's very poor as a storyteller (I can't remember the name of a single character, or even what the story was really all about and I've finished it twice already), but the gameplay is actually pretty addictive if one is into oldschool blobbers and isn't snobby about graphics.

That said, though... Of course I'd want rich and colourful characters like in VtMB, and good, deep writing, with intelligent quirks and branches. The whole nine yards. It's just that... if either would need to be compromised for the excellence of the other, I'd not hesitate to choose the writing.
 
Honestly, it ALL should be good, there should be no corners cut. I do agree that strong memorable NPC's are important. Years later I remember VTM:B characters because they were memorable, but ask me who was in the last two deus ex games besides the MC and I will come up mostly blank because the NPC's were boring and forgettable. Also combat is important, but one of the reasons VTM:B was so awesome was you had alternative ways to solve issues without combat except for a very few rare moments.
 
In all honasty... I probably played VtM:B anywhere from 8 to 13 years ago (yeah, that is a big difference in time, but my mind is fuzzy on when it actually was), and currently I don't remember much about it anymore. And actually... I don't think I finished the game either (when I played the game was roughly around the time where I started to finish less and less games, because I tended to spend so much time on playing them (but not following the story until I felt I was done with an area) that I played my self tired on the games befor I finished them... I have for example currently played Dragon Age: Origins for roughly 350+ hours since it came out (divided between two different play"throughs"), but I have yet to finish the game, in fact both of the times I played it I reached the same part of the game befor I stopped playing, that of having done everything that you can possibly do befor going to the Landsmeet, and I have currently not gone to the Landsmeet yet).

I know I liked VtM:B a lot... I just don't remember much of the story anymore, other then the rough aspects of the start of it... and most of the things I remember is the very early part of the game when your turned and allowed to live, the turorial, your apartment (or if it was a safehouse you where given in the first area, or what ever it was... the place with the TV), the area roughly around this place, parts of the beach, etc. The only one of the main'ish NPC's which I remember was the woman at one of the bars (The Asylum... which I figured out today).

The main thing I remember about the game though was the music... I could on occations stand around in one of the bars for hours, as I was doing somehting else outside of the computer, because I liked the songs played in that location.


Funny thing is that I today figured out that I have been remembering something compleatly wrong about the game. In particular it is connected to the music and a bar/nightclub in the game.

The songs which I remembered from the game is: Chiasm - Isolated (not so fond of this one, but I remember it from the game), Tiamat - Cain (my 2nd favorit song from the game), Lacuna Coil - Swamped (3rd favorit song), and Diary of Dreams - Blind In Darkness (my favorit song from the game).

First, I thought all of them where being played in the same bar/nightclub, a place which I thought was named "The Succubus Club"... turns out there is no such place in VtM:B... the place which I actually remember the look of is rather named "The Asylum" (as mentioned above), but only one song is played there, Chiasm - Isolated, a song which I never really stood around listening to much at all.

Secondly, the place I was actually standing around in, listening to the music there, is known as the "Asp Hole", the place where Tiamat - Cain and Lacuna Coil - Swamped is played (2 of my favorit songs from the game as mentioned), and this is a place which I actually do not remember the look of or it's NPC's at all (I know I was there though, because the first time in my life that I heard the song Cain was in a bar in the game).

And third, my favorit song from the game, Diary of Dreams - Blind In Darkness, is actually not in the game at all. The song is connected to the Vampire the Masquarade IP, because it was released on a VtM releated CD back in 2000 (so 4 years befor VtM:B came out), just not related to the actual VtM:B game. In fact, the CD which the song was released on is essentially supposed to be a soundtrack for the PnP RPG/LARP game, and the name of this "soundtrack" is "Music from the Succubus Club"... aaaand we come full circle. XD

What I think happend here is that a few years after I had played the game I decided to look around for the music for the game, and while I did find Tiamat and Lacuna Coils songs from the game, I also found this soundtrack of music for VtM and mistakenly thought it was connected to the VtM:B (I mean, who has ever heard of an official soundtrack ever being made for a PnP RPG/LARP befor? I have not... so it had to be for the game, atleast so I thought... XD )... and due to the fact that I never really remembered more then one bar/nightclub from the game, I mistakenly thought that it must have been named "The Succubus Club", because that was the name on this soundtrack after all... XD
 
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VTM:B was great because of the way it immersed you in a role and didn't break you out of that role for basically anything. Well... that and the hilarious Malkavian dialogue. What other game lets you get into a verbal argument with both a Stop sign ("No, YOU STOP") And your apartment TV?

But the worldbuilding in bloodlines was fantastic, especially considering it came out the same time as Half-Life 2
 
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