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argurotoxosAs an end-of-the-school-year present to myself, I bought myself a new computer game. The game in question was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a single-player vampire RPG set in California based on the pen-and-paper RPG of the same name created by White Wolf in the early 1990s. It had been sitting on my wish list for over three years - partly because I was waiting for the price to come down, partly because I wasn't sure if my graphics card could handle it - but after I saw that the price had been reduced to under $20 and checked all of the system requirements a few weeks ago, I decided not to hold back any longer.
I finished it after playing for almost five days straight. It's hard to rate it, but it's definitely one of my top five computer games and I enjoyed it more than the first Vampire: The Masquerade-based computer game - Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - thought Redemption was by no means a bad game in itself. (You can watch the E3 trailers for both Redemption and Bloodlines here and here, respectively. The games are better than the trailers make them look, but I prefer Redemption's trailer over Bloodlines'.)
But before I go into Bloodlines, it's useful to have a basic understanding of White Wolf's original RPG. If you pick up either Redemption or Bloodlines and have no idea what Vampire: The Masquerade's about, it doesn't matter that much; both games have dialogue that will explain the world to you if you're not familiar with it and Bloodlines offers both a complete tutorial and a character creation wizard. However, since you're not playing either of those games right now . . .
Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game of personal horror, the most successful of White Wolf's line of RPGs and part of what White Wolf terms the 'The World of Darkness', which also includes werewolves, mages, changlings, wraiths, and so on. According to the mythos of the game, all vampires are descendants of Caine, the Biblical murderer of Abel. Caine sired a second generation of vampires, who in turn sired the third. This third generation consisted of thirteen vampires, called Antediluvians, who became the founders of the thirteen vampire clans. Each vampire clan has a unique set of vampiric powers, called disciplines, and unique flaws.
After the terrors of the Inquisition, the thirteen clans split into two main sects divided by ideological differences. The majority sect, the Camarilla, believed that it was best to blend into humanity and hide the truth about vampires from mortals lest another Inquisition occur. This mask of normality was called the Masquerade and, in essence, means that you should not display any supernatural behaviour while in the company of non-vampires. The opposing sect, the Sabbat, saw the Camarilla as foolishly trying to cling to their humanity and claimed that vampires should revel in their true, monsterous natures. As such, the Sabbat has a reputation of being extremely violent.
The Camarilla and the Sabbat do not contain the total of all vampires. Four of the vampire clans elected to remain Independent. Others became Anarchs, who support the concept of the Masquerade but reject the other Camarilla traditions. Some are Caitiff, clanless because of their weak blood. Finally, there are the Kuei-jin, or 'Kindred of the East' -- vampires from Asia that are not descended from Caine and share only rudimentary similarities to Western vampires. There are a few other minor groups and offshoots, but the above five are the ones you'll meet in Bloodlines.
Other information of importance? Vampires in the game are sometimes referred to as 'kindred' (a term usually used in the Camarilla) or 'Cainites' (because of their descent from Caine). The current age is referred to as the 'Modern Nights'. Finally, there are widespread rumours of a vampiric apocalypse, called Gehenna, in which the Antediluvians may or may not rise again and devour their childer. (I only mention Gehenna because it is discussed in both Redemption and Bloodlines.)
For more information, you can check out the old White Wolf Vampire: The Masquerade page here. The Wikipedia articles on Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines are also good.
I first heard about Vampire: The Masquerade in late elementary school/junior high, making it one of my oldest, yet still extant, obsessions. It was also the first vampire-centered fictional world I was exposed to and loved, before either Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles or Joss Whedon's Buffy and Angel series. Between the release of Bloodlines and now, White Wolf completely reworked their World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade is now no more, replaced by the new vampire RPG called Vampire: The Requiem. I honestly don't know that much about Requiem as my interest in the game started to wane right around the time they started making changes and leading into Gehenna, but I still appreciate Vampire: The Masquerade and come back to it every now and then.
The very first thing you do when you play Bloodlines is go through character creation. You can play as any of the seven Camarilla clans: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, or Venture. After selecting your clan and gender, you then fill out your character sheet, which is a simplified version of the sheet used in the tabletop RPG. If you're new to Vampire: The Masquerade, you can answer a series of questions about what type of character you'd like to play and your clan and character sheet will be filled out accordingly by the computer. Detailed information about clans and their disciplines can be found both in the game and in the corresponding instructional booklet.
Being able to create your character like this highlights two things that Bloodlines does very well: customization and immersion. You can play the game through as a Nosferatu who lives in the sewers and sneaks past enemies rather than killing them, and then play as a Toreador who specializes in seduction and melee and have a completely different gameplay experience. Moreover, there are almost always multiple ways to complete quests and talk to NPCs [Non-Player Characters]. If you wanted to, you could even decline to play any side quests at all, though I personally think that the side quests are the best parts. In short, the game is completely in your hands.
There are several factors that go into immersion. First is the simple fact that your character is yours. Second, you can play in either third-person or first-person mode. There are certain times where you're forced into a certain POV - all melee and cutscenes are third-person, all computer use and dialogue is first-person - but it's very flexible for the most part. Personally, I find that playing in first-person makes immersion much easier than third-person. Third is the atmosphere of Bloodlines. It's believable, dramatic, and features both excellent graphics and music.
The other thing that Bloodlines does a phenomenal job on is NPCs. You'll meet many interesting and unusual characters as you play and the conversations you'll have with them are some of the best moments of the game. The characters drive the plot along and introduce a number of twists.
Finally, there's your computer and TV. They appear in your haven and operate in real time. As you play the game, you'll receive new email (including spam messages) and the news broadcaster will have additional stories to report. Sometimes it's the small touches that are the most enjoyable.
It took me a while to adjust to the combat system, but once I did, it was fun and easy to use. My only criticism is that displaying the health bar for the bosses takes away from the suspense and realism, even if it does give you a better idea of how to handle your inventory. It makes you too secure. Also, this didn't bother me very much, but you'll see the numerical damage you do to enemies as you fight them. By way of comparison, health bars for enemies were never given in Redemption; I remember throwing every discipline I had at the end boss and a large part of the suspense came from the fact that I had no idea how long it would take for him to die and was anxious that I might run out of blood first.
Downsides? Hmm . . . My earliest disappointment was that your character model is locked into your clan and gender choice and there's not much customization on that level. Load and save times tend to be somewhat long and you'll encounter a loading point every time you move from the streets into a building or vice versa. I adjusted to it, but at least the loading screens give you interesting information to read while you're waiting. Also, there are a few bugs in certain locations and I had to access the game console in order to complete the game when a critical door became stuck. However, I didn't patch the game before playing and there are both official and fan-created patches out that make the game more stable (though how stable I can't say, seeing as I've yet to try them; some people apparently have worse luck with the fan patches than with the original).
There are also a few misspellings, though with Malkavian dialogue, I'm never certain whether they're intentional or typos. Most of the disciplines have been altered in some way from the tabletop RPG in order to be more useful in combat. Finally, a few of the main quest levels struck me as too long [the trip through the sewers after facing the Tzimisce Andrei] or too hack-and-slash (or whatever the hack-and-slash equivalent is for firearms users) ['Hell at the Hallowbrook Hotel'].
I played through the tutorial as four different characters to see just how much gameplay changed with clan. First was a male Malkavian, then a female Tremere, then a male Gangrel, then a female Nosferatu. My Tremere, Gangrel, and Nosferatu had fairly similar dialogue options, though fighting was different due to the disciplines involved. I continued with my Nosferatu and Tremere into about ten minutes of post-tutorial gameplay and there the differences really began. As a Nosferatu, you're expected to use the sewer for all transportation since there's no way you can uphold the Masquerade otherwise due to your disfigured appearance. If you attempt to talk to humans, they'll scream and run away. As a Tremere, you can interact easily with humans and have normal dialogue.
Back when I first started playing V:tM, I always played a Tremere. Then, as time passed, my attention switched from the Tremere to the Malkavians and I just barely managed to buy the Malkavian clanbook before White Wolf started preparing for Vampire: The Requiem. When I bought Bloodlines, I was all prepared to go in as a male Malkavian, but I didn't like the character models for the clan and I wanted to see what the normal dialogue looked like before I went through with a Malkavian.
You see, the thing about Malkavians is that they're insane, which leads to some very . . . interesting dialogue options. One of the criticisms I've read for both Bloodlines and Redemption is that Malkavians are portrayed more as funny!insane instead of scary!insane, and I have to admit that there is some truth to that, at least regarding some of the dialogue options for Malkavian players. However, you do meet two Malkavian NPCs in Bloodlines, both of whom display the more disturbing kind of insanity. I don't know if that makes up for the fun lunacy bit, but it's there.
Playing as a Malkavian can be hard in the sense that your interactions with humans usually don't work out because of your unique way of speaking. However, you do get two advantages. First is the uncanny insight that comes with the insanity; you'll see it in your dialogue options every now and then, though it's up to you to recognize it. And second is the Malkavian-only discipline of Dementation, which is useful both for convincing others to do what you want and as a long distance combat weapon. For example, level three Dementation - Vision of Death - causes any NPC to die instantly if they are human and does a good amount of damage if they aren't. (Level three Dementation doesn't have this effect in the pen-and-paper version.)
The unique dialogue you get as a Malkavian was one of my favourite parts of Bloodlines and I quickly switched over to playing only with my Malkavian character, named dev in honour of the sole Malkavian character from Redemption, Dev/Null. I even began to look forward to the dialogue I'd get afterwards while playing combat-centered quests.
'The Ghost Haunts at Midnight' was the first Bloodlines quest that convinced me just how good the game could be. It takes place at Ocean House, a haunted hotel. As soon as you enter the area, the creepy music starts. (The title of the music file - 'disturbed and twisted' - is very aptly named.) Ghosts are one of the few supernatural creatures that truly unnerve me, in large part because there is no way to fight them; you can't decapitate them or shoot them with silver bullets or set them on fire to make them go away. It's precisely this psychological fear and feelings of helplessness that this quest plays on. As you walk up the steps to the main door, one of the lights suddenly breaks. When you enter, a trash can mysteriously rolls toward you from the right.
It only gets worse from there. You catch glimpses of a female in a white dress running away, screaming and terrified, before disappearing. Picture frames vibrate and smash, the stairs leading to the second floor crash when you try to walk up them, turning on the electricity in the boiler room causes the whole place to shake and shudder menacingly. Along the way, you find newspapers that slowly uncover the horrible events that happened there.
In a bedroom on the second floor, the lights suddenly shut off, then spring back to life, revealing the words 'Get out' carved in the wall. A girl's voice whispers 'He's coming' in the kitchen just before pots and pans are flung every which way and the stove ignites. It's the scariest level I've ever played.
The other Bloodlines quest that left scars was near the end of the game. I was talking to Nines, the leader of the Anarchs, when a werewolf suddenly attacked us. Werewolves in the World of Darkness are very powerful and there's no normal weapon or discipline a vampire can use to kill it. The lift I had taken to reach the mountain had returned to the bottom and I was forced to somehow survive the werewolf for over three minutes. (There was a countdown that appeared at the top of the screen.) In the end, I managed to enter a building and hide, shaking, on top a metal platform. When the timer was up, I ran back to the lift with the werewolf on my tail and clawing at my back the entire way.
That encounter shook me up so badly that when I learned that the Prince, who I'd been helping with little complaint, had called a blood hunt on me, I couldn't even process it. I've never felt that kind of paranoia and futility, of not being able to trust anyone or know who's lying and who's telling the truth, as strongly before. When the endgame started, I was an utter mess. I was not expecting those kind of plot twists, though I had begun suspecting that Prince LaCroix was on a road to disaster after he threw a fit at myself and Beckett because we didn't know how to open the Ankaran Sarcophagus.
On a more positive note, I was absolutely thrilled when Beckett showed up. He's a character who has been in the V:tM world for a while and is a scholar from clan Gangrel. Beckett comes off as rather condescending at first, but that's until you realize that it's not unjustified. He's an intelligent loner with a scientist's curiosity and love of objective facts. Beckett's also one of the oldest vampires in Bloodlines and, at his age, very little surprises him. The point where I truly began to admire him was after LaCroix had thrown his little fit and I mentioned that I was thinking of defecting. Beckett took it all very calmly and even gave me some useful advice.
The other NPCs I really liked were the Nosferatu. Gary has a twisted, almost Malkavian sense of humour and Mitnick's emails were full of personality. Malkavians and Nosferatu make a good team.
And then there's Jack. Jack's the only one who stayed to help teach a newly-made vampire (me) the ways of the world after my sire was killed. He's a cool guy; you meet him in the tuitorial and he plays an unforgettable part in the endgame.
There were many other notable NPCs, but the above were my favourite.
As for side quests . . . In Chinatown, I not only stole eyeballs from a corpse at the request of a Chinese store owner who wanted to display them on his shelf (no, they weren't Kuruta red) ['Eye Gouge Hell'], but I also helped a Japanese Demon Hunter named Yukie kill a demon in revenge for the death of her Sensei ['Gone Fishing']. They're both fun quests, but more notable for the anime connections I saw in them than anything else.
My favourite side quest has to be 'A Tangled Web', in which I hacked into a computer in each of the four main locations (Santa Monica, Downtown LA, Hollywood, and Chinatown) so that the Nosferatu Mitnick could set up a computer network. I also liked the mystery of the 'Carnival of Death' side quest, but thought the resolution wasn't as unique as it could have been. Finally, convincing Samantha that I was her old pet turtle in Hollywood in order to preserve the Masquerade was hilariously unexpected.
Because I have so many of them, the screencaps are getting their own post here. Or, if you'd rather, you can view them through their scrapbook gallery.
I finished it after playing for almost five days straight. It's hard to rate it, but it's definitely one of my top five computer games and I enjoyed it more than the first Vampire: The Masquerade-based computer game - Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - thought Redemption was by no means a bad game in itself. (You can watch the E3 trailers for both Redemption and Bloodlines here and here, respectively. The games are better than the trailers make them look, but I prefer Redemption's trailer over Bloodlines'.)
But before I go into Bloodlines, it's useful to have a basic understanding of White Wolf's original RPG. If you pick up either Redemption or Bloodlines and have no idea what Vampire: The Masquerade's about, it doesn't matter that much; both games have dialogue that will explain the world to you if you're not familiar with it and Bloodlines offers both a complete tutorial and a character creation wizard. However, since you're not playing either of those games right now . . .
Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game of personal horror, the most successful of White Wolf's line of RPGs and part of what White Wolf terms the 'The World of Darkness', which also includes werewolves, mages, changlings, wraiths, and so on. According to the mythos of the game, all vampires are descendants of Caine, the Biblical murderer of Abel. Caine sired a second generation of vampires, who in turn sired the third. This third generation consisted of thirteen vampires, called Antediluvians, who became the founders of the thirteen vampire clans. Each vampire clan has a unique set of vampiric powers, called disciplines, and unique flaws.
After the terrors of the Inquisition, the thirteen clans split into two main sects divided by ideological differences. The majority sect, the Camarilla, believed that it was best to blend into humanity and hide the truth about vampires from mortals lest another Inquisition occur. This mask of normality was called the Masquerade and, in essence, means that you should not display any supernatural behaviour while in the company of non-vampires. The opposing sect, the Sabbat, saw the Camarilla as foolishly trying to cling to their humanity and claimed that vampires should revel in their true, monsterous natures. As such, the Sabbat has a reputation of being extremely violent.
The Camarilla and the Sabbat do not contain the total of all vampires. Four of the vampire clans elected to remain Independent. Others became Anarchs, who support the concept of the Masquerade but reject the other Camarilla traditions. Some are Caitiff, clanless because of their weak blood. Finally, there are the Kuei-jin, or 'Kindred of the East' -- vampires from Asia that are not descended from Caine and share only rudimentary similarities to Western vampires. There are a few other minor groups and offshoots, but the above five are the ones you'll meet in Bloodlines.
Other information of importance? Vampires in the game are sometimes referred to as 'kindred' (a term usually used in the Camarilla) or 'Cainites' (because of their descent from Caine). The current age is referred to as the 'Modern Nights'. Finally, there are widespread rumours of a vampiric apocalypse, called Gehenna, in which the Antediluvians may or may not rise again and devour their childer. (I only mention Gehenna because it is discussed in both Redemption and Bloodlines.)
For more information, you can check out the old White Wolf Vampire: The Masquerade page here. The Wikipedia articles on Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines are also good.
I first heard about Vampire: The Masquerade in late elementary school/junior high, making it one of my oldest, yet still extant, obsessions. It was also the first vampire-centered fictional world I was exposed to and loved, before either Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles or Joss Whedon's Buffy and Angel series. Between the release of Bloodlines and now, White Wolf completely reworked their World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade is now no more, replaced by the new vampire RPG called Vampire: The Requiem. I honestly don't know that much about Requiem as my interest in the game started to wane right around the time they started making changes and leading into Gehenna, but I still appreciate Vampire: The Masquerade and come back to it every now and then.
The very first thing you do when you play Bloodlines is go through character creation. You can play as any of the seven Camarilla clans: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, or Venture. After selecting your clan and gender, you then fill out your character sheet, which is a simplified version of the sheet used in the tabletop RPG. If you're new to Vampire: The Masquerade, you can answer a series of questions about what type of character you'd like to play and your clan and character sheet will be filled out accordingly by the computer. Detailed information about clans and their disciplines can be found both in the game and in the corresponding instructional booklet.
Being able to create your character like this highlights two things that Bloodlines does very well: customization and immersion. You can play the game through as a Nosferatu who lives in the sewers and sneaks past enemies rather than killing them, and then play as a Toreador who specializes in seduction and melee and have a completely different gameplay experience. Moreover, there are almost always multiple ways to complete quests and talk to NPCs [Non-Player Characters]. If you wanted to, you could even decline to play any side quests at all, though I personally think that the side quests are the best parts. In short, the game is completely in your hands.
There are several factors that go into immersion. First is the simple fact that your character is yours. Second, you can play in either third-person or first-person mode. There are certain times where you're forced into a certain POV - all melee and cutscenes are third-person, all computer use and dialogue is first-person - but it's very flexible for the most part. Personally, I find that playing in first-person makes immersion much easier than third-person. Third is the atmosphere of Bloodlines. It's believable, dramatic, and features both excellent graphics and music.
The other thing that Bloodlines does a phenomenal job on is NPCs. You'll meet many interesting and unusual characters as you play and the conversations you'll have with them are some of the best moments of the game. The characters drive the plot along and introduce a number of twists.
Finally, there's your computer and TV. They appear in your haven and operate in real time. As you play the game, you'll receive new email (including spam messages) and the news broadcaster will have additional stories to report. Sometimes it's the small touches that are the most enjoyable.
It took me a while to adjust to the combat system, but once I did, it was fun and easy to use. My only criticism is that displaying the health bar for the bosses takes away from the suspense and realism, even if it does give you a better idea of how to handle your inventory. It makes you too secure. Also, this didn't bother me very much, but you'll see the numerical damage you do to enemies as you fight them. By way of comparison, health bars for enemies were never given in Redemption; I remember throwing every discipline I had at the end boss and a large part of the suspense came from the fact that I had no idea how long it would take for him to die and was anxious that I might run out of blood first.
Downsides? Hmm . . . My earliest disappointment was that your character model is locked into your clan and gender choice and there's not much customization on that level. Load and save times tend to be somewhat long and you'll encounter a loading point every time you move from the streets into a building or vice versa. I adjusted to it, but at least the loading screens give you interesting information to read while you're waiting. Also, there are a few bugs in certain locations and I had to access the game console in order to complete the game when a critical door became stuck. However, I didn't patch the game before playing and there are both official and fan-created patches out that make the game more stable (though how stable I can't say, seeing as I've yet to try them; some people apparently have worse luck with the fan patches than with the original).
There are also a few misspellings, though with Malkavian dialogue, I'm never certain whether they're intentional or typos. Most of the disciplines have been altered in some way from the tabletop RPG in order to be more useful in combat. Finally, a few of the main quest levels struck me as too long [the trip through the sewers after facing the Tzimisce Andrei] or too hack-and-slash (or whatever the hack-and-slash equivalent is for firearms users) ['Hell at the Hallowbrook Hotel'].
I played through the tutorial as four different characters to see just how much gameplay changed with clan. First was a male Malkavian, then a female Tremere, then a male Gangrel, then a female Nosferatu. My Tremere, Gangrel, and Nosferatu had fairly similar dialogue options, though fighting was different due to the disciplines involved. I continued with my Nosferatu and Tremere into about ten minutes of post-tutorial gameplay and there the differences really began. As a Nosferatu, you're expected to use the sewer for all transportation since there's no way you can uphold the Masquerade otherwise due to your disfigured appearance. If you attempt to talk to humans, they'll scream and run away. As a Tremere, you can interact easily with humans and have normal dialogue.
Back when I first started playing V:tM, I always played a Tremere. Then, as time passed, my attention switched from the Tremere to the Malkavians and I just barely managed to buy the Malkavian clanbook before White Wolf started preparing for Vampire: The Requiem. When I bought Bloodlines, I was all prepared to go in as a male Malkavian, but I didn't like the character models for the clan and I wanted to see what the normal dialogue looked like before I went through with a Malkavian.
You see, the thing about Malkavians is that they're insane, which leads to some very . . . interesting dialogue options. One of the criticisms I've read for both Bloodlines and Redemption is that Malkavians are portrayed more as funny!insane instead of scary!insane, and I have to admit that there is some truth to that, at least regarding some of the dialogue options for Malkavian players. However, you do meet two Malkavian NPCs in Bloodlines, both of whom display the more disturbing kind of insanity. I don't know if that makes up for the fun lunacy bit, but it's there.
Playing as a Malkavian can be hard in the sense that your interactions with humans usually don't work out because of your unique way of speaking. However, you do get two advantages. First is the uncanny insight that comes with the insanity; you'll see it in your dialogue options every now and then, though it's up to you to recognize it. And second is the Malkavian-only discipline of Dementation, which is useful both for convincing others to do what you want and as a long distance combat weapon. For example, level three Dementation - Vision of Death - causes any NPC to die instantly if they are human and does a good amount of damage if they aren't. (Level three Dementation doesn't have this effect in the pen-and-paper version.)
The unique dialogue you get as a Malkavian was one of my favourite parts of Bloodlines and I quickly switched over to playing only with my Malkavian character, named dev in honour of the sole Malkavian character from Redemption, Dev/Null. I even began to look forward to the dialogue I'd get afterwards while playing combat-centered quests.
'The Ghost Haunts at Midnight' was the first Bloodlines quest that convinced me just how good the game could be. It takes place at Ocean House, a haunted hotel. As soon as you enter the area, the creepy music starts. (The title of the music file - 'disturbed and twisted' - is very aptly named.) Ghosts are one of the few supernatural creatures that truly unnerve me, in large part because there is no way to fight them; you can't decapitate them or shoot them with silver bullets or set them on fire to make them go away. It's precisely this psychological fear and feelings of helplessness that this quest plays on. As you walk up the steps to the main door, one of the lights suddenly breaks. When you enter, a trash can mysteriously rolls toward you from the right.
It only gets worse from there. You catch glimpses of a female in a white dress running away, screaming and terrified, before disappearing. Picture frames vibrate and smash, the stairs leading to the second floor crash when you try to walk up them, turning on the electricity in the boiler room causes the whole place to shake and shudder menacingly. Along the way, you find newspapers that slowly uncover the horrible events that happened there.
In a bedroom on the second floor, the lights suddenly shut off, then spring back to life, revealing the words 'Get out' carved in the wall. A girl's voice whispers 'He's coming' in the kitchen just before pots and pans are flung every which way and the stove ignites. It's the scariest level I've ever played.
The other Bloodlines quest that left scars was near the end of the game. I was talking to Nines, the leader of the Anarchs, when a werewolf suddenly attacked us. Werewolves in the World of Darkness are very powerful and there's no normal weapon or discipline a vampire can use to kill it. The lift I had taken to reach the mountain had returned to the bottom and I was forced to somehow survive the werewolf for over three minutes. (There was a countdown that appeared at the top of the screen.) In the end, I managed to enter a building and hide, shaking, on top a metal platform. When the timer was up, I ran back to the lift with the werewolf on my tail and clawing at my back the entire way.
That encounter shook me up so badly that when I learned that the Prince, who I'd been helping with little complaint, had called a blood hunt on me, I couldn't even process it. I've never felt that kind of paranoia and futility, of not being able to trust anyone or know who's lying and who's telling the truth, as strongly before. When the endgame started, I was an utter mess. I was not expecting those kind of plot twists, though I had begun suspecting that Prince LaCroix was on a road to disaster after he threw a fit at myself and Beckett because we didn't know how to open the Ankaran Sarcophagus.
On a more positive note, I was absolutely thrilled when Beckett showed up. He's a character who has been in the V:tM world for a while and is a scholar from clan Gangrel. Beckett comes off as rather condescending at first, but that's until you realize that it's not unjustified. He's an intelligent loner with a scientist's curiosity and love of objective facts. Beckett's also one of the oldest vampires in Bloodlines and, at his age, very little surprises him. The point where I truly began to admire him was after LaCroix had thrown his little fit and I mentioned that I was thinking of defecting. Beckett took it all very calmly and even gave me some useful advice.
The other NPCs I really liked were the Nosferatu. Gary has a twisted, almost Malkavian sense of humour and Mitnick's emails were full of personality. Malkavians and Nosferatu make a good team.
And then there's Jack. Jack's the only one who stayed to help teach a newly-made vampire (me) the ways of the world after my sire was killed. He's a cool guy; you meet him in the tuitorial and he plays an unforgettable part in the endgame.
There were many other notable NPCs, but the above were my favourite.
As for side quests . . . In Chinatown, I not only stole eyeballs from a corpse at the request of a Chinese store owner who wanted to display them on his shelf (no, they weren't Kuruta red) ['Eye Gouge Hell'], but I also helped a Japanese Demon Hunter named Yukie kill a demon in revenge for the death of her Sensei ['Gone Fishing']. They're both fun quests, but more notable for the anime connections I saw in them than anything else.
My favourite side quest has to be 'A Tangled Web', in which I hacked into a computer in each of the four main locations (Santa Monica, Downtown LA, Hollywood, and Chinatown) so that the Nosferatu Mitnick could set up a computer network. I also liked the mystery of the 'Carnival of Death' side quest, but thought the resolution wasn't as unique as it could have been. Finally, convincing Samantha that I was her old pet turtle in Hollywood in order to preserve the Masquerade was hilariously unexpected.
Because I have so many of them, the screencaps are getting their own post here. Or, if you'd rather, you can view them through their scrapbook gallery.
