Bloodlines and Indigo Prophecy discussion

[econ21]

I loved Bloodlines - I did not see it as being in a joke-world, but maybe, being a Brit, I missed a lot of the cultural references. Or maybe I am not so pernickity. I liked some of the jokes - the radio and the TV anchorman.

Perhaps the best thing about Bloodlines for me were the NPC characters - most of them were so vividly drawn and unusual. The chats you have with Jack in the tutorial alone are much more fun than all the conversations in some other RPGs (cough, Morrowind)! I think the game probably gets slightly worse as you move from area to area - the first two areas (Santa Monica? and Downtown) were particularly engaging. Chinatown becomes too linear and combat heavy, IMO.

Linked to that, the sidequests and even mainquest tasks are rather innovative. I guess LaCroix does send you on a far number of "fetch" quests, but they are far from fedex. (As my Malkavian said about the Museum quest: "It was fun, there were dinosaurs!") Doing the quests for the daughters of Janus was probably the highpoint.

I am not sure why you felt your main character was a cipher. I usually found it gave me a nice variety of lines to choose from. But I guess I have just got hooked on the Malkavian clan, who have amazing dialogue.

The other area where Bloodlines really shined was in role-playing. To me, it really got me into the part of being a vampire. First time around, I just did not want to play a vampire - I am more used to being a paladin type and had only reluctantly bought the game. But gradually, the game gets you draws you in to the covert and hungry nature of the vampire - I started off lurking in sewers, feeding on rats, despising myself. Then gradually, it becomes fun and when I got to Hollywood I was genuinely afraid when I was recognised by an old friend. I did not want to go to my characters old life - I wanted to get on with the new life. My character ended up draining enemies with a vicious abandon. There were other nice aspects too - sometimes when things got to heavy, my character would just dance as an execise in carthasis; it was just too cool to find out that the game rewards that with a restoration of humanity.

Most of the rest of the game was top-notch: the graphics, the voicework, the music & sound effects, character creation and development etc. It was rough around the edges, but very rewarding with a little perseverence (well, a lot of perseverence when it came to that swimming quest).