Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2

It was a graveyard smash 

Oh, how long it has been? Ya'll probably not know this, but all the way at the start of this blog the very first entry I wrote (excluding my introduction) was a piece about 'Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2'. Of course, back then I used literally no screenshots of the game for some stupid reason, but I wasn't quite as atrocious as I might have imagined. (I did waffle on for a bit, but then I still do that know so I guess things don't really change, now do they?) To save you a trip, I basically spoke about my history with the flawed but classic predecessor to this game and implied at how incredibly stoked I am to get my hands on this title. (It's been literal years.) To that end I am over the moon to hear that another trailer dropped alongside the Series X gameplay event, and in the light of the last two titles from that event which disappointed me, I'm more than willing to cover something that I know won't. (I even made sure not to watch the trailer until this exact moment, so my thoughts are as raw as can be.)

Okay, so coming away from the trailer straight I'm intrigued by this slightly more whimsical attitude from the trailer, but not at all put off. In fact, a lot of what made the first game so instantly lovable was it's dark humour and this trailer had some very dark humour. As there is little information on the full game to go on (something which I delight in) I will be partaking in a little bit of guesswork to interpret what we're seeing. Although I will take a quick moment to note that whilst this may have been a cinematic, there are a few hints of gameplay to look at for those who only want that. (Now that's out of the way go watch the trailer then come back, it's good I promise.)

Now the trailer kicks off with something very interesting in that there is a Christmas tree being decorated, that alongside the festive jaunt that accompanies this trailer looks like a pretty clear hint that this game is still on for release some time this year, probably around November/December time. (I doubt they'll make Halloween.) Aside from the meta-connotations of this moment, what is perhaps also of note is the devilishly grotesque scene itself. We see a family strung up around their Christmas tree with their faces contorted by hooks into bloody smiles that, to me, brings to mind the effect of the Joker's laughing gas, somewhat. Similarly, we have several scenes of characters dancing to themselves in this trailer which conveys that irreverent, not-a-care-in-the-world attitude that one usually associates with the clown prince of crime.

Starring in this massacre we have- shall we call him 'puppetmaster'? (For want of a better name) Now unless I'm much mistaken this appears to be the same fellow who is front and centre on a lot of VTMB2's marketing, implying he is a fellow of some import. In the art he's typically depicted reaching a hand out, as though inviting the viewer into the World of Darkness. (tm) Originally I just assumed that he was the player character's sire (the person who turned you into a vampire) but after this I'm thinking that he may have a more pivotal, maybe even antagonistic, role in the game. Now I'm not just saying this because he's in a room full of strung up bodies that he presumably murdered, VTM isn't exactly renowned for being a series full of virtuous characters (is about Vampires afterall) but his general depiction of aloof indifference in such carnage just screams 'disruptive force' to me. Given the story of the last game focused on a vampire faction trying to assert order on LA, I'd imagine this puppetmaster fellow would represent a handy antithesis of all their doctrines.

From here another highlight of the trailer is the gameplay snippets and once again I am totally swept away by how the visual direction stands out so well. We feel the gloom the midnight LA streets but are never assaulted with the same dull colour. In the streets we get that yellow glow of florescent lights whilst away from the main street the pale blue moon illuminates the scene. It's such a perfect example of all the ways in which one can make the night-time shimmer without losing it's allure and mystery. This is one of the reason why I am so sold on the ability of this team to deliver the vampire game of this generation; they know all the little details to focus on in order to build up to the main course.

Beyond that there is a smattering of CG scenes placed about in order to give a feel of the sort of world we will be entering. There's some mystical world manipulation hinting at some of the magical aspects of this world taking more of a forefront this time around, or maybe just a Ubisoft-style dream sequence. (I really hope it's not the latter, though. I've seen enough dream sequences off of Ubisoft to last a lifetime.) One moment shows an unidentified suit dancing in his empty penthouse with the lights off, could this be a member of the Camarilla, or just an extra from Yakuza who stepped into the wrong game? And, of course, in order to ensure everyone that they're still making the same game we all got excited for last E3, Paradox showed us a familiar face in Elif, luring a hapless dancer in for some healthy neck munching. (Which, on an unrelated note, most be a pretty silly move to pull at your own bar. Aren't people going to stop showing up when they hear about people disappearing after a night out? Talk about poaching your own client base. Literally)

If there is one thing that I will say, and this is going to start becoming a bit of a chorus for these blogs at this point, I have no idea what business this trailer had for representing the Xbox Series X. Don't misread me, I adore getting another look at this world but I came away no more sold on the Series X than I already wasn't. Sure the textures look nice, I guess, the gameplay looked smooth, kinda; Am I supposed to be enticed by the HDR? The One X can pull of as good High Dynamic Range as any other console out there on the market right now, so what am I supposed to be impressed by? I worry for Microsoft if even their best games don't really represent what makes their console so special, because at that point you've just spent your whole event advertising other people's games. (Which is great for me, but sort of a waste of time for them.)

But alas, I have no actual stake in how Microsoft choose to market their console so I'll instead just bask in the glory of the trailer I've been granted. It's been a while since real quality RPGs were present in the modern market and right now I'm looking at a holiday season that's teasing three, and that's just dandy where I'm sitting. Oh, and to put a cherry on it all, VTMB will make use of that handy 'smart delivery' system just in case you couldn't live with yourself without seeing the shadows of LA pop like the developers intended. (Although again, I'm sure the One X can pull that off to a similar, if not identical, standard.) All minor complaints aside, I loved this trailer and right now I'm thinking that the afterlife hasn't looked more enticing!

Worlds I want to live in: Part III

They slither while they pass

We took things a little far from earth with our astral contemplations last time, so I thought this time would be better served by taking things back down to terra firma. Afterall, one doesn't need to go too far away from home in order to be fraught with adventure (At least that's what we should telling ourselves during this quarantine) so I decided to weigh up three alternate worlds from video games to figure out the positives and negatives of living there. Once again, this analysis focuses on how a normal NPC character could live in this fictional world and whenever applicable I do find it helps to be knowledgeable about the source material in order to pick a relatively strife free moment. However for these three I find that last point to be not entirely necessary.

When thinking about a world that is not just on Earth but also conceptually similar to our own, one can hardly get closer than Grand Theft Auto's America. Excluding the storyline of Grand Theft Auto 2, because that game would have us all living in a Cyperpunk-ian dystopia approximately 7 years ago, Grand Theft Auto's world is largely the same to our own. There is a functional reason for this, and that's because much of GTA's setting serves as the palette for the Rockstar team to paint their sardonic and irreverent commentary upon our current world. In that sense one could conclude that the GTA world exists as little more than a setup for a punchline and cannot be looked upon as a true simulated world, but anyone who's taken the time to play through a game will know that too much effort goes into crafting these worlds for us to just write them off with a clear conscience; so I'll treat them with the bare dignity of acknowledging their world as inhabitable.

When I said that GTA's America was close to our own I wasn't kidding, almost every game's landmass is created to be a direct parallel to a real world space. Liberty City is New York, Vice City is Miami, Las Venturas is Las Vegas, San Fierro is San Francisco and Los Santos is Los Angeles. For the sake of this choice, however, I've decided to focus purely on the games that were released in the HD-era and thus that only leaves me with Liberty City or Los Santos. Now personally I'd rather eat a landmine than go to New York, (No offence if you're from NYC, it's just not the city for me) so that leaves me with LS. This also means I don't have to go into the background of events that shaped the city, such as the LS riots depicted in San Andreas, because nothing outside of GTA V and IV is technically canon anymore. (Yay, no background section!)

On the sides of positives, Los Santos is known for the fact that most non violent crimes are no longer illegal for some unexplained reason. I'm talking about J-walking, going through red lights, driving tanks down the street, as long as you're not hurting anyone you're pretty much free to do whatever. Additionally, if any violent crime does occur near you, you can rest assured in the fact that this fight will be resolved by the authorities due to the fact that the police in the LSPD easily outnumber the amount of pedestrians ten to one. In fact, this place is probably a police state when I think about it, but as a simple NPC I probably won't be thinking about it. Aside from that you can safely enjoy all of the same shallow wonders of tinsel town just as you can in the real LA. (That's gotta be fun for someone, right?)

Now onto the negatives, oh boy. For one, your life is always in danger as Los Santos' criminal underbelly is really more of an overbelly and it dominates every single aspect of your life. These types constantly speed around the city in fast cars and don't just disregard the safety of human life as sometimes actively attempt to run them over. In shootouts you'll probably end up as collateral damage for the criminals or the insanely over-zealous police force and it's almost the customary LS greeting to get carjacked at least once in your time there. Every single businessman or politician is involved in some scheme to screw over the every day man; i.e. you. The state has employed a private military force to serve as a resident army for the state, which should ring just about every alarm bell ever. And the economy is due for a recession due to the fact that three bank robbers will soon hit the federal reserve for an eye-watering $200 million dollars. So maybe book your vacation somewhere else.

Moving away from the bright streets of Los Santos, let's instead dive into the seedy dark alleys of... Los Angeles? That is, 'Vampire: The Masquerade's' Los Angeles, and as it turns out, this is quite the interesting place to be. Now FYI I should preface this by saying that I'm basing all of my information on this world upon my time playing the 'Bloodlines' videogame, rather than playing the boardgame source material. (Again, I lack the friends to play a boardgame.) But from how I understand it the world of V:TM operates with 7 vampire clans which each imbue their members with certain hereditary powers to help them through the night. You have the warrior Brujah, the bestial Gangrel, the schizophrenic Malkavian, the magical Tremere, the alluring Toreador and the aristocratic Venture. Oh, and the butt ugly Nosferatu that are so disgusting that they have to live in the sewers for risk of exposing the vampires. All clans live under a mostly unspoken set of rules known as 'The Masquerade' whereupon everyone is expected to disguise the existence of their order to the outside world under pain of death.

In V:TMB the vampires of the city have mostly lived free from all the hyper-vigilance that some other parts have been forced under, and those of the city have enjoyed their freedoms whilst prowling the nights in peace. (And nibbling on the odd neck where appropriate.) This comes under scrutiny once the Venture-run 'Camarilla' start setting up shop in LA and begin imposing their rules upon the residents, claiming that their authority is helping keep vampire kind safe. As it turns out, however, their 'rules' amount to little more than common sense for most other kindred (That's their word for 'vampire') and this is clearly just a poor excuse for a power grab. Sooner or later all the city's vampire populace is caught up in this power struggle and everyone has to start picking sides.

On the positive side of things, you get to be a freakin' vampire! On a base level this means you'll have abnormal strength, strange magical abilities, inhuman speed and immortality to the mix. You'll also be inducted into your 'clan' of vampires to ensure you don't have to spend your nights preying on the shadows alone, you can team up with peeps. You have a genuine excuse to sleep through the day and wake up at night. You can quit your job, you don't need to feed yourself anyway: you're immortal! And whenever you want you can pull a Tom Cruise and hang out in the Cinema throughout the years to thematically showcase the subtle passing of time through the evolution of cinema technology to the audience... Wait, what were we talking about again?

On the side of the negatives, you have just about everything you can expect to be a negative about being a vampire. You die if  you go into the sun, you have an aversion to holy instruments and you now live in a world brimming with varieties of horrific supernatural monsters who wouldn't think twice about chewing you up and spitting you down a gutter somewhere. You also usually don't get to pick your clan, so you could end up a the world's most shy Toreador or least confrontational Brujah. You'll also find yourself dragged into a land dispute against the free vampires of LA and the Camarilla, ever aware that picking the either side could get you killed. And then there's all the issues that come along with immortality like loosing all drive to pursue anything in life, having to come to terms with losing all your none vampire friends over and over (You'll get over it after the first century, guaranteed) and facing the moral quandary of possessing the cure to practically any disease but having to reserve it for fear of breaking 'the Masquerade'. (I wonder if vampires would be susceptible to the Coronavirus? Probably not, but it'd sure give them a tough time.)

Finally we come to one of my favourite games of all time and, by default, one of my favourite game worlds of all time. To the northern stretches of Tamriel upon those shores first touched by the men of Atmora, I talk of the snowy tundras of Skyrim. As the home of the Nords, Skyrim has a reputation for producing hardheaded meat mountains, but that's just the kind of person you need to be to survive her harsh climates. In ancient history, Skyrim was home of the first men and so is essentially the ancestral home to all humans on the land of Tamriel. This was also the land in which the dragon's of old subjugated man and the place where Tiber Septim first received his title of Talos before embarking to conquer and unite the lands under The Empire. Essentially, Skyrim is the ancestral home of just about everybody, regardless of race, and don't you milk drinking Imperials forget it!

Before the events of Skyrim (the game) quite a lot has happened with the geopolitical situation around Tamriel. The fascist Elven 'Aldmeri Dominion' was revived and conducted a brutal war against the Empire, eventually conquering the Imperial territories; The god-king Talos was banished from the pantheon, demoting the divines to a number of 8; and the High King of Skyrim was recently slain by a rebel upstart looking to seize the throne before launching a war against the Dominion. In a few days that will all be slightly undermined, however, by the resurrection of Alduin 'The world Eater': a primordial dragon from the subjugation days who's destiny it is to, take a guess, eat the world and end all life. (So this isn't exactly the chillest of years that Skyrim has ever had.)

On the side of the positive, Skyrim is a magical, mythical Nordic wonderland of cool. You'll live in a world writhe with ancient magics, exotic races, strange creatures and more living history than you can shake a stick at. Skyrim in particular is also a frontier for freedom amidst the tyranny that has infected the rest of the Tamrielic kingdoms. The land is vast and beautiful, the people keep mostly to themselves and don't waste your time telling you about the thrilling time they met a mudcrab the otherday (damn Imperials!) and due to the odd way that income works in this world, you can easily make a good living for yourself without putting yourself in danger by doing just about anything other than farming. (Farming is literally the worst profession in Skyrim) Once you are ready to settle down, Skyrim is brimming with opportunity for you to do so and just about every major settlement that you touch down in will be a new adventure in of itself.

On the other side, this is probably one of the most dangerous provinces to live in. Due to that 'freedom' I mentioned earlier, Skyrim is top priority for being the next country that The Dominion conquer so you can expect a great war anyday now. But before then there is the very active civil war that is raging across the land and dragging just about anyone who seems able into it. (So fake a limp or something.) Then there is the little issue of Alduin coming back and bringing his Dragon pals back to life with him, meaning even the skies aren't safe from danger. All that is just exacerbating factors to pile on top of the fact that Skyrim itself is dangerous normally. Bandits stalk the roads in the day, Undead stalk them at night. Giants roam the land with half a mind to squash anything that gets 'too close'. Sabertooth tigers roam the northern tundras, giant Frostbite Spiders populate the central domains and Spriggans dominate the southern forests. Wherever you go you are in danger the moment you leave the city, and thanks to the war and the dragons you aren't safe inside those cities either. Basically Skyrim is the land that you will die in, but at least you'll have a magical time before being whisked away to Sovngarde.

So there we have it, three more worlds that it would both be awesome to live in whilst simultaneously sucking. I suppose a more intellectual fellow might comment on how such an exercise really puts our current world into some sort of perspective, but it's 3:00 AM in the morning over here and I don't feel like being all 'introspective'. (Or would that be 'Extrospective'? Is that even a word?) Either way, I hope you enjoyed my injecting of a little bit of reality into some of my favourite game worlds and maybe that got you to think somewhat more critically about the worlds you explore.  And who knows, I may even think up three more next week. (But no promises.)

My Manuscript on Modular Manipulation otherwise known as: Modifications.

Oh, Just do it yourself then!

Gaming on the PC can be a troubling ordeal. One must keep on top of system requirements, driver updates, game patches and sometimes even the operating system itself. Oftentimes the hoops one has to jump through in order to get the base game itself to function makes the entire experience not worth your time. (Very few games are worth 8 straight hours of trolling through forums until you find an obscure fix on a necro-thread posted by the one games developers; Divinity 2.) But, as any PC elitist will parrot, the reward is the ability to enjoy the full breadth of what a game can offer, and what the community can offer.

Given the malady of humanity to crave the ever-elusive virtue of perpetuity, it should be of no surprise that many people never want to stop playing the games they love. Sometimes sequels can wane in quality or the direction can veer sharply from what you wanted, thus you are drawn back to your old faithful, content in the familiar. But what happens once you've done everything you can do with the product? What happens when there are no depths left to explore in your favourite game? Do you finally move on, or undergo a series of experimental medical procedures to alter your memory so that you may re-approach the game anew? Neither, you delve into the wonderful world of mods.

'Mods' is the term we coin to refer to modifications (get it?) to the base of the game. Different from User Generated Content, Mods can range from something as mundane as a retexturing to something as elaborate as a whole new DLC sized quest mod. (Not to knock any of those high-class retextures I see out there.) They are pieces of content developed and uploaded up members of the community with no ties to the studio who created the game and thus none of the limitations. Mods can stretch the limit of your imagination and fundamentally change the way that a game is played from the ground up. They can be that transformative if the right talent and passion is behind it.

In recent years the idea of 'modding' has started to catch on in the mainstream. Just look online and you'll find dozens of articles detailing 'the best mod to achieve this effect' or update articles following the crafting of some of the most ambitious mods ever like the, apparently soon to release, 'Skyblivion'. In fact, it is a little disingenuous to label mods as a PC phenomenon nowadays; during the marketing for Fallout 4, Todd Howard boasted at the Microsoft conference about how this game would be the first ever home console game to allow for modding. (Which wasn't entirely true, that year's Farming Simulator beat it out by a few months.) True, when Fallout 4 actually landed we saw that the implementation lacked the breadth of what was possible on PC, (Plus mods had to go through Bethesda so we didn't get anything truly outlandish) but this was a significant step to bringing this element of gaming to the masses.

But what is it that is alluring about the world of modding? Well if you ask people like Todd Howard, he claims that it all about the act of taking ownership of your game, filling it with content of your choosing and playing the way that you want to play. For some it can be the promise of a never ending story with constant adventures from now until the end of the Internet. Others may just like the idea of seeing something familiar shone in a whole new light that shifts the viewers perception. There is something deeply personal about the act of modding that makes it appeal to so many different people in so many different ways.

Of course, with how huge the world of modding is and litany of hosting platforms for those mods, there is no earthly way that I can provide an exhaustive list of mods, or even games that feature mods. I spend so much of my free time browsing through gaming forums from every type all over the Internet, and yet I still get surprised by a new one now and then. Therefore, I have instead chosen to focus on certain types of mods that each cater to a certain need from the community. This should help me rationalize this blog and provide something that is fairly coherent. (Although coherence is never certain when you're on this blog.)

Firstly, I will focus on the mods that attempt to fix certain aspects about the core game. These are the modifications that do not try to alter the creator's vision, but rather bolster it my delivering the much beloved 'unofficial patch'. Every now and then, time constraints or lack of resources can lead to corners being cut in the development process. Sometimes all this amounts to is a feature or area being trimmed down or cut, whilst othertimes this can be as serious as leaving huge bugs out in the open for players to deal with. Consumers may have to wait until a patch is released to address this issues, if that patch comes at all (Remember, developers must always be moving onto their next project.), or they could simply roll up their sleeves and get to it themselves.

Sometimes these patches are so imperative that they become absolute must-haves in the community. 'Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines' Unofficial Patch is renowned as the only way one can feasibly run that game on modern consoles (With a modern resolution.) Saints Row 2 similarly suffers from poor PC optimization that can make the game unplayable; celebrated mod, Gentleman of the Row, fixes many of these core concerns whilst adding a bevy of new vehicles and customization options. Things don't even need to be that drastic either. When 'NeiR:Automata' released, it was sorely lacking in settings, one discerning modder fixed this with a helpful patch that provided everything one would require from a settings menu, removing the need to prowl through a volatile 'Ini' file.

Then there are the customization mods. When a developer offers the player customization options, the intent is obvious; they want to engage the player's creative side and have them create an avatar for themselves that they feel personally attached to. This can be difficult, however, if the tools available to you are not broad enough to create your ideal character. Normally, the only solution would be to scale back one's ambition, but with modding you can reach for the exact opposite. Any game with a character customizer is just patiently waiting for the community to supplement it with modding options.

Games like X-Com 2 launched out of the box with mod support to help accommodate for these kinds of mods. Members of your squad could be fashioned with a modular customization system, ideal for additional content, and even attributed a voice pack, which players could create. As such it wasn't too hard to create an entire force of your favourite pop culture/ Video game characters to help fight back against ADVENT. Even the GTA games have been met with hundreds of clothing mods, dating all the way back to San Andreas. Creating your perfect character is very important to some people.

Software in tech is a fickle mistress, just when you feel you've reached her full potential, she reconstructs the goal posts next year. As such, graphics that look top-of-the-line today will undoubtedly be outclassed tomorrow in our endless march towards 1:1 animation. Some of your favourite games from back in the day likely still look as perfect as the day you met in your head, but dig it out and you may start to notice the crease of wrinkles and the sag of skin. (This personification bit is going a tad awry.) modders have you covered, however, with all the tools you need to spruce your game back up and have it looking good as new.

There are many examples of beautification projects in the modding community, such as the aforementioned retextures that one might find in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls world. This is when modders extract texture files and either do-them-up or just straight replace them with their own maps. Then there are lighting mods, volumetric mixers and texture blenders that all work together to blur the seams of the world to be imperceptible. ENB's bring all of these together to overhaul the visual atmosphere of your entire game world. And no, I don't know what 'ENB' stands for. (Best guess from me is 'Enhanced Natural Beauty')

Then there are the mods that bring something wholly unique and new to the game. Folk like me love the escapism of our favourite games so much that we never want the adventure to end, and with content mods it never has to. Modders have been adding new quests, lands and game modes to games ever since the days of Half Life and these are the types of mods that I personally live for. I find nothing more exciting then traversing back to familiar lands and finding things different, it's a new unknowable adventure every time.

There are countless dozens of examples of situations where modders have changed the fabric of a game with their content. I already mentioned Half Life and the slew of mods which comes from that  (One of which became a game of some reknown called: Counter Strike.) DOOM has it's several comprehensive level mods that put the Marine in whole new maps against hoards of monsters. Then there are total conversion mods like Oblivion's 'Nehrim', which uses the base game as a platform to tell a wholly original story in a modder crafted world. There are truly no limits to this kind of creativity.

Modding is one of those elements that I think best encapsulates passion that the gaming community inspires, a passion that few other communities do. How many pieces of art drive people to, not just take up the craft themselves, but actively modify that piece of art to make it their own? You find the odd dedicated fanbase who'll seek to re-edit movies (Like the famous Phantom Edit for the Star Wars Prequels), but nothing that rivals the sheer size and creativity of the modding community. I have dabbled in small, personal mods and I thus I can attest to the amount of love it takes to infuse some part of yourself into someone else's project. It's what transforms games from products into communities, and I look forward to see how it will evolve once it starts taking further root into the general gaming populace. Perhaps we'll start to see that next generation.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2. Is it what we were waiting for?

This year's E3 seemed to be the year of the unexpected revival.

Rewind back to 2012, and I was about to get my hands on a game that married many of my favourite gameplay elements in a manner I hadn't ever considered before. Stealth gameplay was always big for me, the fantasy of ghosting in and out of an area without anyone being the wiser was somehow more impressive than gunning everyone down mindlessly. Suddenly the patrolling guard seemed much more dangerous than your typical clone-a-thug, all it took was one impatient move, one misjudged action and they would send the whole place raining down on you. Similarly, I loved the immersive weave of a good RPG. The type of game capable of putting me in the shoes of a fresh, plucky adventurer and allow that character to grow in person and talent as my immersion in this world grew. Never would I have thought of these two genre's mixed together until 2012 when I played Dishonored.

Now, by no means is Dishonored the first to offer such a paring of gameplay elements (predated by the much revered Deus ex franchise and VTMB) but it was the first time I had ever played anything like that. And I loved it. Of course 'RPG + Stealth' aren't the only ingredients in this particular dish, just the easiest to identify. Baked into the essence of games like these is the concept of choice, both in story and gameplay. I can choose to run and gun or I can choose to sneak in undetected and both options are just as fun and rewarding (at least that's the idea.) Dishonored, however, got it right. A simple premise with great stealth, fantastic combat and satisfying, open level design that promoted replayability.

Not too long after, I was seeking every game like it. I played the fantastic Deus Ex: Human Revolution and wanted my next fix. Fate and circumstance would lead to me coming across the 2004 title: Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Needless to say to anyone who has played the game themselves, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. It was odd, buggy, questionable in core design choices but ultimately won me over like it had so many others with it's twisted charm.

Although almost a decade old when I first played it, Bloodlines managed to pleasantly surprise me in almost every department that mattered in a game like this. Smart writing with memorable characters, an authentic, diverse, (occasionally cheesy) world to dive into and uncomplicated but diverse RPG elements. To say the game still holds up today is debatable. Basic gameplay is pretty stiff and connection in combat is only slightly better than what is offered by Morrowind, but choice in gameplay gives enough variety to look past these faults and admire the whole product for what it is. A fun Vampire romp with enough dark twisted themes mixed in with early 2000's cheese to leave the player satisfied and/or charmed.

15 Years after the original and Bloodlines fans finally got a glimpse of this long awaited follow up and Troika Games seem to have studied and learnt from all those genre defining games along the way. The E3 PC gaming conference was disappointingly light on details when it came to the anticipated sequel, offering us a tiny glimpse of the full demo before shuffling along their line up for the evening. However, on YouTube one can find a much more comprehensive look. The Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 extended gameplay reveal (Whew, that's a mouthful) has been featured by a handful of the usual suspects. IGN, etc. and from this footage comes a great look at what the game has to offer in the modern age.

Vampire-the-Masquerade-Bloodlines-2-Extended-Gameplay-Reveal-The-Crimes-of-Grindelwald starts off in your genre typical slummy-but-not-unlivable apartment. The type that it the absolute envy of anyone who is currently apartment hunting. (Don't get me started on Adam Jensen's suite of an apartment) and then carries on to the lightly Gothic stylings of the city whereupon the game flaunts it's first major improvement: The visuals. 'No duh, the game is fifteen years on' but even then it's worth commenting about just how pretty the new world looks. Far more dark and eerie than it's predecessor with an absolutely gorgeous use of lighting later on. This time around it seems the team intends to make the pale light from the moon the primary source of outside light rather than clustered streetlamps and it most definitely complements the cold, dead aesthetic that a Vampric theme demands. However, they seem keen to let you know that they haven't abandoned the campy nightclub neon of the original game nor the diabolical dancing animation that game immortalised. Dance like no one's watching and all but whatever you do, don't do this:

Here we start meeting characters. The proprietor of the nightclub Elif, Echoing the Voerman twins from the original Bloodlines. An underground informant with shades of Bertram Tung about him and the poor victim of your Vampiric wrath Slugg who... reminds me of literally every video game debtor ever. But the take away is that the developers want to lean on the angle of familiarity with this demo. So that we all feel we recognise the world they're teasing and equate it with our own warm, fuzzy, nostalgic memories. A valid tactic in this regard as the twisted tale of the Voerman 'twins' was one of the most disturbing, memorable moments from the original and to invoke it's spirit certainly speaks to the ambitious approach to the writing of this new story. It makes me excited for the twisted tale they can weave in this new outing into the universe of the World of Darkness.

I bought up Dishonored earlier, and it was for good reason. When it comes to the combat for Bloodlines 2 that was what immediately popped into my head. The first person slash-centric systems may lack the fluidity and punchiness of Dishonored's combat but, if married with the RPG elements correctly like the original game did, could end up being just as compelling. As for what we saw, some lead pipe bashing and Vampric metamorphoses skills made quick and easy work of just about everything in the demo but such is the way with E3 demos. The final product will likely have much more involved fights and maybe even some cool mythical boss fights just like the original.

Overall, I found Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 to be one of the more exciting reveals this E3, even with it's March 2020 launch window. Troika Games seem to know all the right buttons to push when it comes to showing off their game and they seem to have a solid grasp of exactly what it was that made the original such a cult classic. That's why I'm comfortable speculating on what might be, using the last game as reference. There may have been little stealth but I have no doubt the final product will support that playstyle. The level showcased might not have been the most impressive or imaginative but I just remember the haunted hotel from the original and I know that the team are saving their big surprises for the main game.

As a fan of the dark and twisted alongside the campy and silly, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 scratches an itch other games cannot. In the same way how The Outer Worlds looks like Borderlands with dialogue trees, VTMB 2 looks like the kind of RPG no one else would or perhaps could make in today's market. Maybe my old rose tinted glasses are getting in the way but heck if I can't help it. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm excited.