A humorous factor occurs if you fire up sufficient bother within the tiny, open-world parts of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. For those who take pleasure in displaying off your uber vampiric parkour talents and wield your different powers too overtly, the music intensifies and sirens, adopted by the sound of a helicopter, encompass you as you, hopefully, are attempting to cover. At first, it instills a way of urgency, a panic. You need to discover someplace within the not-so-sprawling map of Seattle to cover away. The necessity to run, to vanish into the shadows, it’s type of enjoyable.
The factor is, there are not any police automobiles with sirens blazing. Cease and look: There are not any helicopters. You’ll attain a recreation over display screen in the event you proceed to violate the vampiric code of silence generally known as the Masquerade, however except for cops on the streets opening hearth on you (who’re hardly a menace given that you simply’re actually a 400-year-old vampire), a lot of the sense of hazard round you is nothing greater than a shallow facade. It makes an in any other case lovely slice of Seattle in snowy winter really feel fully hole.
Equally deflating, there are not any lasting penalties for feeding on people, killing them quietly, or indulging in your violent vampiric facet.
Within the tabletop roleplaying recreation on which Bloodlines 2 is predicated, gamers whose characters are vampires must stability the bestial nature of vampirism with their efforts to hold onto what’s left of their humanity. It’s a core recreation mechanic, with a “humanity” meter that may develop or shrink relying in your actions. However it’s additionally fodder for the central themes of VtM, which many come to the sport for: at what level are you not human? How and when have you ever absolutely given into the monster inside you that hungers, eternally so?
There’s no starvation meter in Bloodlines 2, a minimum of not one which displays the issues you may have within the tabletop roleplaying recreation the place your actions have an effect on the world round you in addition to your self. In Bloodlines 2, you’ll must feed on people in the event you’ve used too many powers in fight, however by no means does the sport require you to concern your self with the ethics of the way you satiate that starvation.
And positive, these vampiric powers will be lots of enjoyable. You’ll be able to zip round enemies, snap their necks, telepathically decide up their weapons to fireside again at your enemies, toy with their minds by instilling concern or a way of self-destruction, and even summon blades of blood to shoot at your foes. That half will be very cool.
However the enjoyable of that loop is fleeting at greatest and also you’re left with nothing however a hole diorama set on this planet of VtM’s wealthy lore.
That’s why it’s much more disappointing that, regardless of that faux feeling of the world round you, regardless of a recreation loop that tires shortly, there’s a lot that Bloodlines 2 does properly that it appears like an undead variant of a greater recreation that one way or the other withered away in its developmental slumber.
The soul of one thing vibrant trapped in a dull husk
It’s form of poetic that Bloodlines 2’s protagonist, Phyre, is a 400-year-old vampire solely just lately awoken from a deep sleep, not sure of the fact they now stay in. Bloodlines 2 itself had a tough earlier life, and it appears equally not sure of itself. The unique Bloodlines, launched in a shoddy state in 2004, required the work of numerous modders and VtM fans to mould it into one thing acceptable. It stays a wonky recreation to today.
The sequel, as chances are you’ll know, noticed its first developer, Hardsuit Labs, dismissed from the mission. The stays have been picked up by All people’s Gone to the Rapture developer The Chinese language Room, as they used belongings created by HSL and crafted a wholly new story set in a really small slice of Seattle.
As we communicate, these previous belongings and construct supplies from HSL’s work on the sport have leaked out, and are main many to take a position that one thing higher was misplaced.
The hypothesis is enjoyable, little question, however I feel it additionally distracts from speaking in regards to the precise product that exists, what it fails to realize and what it manages to do properly. And going by the writing in Bloodlines 2, it’s clear that this might’ve been a superb online game.
There’s so much to say in regards to the story and writing of Bloodlines 2, how properly it handles VtM’s themes and lore, how the Johnny-Silverhand-of-a-situation that Phyre and the co-protagonist who lives of their head discover themselves in sparks nice dialogue (and wonderful voice performances) and narrative route. However I usually discover myself fascinated by a specific NPC named Persistence, a Toreador clan vampire who I think about a superb tackle the obsessed artist archetype.
Persistence is nearly all the time discovered within the backroom of a pawn store which is owned by one other fascinating character, Niko Anelov. In most VtM media, Toreadors are portrayed as upper-class divas, obsessive about themselves and their objects of want. There’s actually a mechanic for this within the TTRPG: a Toreador can develop into fixated on what they discover lovely to the purpose the place their monstrous nature permits them to do horrible issues in pursuit of getting that magnificence.
It’s widespread sufficient that these lovely objects are “high art,” or issues that many would regard as conventionally lovely or sexually engaging. Persistence, as a Toreador, could be very obsessed in an analogous manner, however it’s trash that calls to them, the trash left behind at a pawn store particularly. They want to acquire it and work with it as a type of discovered media, seeing magnificence within the act of one thing left behind, forgotten, misplaced, discarded. On one hand, it’s refreshing to see a personality like this. On the opposite, Persistence could possibly be seen as an egotistical hipster scrounging up rubbish to masquerade as artwork, not fairly not like the stuffy elite Toreadors holed up in artwork galleries and opera homes. Who’re they actually? I like that riddle about them.
I are inclined to favor Malkavian clan sorts myself, however this Toreador? One dialog with them sees Phyre ruminating over whether or not Persistence’s artwork is about “mortality” or “individualism.” It’s the type of second I like in tabletop recreation of VtM. Sure, there’s the gory lore and the intercourse and the joys of being highly effective, however stopping to ask a vampire artist if their work, which they are going to proceed to toil away with for eternity, is a press release of their very own individuality or a commentary on the character of dying? That’s what I’m right here for. These are the deep, limitless riddles that I like cracking open with the sharp object that’s the vampire as metaphor.
However alas, Persistence, my lovely trash Toreador, will simply stand round on this planet, lifeless, except I discuss to them. And the hunt they offer me? It’s simply to gather some gadgets which, whereas they’re related to the story, really feel like a Ubisoft-ified collect-a-thon. I’ve gathered all of the gadgets they requested, however these knickknacks don’t seem of their studio, or on their work. It was all only a checkmark on the sport’s map.
Lifeless, hole, I go away Persistence to do their work of…standing there, as I return to the equally lifeless sirens and helicopters of Seattle. The world will blare sirens at you that don’t exist, and Persistence will communicate of a vibrant, countercultural inventive follow you not often see exterior of what exists in a everlasting, inflexible state of their studio.
I’ve but to cross the end line on Bloodlines 2’s story. I really feel compelled to take action as a result of the characters are wonderful, and the best way it’s utilizing the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade and the thematic nature of the vampire has potential. However the execution, that’s the stake by way of the guts.
