Vampire Bloodlines

Developed by Troika, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines puts the player in the shoes of a fledgling vampire in Los Angeles. As is typical for Troika, the game has a faithful translation of the White Wolf rules, down to a character generation sheet that looks almost identical to White Wolf's reference design.

The player will be able to choose either gender and any of the seven clans, with all the gameplay consequences that entails. Choose one of the ugly Nosferatu and your public activity might have to be limited, and of course most NPCs adjust their reactions accordingly if you happen to have a female character rather than male.

This first-person shooter RPG is based off Valve's own Source engine, and this was quite evident from the demonstration. The game is quite beautiful, making particularly good use of lighting and the facial animations. Animations are somewhat stiffer than we'd expect, but this is Troika's first FPS. The combat was remarkably smooth, given the tie-ins involved, like skills and vampire powers. The RPG aspect of Bloodlines looked to be much more smoothly integrated than the clunk in Deus Ex or even Morrowind's decent setup.

Bloodlines is also the official prequel to White Wolf's Time of Judgment, and unlike most computer translations of White Wolf products this far, it doesn’t lack for mature content. Troika goes about the sex, violence and swearing with a bit of tongue-in-cheek, but not enough to ruin the effect, nor do they take themselves as seriously as say Kingpin did.


Like any Troika game, Bloodlines seems to offer the player enough freedom and rope to hang himself with. You're permitted to make gimp characters, to make the wrong choices and of course to pay the consequences. There are factions to align with, stay faithful to or betray as you will. Depending on your clan and abilities, in some situations you can talk your way past a fight, or to sneak past, or to go charging right through like a typical Brujah. Depending on some of these choices, the ending of the game will adjust itself to reflect what the player has done along the way. What quests you choose to do, which ones you succeed in or which you fail, can have consequences for the endgame.