https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzh5kmAt7A4
A million years ago, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was my submission for the Best Video Game Ever. (Seriously, I have been talking about this game non-stop since it came out. Here’s me not shutting up about it in 2011. And, again.) Seriously, the game was good.
You know how Great Art inspires people? It inspires them to change their lives? This video game inspired me to create a tabletop RPG group that is still going on today. I get with friends every other week and eat and throw dice and crack jokes and this measurably makes my quality of life higher. And I would not have been inspired to start that gaming group without Bloodlines.
Well, it’s now 15 years after Bloodlines came out and, holy cow. It’s getting a sequel.
HOLY COW IT’S GETTING A SEQUEL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omB13hiy_B0
Dude. Look at that trailer! At 0:48, is that a Tremere or a Toreador (there’s a piano… that’s Toreador, right)? At 1:12, that’s OBVIOUSLY a Ventrue. I’m having vague trepidations because it’s probably going to come out that, really, this is a first person MOBA or something that is set in the World of Darkness universe… but if they played the original and said “we need to come out with a sequel to this” rather than saw the original’s license and said “we can make money off of putting a 2 at the end of that title”, I’m a Day One Season Pass buyer.
Now, the original allowed you to play as any of the seven original Camarilla clans (with all of their attendant pluses and minuses) and I worry that this will force you into being a Generic Vampire for the whole game rather than creating seven (or more) different potential paths to take… but, hey. There are a lot of ways to do it wrong but a handful of ways to do it right and, if they do it right, it will be one of those games that will be worth playing through a second time (and if they do it really right, it’ll be worth playing a fifth).
I’m cautiously ecstatic and I cannot wait to play this. If they don’t screw it up.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Bloodlines 2 Promotional Art.)
I’ve never played the first one for some reason. Perhaps because I detest the tabletop game for idiosyncratic reasons.
Maybe it’s time to rectify that.
(Also the sooner this trend of teasing sequels to beloved old single-player games and then turning them into Massively Online Thingamajigs comes to an end, the better.)Report
Two things:
A) It’s regularly on sale. You can easily find it for $5 like clockwork. For example, right now at gog.com, it is on sale for $5.
2) The Official Version is only patched up to version 1.2. The Unofficial Version is patched up to version 10.3. (Back when I was yelling about this game in 2013, it was up to version 8.6.) This not only patches the game with bugfixes and whatnot, it restores lost content that was left unimplemented in the version you got in the box.
If you like single-player RPGs at all, this game is well worth your time.Report
OK purchased.
Your sinister plan to ensure I remain part of the #YangGang has been all too effective.Report
Definitely take the personality test instead of merely picking a clan the first time. Just be warned that Nosferatu are probably best appreciated as a Second Playthrough Clan given the handful of limitations they have.
(I was a Malkavian, fwiw.)Report
And to reiterate the importance of the patch: I figured I’d boot up my old copy and see that I removed it from my HD a while back. Okay, I’ll download it again.
I booted it up after I downloaded it and had 3 different graphic resolutions available to me.
720×480
720×576
800×600
After the patch, I had 18. Including 1920×1080.
So get the patch. It helps.Report
Yeah, makes sense. (Though based on the tabletop I’d probably pick Malkavian anyway.)Report
but if they played the original and said “we need to come out with a sequel to this” rather than saw the original’s license and said “we can make money off of putting a 2 at the end of that title”, I’m a Day One Season Pass buyer.
The only people they’re going to attract by calling ‘ Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’ vs. ‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Something Else’ are going to be exactly the people they annoy if it’s not in the same vein as the original. (Pun not actually intended)
If they just wanted to do some other Vampire: The Masquerade game, they would have. I have to assume calling it ‘Bloodlines 2’ means something.
Fun fact: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is actually a sorta sequel to the point-and-click RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption.Report
This is true… and yet precedent shows that video game publishers are surprisingly eager to do this specific, incredibly stupid thing.Report
It don’t matter if you annoy a small number of people as look as you pick up a bigger number of dollars.
The pivot to Epic Legends/Fortnight kinda games makes me worry about single player games. Will putting out something like Cyberpunk 2077 (or any game that supports a modding community) be seen as dereliction of fiduciary duty to shareholders when the company could be making/selling a server-based game and selling cosmetic skins?Report
I also have a rant about Dungeon Keeper Mobile.Report