Or should that be: Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2-2?
Once more the video game that started this whole blog all those years ago is slowly doing the rounds of revealing itself in public whilst people are around, (the pervert!) and with every little coquettish slip-of-the-thigh I'm force-fed chunks of a tough, chewy emotion I can't quite swallow down and identify. Is it dissatisfaction? Disgust? Or maybe the rough-hewn seeds of a new excitement? I... to be honest I don't really know. I can't say 'The Chinese Room' have ever proven their prowess with this sort of action adventure RPG game before (At least as far as I know. I haven't played their 'Little Orpheus' but a precursory glance certainly doesn't scream 'VTMB predecessor' to me.) so this isn't really a matter of "I don't understand what I'm seeing so I'll just trust-the-process; they know what they're doing!" I guess I'm waiting to be proven that the decision to utterly murder the last iteration of this game wasn't an assassination to what was going to become 'The next classic'. And it's a hard sell.
I know that it's pretty ridiculous to be hung up over the perception of a game that I never once got to play under the belief that 'it might have been good' but I suppose that speaks to the strength of that original game's marketing arm! I mean that Christmas themed trailer, the silly but horrific vibe, the involvement of original talent in the team- it spoke to me of everything I was looking for from Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, but new and fresh. This new game... I don't really know what it is right now. The more I see of it the more I can't help wondering if this is better off being designated another series subheader like 'Swansong' was. Although I can't quite put my finger on what isn't clicking with me out of a franchise I want to feel different, but maybe it's because I never got to close the book on what that first iteration of the game felt like.
And just to be clear, this new version of the game is straight out of the oven. Calling this the 'product of ten years' would have been disingenuous for the last version of the game, but for this version it's less apt. What we've heard from the basic premise of the story reveals a set-up somewhat more akin to Cyberpunk 2077 than to the original 'Young Vampire cutting his fangs in a world on the brink of a Vampire Apocalypse' narrative I was all onboard for. But then their own idea 'Vampire Elder wakes up after a century nap and tries to establish themselves in the world' isn't a million miles away from my own plans of what I would do with a VTMB game. (I would have set the entire first act of the game across time as the player Vampire builds up who they are and the impact they've had and delivered in the Vampire world, before bringing us to the present day and presenting some kind of threat which is in someway the culmination of their centuries long travels.) Maybe it's the twist which has me disquiet.
The twist in that we are not a voiceless protagonist, but an already established Vampire with a voice and a painful Tumblr fanfiction writer from the 2000's name. Phyre (pronounced: 'Fire') is waking up a stranger in a world they don't recognise whilst being beset with the voice of a Thinblood, one of the lower tiers of fresh vampire (and incidentally what we would have been playing as in the original), in a manner that doesn't sound so very dissimilar from the Johnny Silverhand relationship from Cyberpunk. There's no word yet on how customisable Phyre is, but giving them a voice already limits role playing potential, which might speak to how The Chinese Room might not really understand the assignment when it comes to making this game. Don't get me wrong, there have been RPGs in the past with spoken protagonists, but only the top-most of the top-tier manage to pull it off successfully. I'm talking Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Cyberpunk 2077- I'm not sure if I trust The Chinese Room's abilities to break into that vaunted hall with their efforts.
Rather adorably the Chinese Room decided that the very first gameplay teaser outside the announcement they would share would be a clan introduction video to the first confirmed in-game clan- The Brujah. Which is so very cute because that just so happened to be the first clan revealed by the other Masquerade Bloondlines 2 game, almost as if they're taunting. Making me jealous for all that which I cannot, and never will, have. Of course, some might question whether or not they should have made this announcement at all given that the character face models are clearly not done and this really isn't the best foot to put forward. I wouldn't even argue the demand was that great given that the total reboot was only just announced a few months back. But here we are, a clan trailer. Guess we can't deny this is VTMB now...
Actually, whilst we're talking about clans I need to get something off my chest- apparently the team plans to sell playable clans to us post game as DLC. Now putting aside the absolutely brain-broken troglodytes in the community puffing up their chests to defend a cringe-inducing policy like that- gutless worms that they are- I don't understand how that this is going to be the case. You see, in VTMB; a player could similarly choose which clan they would be 'reborn' into, and that would have an effect on the clothing they wore, some of the powers they had access to and maybe a bit of extra flavour text for the Malkavians or the inability to roam outside of the sewers without being shot dead, for the Nosferatu. But you'd still be playing the same basic game, the clans were a nice bit of roleplaying for the most part, an ability to conjoin the various RP vampire archetypes. But they weren't really 'experience defining'. So how can one feasibly be DLC?
Because- well- what are clans but honestly, at the end of the day, just Dialogue options? Maybe a quick way to bypass a quest here or ingratiate yourself with a certain NPC there, I doubt the clan-unique clothing concept will stick. Unless they're planning to paywall the Nosferatu, there's literally no way to package downloadable clan classes in any way. They're planning to charge for dialogue options! My god, The Chinese Room are worse then I thought when I believed them to just be a 'Award Bait game' factory. Okay, maybe there's a one in a million chance that The Chinese Room have been bitten by the Baldur's Gate 3 bug and every single Clan is actually imbued with an insane level of reactivity that simply demands replays from everyone who tastes it. But they couldn't afford that. Not with a voiced protagonist they can't! Can you imagine how expensive it would be to have the entire game's script be re-recorded multiple times per clan? Nah, they're selling the possibility to role-play- that's what it is, isn't it?
In my gut, I cannot compromise with what The Chinese Room are delivering, and though it's insanely cheap to just throw up my hands and announce that anything we get delivered pales in comparison to the 'masterpiece' in my head and heart which we never got: I'm just not feeling the heart of the original game here. The scrappy, messy, quality despite everything, genuinely off-kilter and not-what-everyone-is-doing style of RPG which fought for a cult status so profound that the community itself decided to support the game enough to keep it playable. What we've seen looks too sterile, too safe, too unreconcilably within the lines to be the next flare of The World of Darkness. But again, by all means I welcome any with the gall to prove me wrong. Provided we can get to the next trailer date without some more horrific monetisation decisions being revealed. (Can't wait for the premium priced 'Septum Piercing' cosmetic pack!)
No comments:
Post a Comment