Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines preview

A clove of garlic is unlikely to deter this creature.

If Bram Stoker had any idea what he was unleashing upon the world, when, in 1897, he wrote Dracula he may well have changed his mind and written a nice children’s book about squirrels. It certainly seems unlikely that he would have foreseen his update of the various old vampire myths from around the world giving rise to such modern phenomena as goths, Keanu Reeves’ English accent and the world’s first licensee of the Half-Life 2 engine.

I was recently able to not only get a sneak peak of the game itself but also speak to the joint CEO of Trokia, Leonard Boyarsky, and the game’s producer at Activision, Thaine Lyman. Before we get into the nitty gritty though the first question you’re no doubt all pondering is exactly how good does the game look? Well, the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is quite good. Which is purposefully faint praise for a game that doesn’t look anywhere near as impressive as Half-Life 2 itself.

Half a Life

Talking is as important as fighting in Bloodlines.

In fact knowing little about the game before I started I actually had no idea it was using the engine and when I was told it was I had to take a bit of a double take. On closer examination the graphics are indeed impressive – well detailed and with some excellent use of light and shade (funnily enough the game is always set at night). Indeed according to Boyarsky the team have made many of their own alterations to the basic engine with their own lighting and cloth system as well as a complete overhaul of the particle system.

This may well be but just looking at the game it’s still not a patch on anything that has yet been seen of Half-Life 2. Which is really a testament to the talents of Valve’s artists rather than a complaint against Bloodlines. At the end of the day Bloodlines is still heaps better looking than pretty much any comparable RPG and that’ll be all most people care about.

FPRPG

The beach house is guarded by a number of antisocial types.

The other most immediate surprise with Bloodlines is that it seems to have little or no connection with its predecessor, 2000’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. That game, developed by Nihilistic Software, was most notable for its multiplayer mode, which allowed one player to control the story in the manner of a traditional dungeon master - a feature that was not seen again until the release of Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights some years later. Bloodlines though makes little or no reference to the earlier game and indeed Boyarsky admits that Troika simply approached Activision with the idea of doing an action RPG using the Half-Life 2 engine and it was only then that the idea of making it a Vampire: The Masquerade game came about.

Basing their game in the popular tabletop RPG world seems to be a good fit though, for the developers of such RPG classics as Fallout and Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura and Boyarsky is keen to make it clear that the team includes “lots of vampire fans”. What they don’t have though is a lot of expertise in first person shooter developers, although this we are assured will not be a problem – even though the majority of the game can be played from a first person view.

In fact considerable effort has been made to ensure that FPS experts don’t have any kind of special advantage in the game, with the ability to use advanced weaponry and the size of your on screen sight being determined by your weapons use statistics. So even if you are a crack shot yourself you’ve got to ensure your character is as well in order to make the most of it.

Muddy Funsters

Mercurio has not been having a good day.

As Boyarsky points out though, as he begins to demo the game, the game is bias towards the RPG elements not the shooting, so even if you decide to shoot your way out of every combat encounter there’s still plenty else in the game to contend with. In order to demonstrate this he takes control of a middle of the road character – one that is neither biased towards combat or stealth - and sets of to find a NPC called Mercurio, who has some special explosives that your vampire boss wants to get his undead hands on. Finding Mercurio turns out to be pretty easy; the only problem being someone else has got to him first and scarpered with the explosives. This being a RPG interrogating him is as complex as you want it to be with multiple options to bully, cajole and flatter the information out of him. As long as you don’t mind the fact that he, and pretty much everyone else in the game, swears like a trooper this is all terribly enjoyable.

What’s really impressive about this sequence though is the number of extra options you have that are dependent on your own abilities and stats. If you’ve chosen to create a suave new romantic style vampire then you get the option to charm Mercurio into telling your want has happened, but if you’re a more wizardly vamp then you get the chance to affect his mind, Ben Kenobi style. One small touch that Boyarsky is very keen to point out is that there are no random dice throws to determine whether you’re successful or not – if the option appears then it will be successful (of course if you’re not powerful enough the choice would never appear in the first place).

The Children of the Night

Nosferatu are the ugliest of all vampires.

Mercurio points the finger at certain “Dennis” who is holed up with some pals in a Santa Monica beach house. It’s at this point that the various differences between all the different clans of vampires become even more obvious. Dumping Mr Average for a ‘Nosferatu’ vampire the first approach is all stealthy, which is a good idea really because the Nosferatu are ugly so and sos and quite clearly not human. Creeping past the guard on the beach house gate Boyarsky spots a loose board in the fence and flings it over the side of a cliff so as to not make any noise. Keeping to the shadows he then tip toes around to the back of the house and flicks the main power switch off so that all the lights go out. A goon comes out to see what’s going on and suddenly Dennis has got one less friend in the world.

After drinking his fair share of blood the Nosferatu now has enough power to cast a “Obfuscate" spell which makes him invisible. Apparently the completeness of this illusion depends on the stats of your character at the time, but Boyarsky has whacked them up to full for the purposes of the demo, which means that as long as he doesn’t bump into anyone he can just waltz in, grab the explosives and jump out the window.

Spandau Ballet

One of the poncy New Romantic 'Toreador' vampires.

The stats for the next character - a suave ‘Toreador’ type – have been similarly inflated to prove a point and allow the character to smooth talk his way into the beach house, past the guards and in to meet Dirty Den. In fact so persuasive is the character that his able to convince Dennis to hand over the explosives for free, in the mistaken belief that they’d be paid for later. As Boyarsky points out though you’d almost certainly not have stats this high in the game if playing for real so although you could get in to see Dennis you’d have to produce the cash in advance, probably entailing a side-quest for dosh, before you got what you were after.

For most Half-Life fans this is going to appear a completely boring solution to problem that can be much more easily solved through the use of extreme violence. At which point Boyarsky whips out a pre-saved ‘Tremere’ blood magician – the wizard type character to alluded to earlier. Being a vampire all his spells are powered by blood so to make sure he has a full stock our man Boyarsky sends the first guard to sleep and sucks him dry. He then throws caution to the wind and starts casting “Purge Blood” spells at the other guards, which causes them to vomit up claret until they pass out. This only furthers the amount of blood available to cast spells including “Celerity” which creates the now obligatory Matrix style slow motion effect and “Possession” which causes one of the guards to turn on his fellows. Finally there’s the “Blood Boil” spell which, funnily enough, causes a person’s blood to boil, burst into flames and generally cause a result in messy death.

Official Secrets

Would you want to spend eternity looking like this?

With the main demonstration now complete I pose what I think to be an entirely innocent question about the multiplayer mode, which to my surprise elicits only a lot of sideways looks from everyone and a slightly stammered response about not being able to show the multiplayer mode yet. Quite what the big mystery is isn’t even hinted at and I can’t even get anyone to suggest when the big revelations will be made, which is very odd indeed.

The game is technically due out this October but contractually Activision aren’t allowed to release it until after Half-Life 2. When I ask whether this is likely to interfere with their preferred launch date everybody makes again with the nervous eye rolling and I’m told that “the game [Bloodline] will be out this fall”. And clearly if anybody outside Valve knows when Half-Life 2 is going to come out it’s these guys.

So there you have it, while it may not be a second Hallf-Life 2 it’s certainly the most interesting looking action RPG for years. And who knows, maybe that multiplayer mode will turn out to be worth all the secrecy too.