Does the game really drop in quality towards the end? Doing stuff Downtown now and I fucking love this game

Yeah you can't fault them for their ambition or vision or whatever but ultimately you need to get your shit in when it's due.

Yes because the game was unfortunately rushed to be released on the same week as Half Life 2 and a lot of shit got cut out/modified

>They were rushed to put out the game by the publisher

It was the opposite actually. Activision gave Troika multiple extensions to development time. They just worked way too fucking slow. It took them well over a year, for example, just to get Santa Monica done. They agreed to two years development time. They got three. They needed ten.

It takes a dip sometime near the end of Hollywood, there's an extensive sewer level there that I always hated + the hub after, Chinatown, has notably less shit for you to do compared to the other hubs

It takes another dip near the very end, which becomes a rush of combat + bosses and a rushed ending

still love the game tho, wish it could've been properly finished

>and even offered to do it for free

Utter crap. They wanted to be paid. Of course they wanted to be paid. The free thing came from a couple of devs doing a patch for the game in their own time, not the whole studio working for free for half a year.

Don't think so, only for a bit in Santa Monica. Presently looking into a doomsday cult spreading vampire aids to hookers and hobos.

Yes, Hollywood is good but Chinatown is too small. The ending makes up for it though

They spent a lot of time making their own tools and systems to work with shitty pre-release Source, and Valve demanded that the game not be released before HL2 so Activision took that as "this is the soonest we can release it so that's when we release it fuck everything else".

Read your post wrong and thought you said you were already in Hollywood. Anyway, enjoy until you reach the sewers (you'll know what everyone's talking about once you get there) ,and what ever you do, DO NOT OPEN IT

why couldn't VTMB produce a vampire as based as christof?

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>french
>speaks in a clear english accent
what did they mean by this

I don't know if I'd call it a drop in quality, but it becomes much more linear.

It had Pisha, Beckett, Strauss and a lot of other great characters, what are you talking about?

HL2 was delayed. Bloodlines was released well after it's intended release date. No, they didn't spend a lot of time making their own tools. What they did spend a lot of time doing was making The Temple of Elemental Evil, a production they decided to take on while the were supposed to be developing Bloodlines. Activision was understandably not happy to find out about that.

Forget it boss, it's Chinatown.

>No, they didn't spend a lot of time making their own tools
Valve never used Python as far as I know, Troika came up with their own fucky solutions for a lot of things.

Bloodlines is my favorite game ever, but one of the things that truly set it apart was the emphasis on the social aspect. I've played a lot of CRPGs and none of them have that something Bloodlines had.

And so does everyone in Prague.

bloodlines is a crpg?

Channeling Patrick Stewart.

It's made by Troika, so yeah.

It's habbening

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Developing an interface for a pre-existing interpreted script language is not a big deal.

crpg = computer role-playing game
So yes, Bloodlines is a crpg.

FUCK FUCK FUCK PLEASE BE REAL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Chinatown has less content than the other hubs and the final levels are just bad shoot em ups

I knew about the ARG going on for a couple months now. I did not know Chris Avellone might possibly be involved.
March 21st is going to be a little more interesting now.

isaac is pretty based

Not bad shoot 'em ups, but they force you into combat and it fucking sucks if you aren't prepared and though you could stealth your way (which you can outside the boss fights for the most part) and made the same mistake I did by not putting points into firearms on later stages of the game but godmode is always here so whatever

>Dong expands.

>tfw you stuck it to the Strauss
felt good

they are bad shoot em ups, the combat is awful
although I'm pretty sure the game forces you into combat far earlier than that, I can't imagine anyone going for a pacifist build and not realizing you need to kill people

It needs to either be a very well funded sequel or a decently funded remake. I'd accept a remake of VtMB not because the game is dated but because a lot of shit ended up being unfinished.

Pisha is the best character in either game, but yeah Christof was a great protag.

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>strauss tells you all about the fucking gargoyle knowing it makes him vulnerable
he deserved to get owned for that alone

How did Gomez find out about the Masquerade?

You can sneak your way through most places up until sewers, but there are definitely sections that you need to be prepared for a brawl, but I just sucked the first time around and didn't realize how valuable class skills can be, especially if you're a Ventrue or a Brujah.

He decided to gamble, but it wasn't a big miss which is why I think he did that.

Wrong, Beckett is, though Pisha is in the top 3 for sure.

it's a clear split from what valve was doing at the same time. vtmb also uses older outdated assets from valve which implies they weren't getting much support.

clip of the twitch thing during the Tender ARG
clips.twitch.tv/DifferentPlausibleCamelRlyTho

a lot of people speculate it's Santa Monica Pier

>class skills
just skill guns and shoot people lol

That's only needed for the Sheriff and that Chinese cunt, but otherwise I prefer to go melee because you can't stunlock them and abuse the shit out of it.

Max unarmed and celerity.

All you need bro.

>He decided to gamble, but it wasn't a big miss which is why I think he did that.
Yeah but he didn't really have anything to gain from telling you, and also got embarrassed pretty badly

I'm not going to deny that they got a shittier version of Source than what HL2 was released on but the idea that that was the reason the game has issues is utter crap. Most devs don't have their hands held when they license an engine. I don't know why you think things should have been different here. The main reason the game took so long and was released unfinished is because Troika pulled a Randy Pitchford and siphoned Bloodlines financing to development of The Temple of Elemental Evil. Activision was understandably upset about that and that's why they cut them off and nothing happened for six months while everyone waited for HL2 to be released. Troika are such a bunch of fuck ups they even sent the wrong build of the game for duplication and so the game was released in an unwinnable broken state. Stop making excusing for them just because you think their writing is cool.

>He didn't have anything to gain
Having the PC kill Gargoyle and deny the Anarchs a chance to utilize him certainly is beneficial for the Masquerade.

big claims require big proofs

Not enough rule 34 for this game

Right but he could have told you the weaknesses or whatever without going 'whoosp i made a verbal slip and when pursued on it i admit i made the gargoyle'

I assume it was a test to see where you stand.

>Activision, fearing their license was in jeopardy, advanced Troika more money in 2003, to allow the ToEE team to move over to work on Bloodlines, hoping Troika would be able to complete the game by 2004 by sheer force of mass.

Activision actually directly financed a competitor's product just in the hope that Troika would manage to finish Bloodlines. The even sent them developers paid for by Activision to work of ToEE. Only a retard believes developer = good, publisher = bad until proven otherwise.

Yeah, I liked troika but Activision really should have put a better handle on them. Wasn't there some weird politics going on interanlly at Actvision at the same time?

>Only a retard believes developer = good, publisher = bad until proven otherwise.
you haven't proven much yourself, the article you pulled that quote from says nothing about troika siphoning activision money to toee. it even says that activision and white wolf kept cock blocking them and keeping them from getting things done.

Troika/Obsidian end up doing that for every game. It's always a buggy half finished mess. At some point you can't blame the publisher any longer.

where is the proofs???

VTMB, KOTOR 2, FNV...

Didn't Arcanum have some problems too?

Yeah I think it did. Don't know though didn't really play it.

you know what i meant, you're trying to avoid giving proof of troika pulling a gearbox because there is none.

Arcanum was pretty tight when it came to writing and didn't suffer from rushed development, but it's a bit clunky to play and the interface isn't really intuitive.

>it even says that activision and white wolf kept cock blocking them and keeping them from getting things done

Which is strange because for years Troika was saying working with White Wolf was a pleasure because they didn't really care much about what they did with the IP and that was unusual.

Arcanums gameplay can be clunky but it's good quality from start to finish and doesn't feel rushed or cut of content like FONV or VTMN do.

>As talented as they were, there's a reason they went out of business.
They had their own issues but Activision also forcing VtMB out on the same day as HL2 was the final nail in the coffin.

no, it doesn't drop down, hollywood and chinatown are awesome. Near end the pace will ramp up. If you didn't look up any spoilers everything will be fantastic.

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There only a few parts that could've used more work, but anyone saying it's the second half or last third of the game is exaggerating.

Yes but it ends quickly and is satisfying.

pls

the hubs are fine, the sewers are where the shit at

>Before Bloodlines even landed in stores, Troika was feeling the final effects of having to develop by the seat of their pants over seven years. Boyarsky (now the sole CEO) and team were unable to secure new deals with Activision or other publishers, presumably due to what had then become a track record of great design with poor implementation. They pitched a variety of ideas to a few different publishers, Anderson's favorite being "Dreadlands, an [MMOG] set in mythical mid 19th century Eastern Europe." The team was also working on the spiritual successor to Fallout, but couldn't find anyone willing to bite on the end of their line.
>Looking back, Anderson says, "Publishers aren't interested in games from developers that consistently turn out B titles. Unfortunately, although our games had depth and vision, we were never able to release a game that had been thoroughly tested and rid of bugs. The large quantity of errors in our product automatically rendered them B titles."

It's all on them.

We'll know next week... maybe, it might just be another ARG thing.

Was it just me or did stealth got really fucking stupid towards the end of the game as well? I remember the Sabbat warehouse and the parking lot level, enemies would catch you form several places if you took a wrong step, but towards the Kue-Jin temple, the Leopold's temple, enemis would walk in circles around your crouching character and just stop there.

>It's all on them.
Not really. VtMB was buggy but still won a bunch of awards when it was released. It didn't matter how good it was because it wouldn't have gotten the necessary attention being released on the same day as HL2 anyway. If Activision had waited a bit until HL2 hype started dying down, then marketed VtMB as the first RPG on the Source engine, it would've gotten a lot more sales.

its more the scaling than the NPCs tbqh

late '04 also had a fuck ton of other great games released around the same time, people really forget

yeah, they throw some massive dungeons that are mostly fghting towards the end.

You do know Troika developed more games than just Bloodlines, right? They already had their reputation BEFORE Bloodlines was even released.

And I don't think you are right that Bloodlines would have been an enormous success if they had waited until after the release of HL2. It would have just been another high profile release they were going up against. Bloodlines is a good game but the idea it's an absolutely amazing game that only got a mediocre reception because it went up against HL2 is crap. It got a mediocre reception because it's mostly a mediocre game that is riddled with bugs.

>mfw assaulting the giovanni mansion like nomak at the end of blade 2
i will never not post this in a vtmb thread

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>giovanni mansion

im hating it right now

>dont have enough charm to talk out the quest
>dont have enough fight skills to kill the chinamen

>It got a mediocre reception
It doesn't have a mediocre reputation. It's just not as well known. That's not the same thing.

Yeah, it got mostly 8's with a few 9's the year it released. (25 of the 35 reviews from 2004 were an 8 or better, I might be miscounting.)

IGN gave it RPG of the year award too.

And it aired on Nocturnal Emissions back in the day.

Wonder how the new one is going to fare?(I'm not going to get my hopes up, at all.)

The first big hurdle the "new one" faces is existing.

Well, something WoD related is definitely on the wayAnd not just the Werewolf game.). Maybe it'll get revealed next week, maybe not, but by the end of the year a WoD game will be shown.

Any reccomdened mods for this game?

10. something one is pretty solid and the last one I played

I don't think so. I think it's Santa Monica that's the boring part. The sewers are fine, except for the rubbish puzzles. Chinatown is a bit small with not that much to do, but then that's every hub in the game, innit.

>I think it's Santa Monica that's the boring part.

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>Bloodlines is my favorite game ever, but one of the things that truly set it apart was the emphasis on the social aspect. I've played a lot of CRPGs and none of them have that something Bloodlines had.

>no reputation system
>can't even talk the final boss down
>less emphasis on the social aspect than Bloodlines

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Man, you're really strawmanning here.

>reddit spacing
>"nah"

Fuck off?

You sure as fuck had better not neglect combat stats. Pick either firearms or melee and stick with it.

Also, yeah, it goes downhill later in the game. There's still some great stuff, but eventually there are lots of linear combat missions, which is just not fun.

>reddit spacing

dont tell me you hear this for the first time, but vtmb is the best game ever because of the thick atmosphere

I swear the definition of reddit spacing has changed to any post I don't like. I've never even been to reddit and even I'm getting people calling my posts reddit spaving. I don't use any social media like fagbook or twitter, I have solely used Yea Forums as my only social website for over a decade now.

And Nah is a SS2 meme fuckface.

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It gets more combat heavy from mid-Hollywood onwards and the combat is just... shit.

Either shit-boring and tedious if you don't know what you're doing, or shit-easy and immediately over if you do.

Reddit spacing doesn't exist and is used by morons since people have typed using "reddit spacing" since Yea Forums's inception.

remember to play vanilla first and then install the clan quest mods next.

I suggest getting the flamethrower from mercurio no matter what your build is

Unarmed is a bitch at times.

Is there anything unique to playing Toreador? I swear gameplay wise they are just worse ventrues. Do they get anything in Hollywood?

Extra voices in Nosferatu den. That's about it.

Both Hollywood and most of Chinatown are fucking amazing. It's towards the last couple of hours the game drops in quality.

>most of Chinatown
Now you're pushing it. The "return the dude's" mission was lame and everything else felt like it wasn't fleshed out like it was intended to, so it's easily the weakest part and severly underwhelming, though I still wouldn't call it bad since it has its moments, namely telling the chink mobster you're a vampire and devouring him as he's scared shitless.

It didn't get a mediocre reception and it's not a mediocre game, today most remember it as one of the best RPGs of all time(it always shows up on those kinds of lists on different websites). The main issue was all the bugs but that's fixed now.

Hollywood will give you a boner

The game becomes pretty tedious combatwise because the best way to kill humans is to bite them and heal. Get guns or melee weapons to handle the other other enemies.

>anything unique to Toreador
Besides being the most OP combat clan? Nah

>dont have enough fight skills to kill the chinamen
Stay in the stairwell, don't go out towards the main arena

It doesn't. Mostly because it's not that good to begin with so the drop in quality doesn't exist. Still a good game though.

>avellone
only obsidiots will cheer

Play the real one

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Nah, unofficial patch basic is the way to go for a first timer. Fixes the bugs but leaves the game intact. The unofficial patch is also 100% necessary if you were an idiot like me and bought it on Steam. Steam has a pretty good chance of chimping out when you're trying to start a fresh vtmb installation and crashing the game. Apparently it has something to do with the Source engine build used in the game not being recognized by Steam leading to all sorts of issues. The best solution to this is installing unofficial patch as it completely separates the game from Steam.

>it wasn't big miss
Yeah it was
By the Montmartre pact, he can now be legally killed by any vampire in the Camarilla, and they don't have to fear any backlash
Creating gargoyles is a BIG nono. It still happens, but you musn't get caught

hollywood is still fine but omg towards the end with chinatown it feels so rushed and cliche like a bad 90s movie take on asian downtown.

overall i wished they'd dragged on more with the tremere lore because there's barely anything there and the game just needed more depth overall

Strauss is too valuable off an asset to just be killed like he's your run of the mill kindred and I doubt he'd allow himself to be killed thanks to some nobody ratting him out.

>too valuable of an asset
To who? The Tremere have more enemies than anyone. Hordes of vampires would jump at the chance to kill a Regent and get away with it scot free

>Paradox
Can't wait for [insert clan here] DLC!

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That would only help the Anarchs and would weaken the Camarilla though.

Based Sam Lake poster

Yes because clearly, no vampire has ever acted in their own interest instead of their sects
I think you don't really understand how hated the Tremere are in the lore.

It's really obvious where they ran out of time and resources but is still a wonderful experience. If you are solving all your problems early game by just going loud and blood-buff beating the shit out of everyone you won't have any issues, but social and stealth/hacking focused characters without any combat proficiency will find themselves screwed over hard past a certain point.

General advice is to level at least one combat skill early game alongside your other choices as an investment for later on

>oh no, a dead tremere... what a tragedy......

>some thin bloods are openly saying that are vamps
>thin bloods can make disciplines
>some thin bloods can go in the sun

fuggggg

I know they're hated because blood magic and all that and vampires are rather selfish, but I doubt someone as smart as Strasus would allow himself to get fucked like that.

>because of Blood Magic
>rather Selfish
No, it goes rather deeper than that.
>As smart as Strauss
The whole point of this discussion is that Strauss is clearly not very smart if he entrusted some fledgeling with information that could lead to his death

>tfw remembering my first run
>getting towards mid-late game
>getting ass beat in sewers, still somehow make it out of there
>tfw remembering i got to some point in the game, i think somewhere in chinatown, where i felt like i had to restart from the beginning
i think it may have been right near the end, fighting Ming Xaoi or whatever that creature feature bitch's name is

Gargoyles are made from Nosferatu and Gangrel (and Tzimisce) vampires.
There are probably some Nosferatu elders who had friends that were turned into Gargoyles in the middle ages. How do you think they'd react when some (relatively) young piece of shit like Strauss makes his own Gargoyle?

they aren't hated because of blood "magic" (what the Tremere have is a laughable imitation of the real thing, actual world of darkness mages are ridiculously powerful and deal with cosmic level threats).

They're hated because the entire clan is if every awful stereotype and conspiracy theory about gypsies and jews was not only 100% correct but actually an understatement spread by themselves to hide their true vile nature. The clan is hated because of what they've done and how they act, not because they do boring shit like drain blood from s distance. The Tzimisce do 10x more fucked up fleshcrafting shit and aren't despised the way the tremere are because their autism is contained to turning living people into furniture

Aight, seems like I'm in the wrong here.

Well, he is a canonical character.

>mfw it turns out to be a remake of Bloodlines

Can't wait for them to fuck up voice acting and dialog animations, two things that actually sold Bloodlines to a lot of people.

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Hollywood is ok chinatown was shit

>can only fug one of them
Fucking false advertising

>VV
Literally a corpse
>Heather
Giant boobs, super into you
>Jeanette
Literally a corpse
>Damsel
Literally a corpse
>Kiki
Pretty hot but kind of a bitch
>Venus
British, so literally worse than a corpse

Is Redemption any good?

Yes, but fairly different and more akin to D&D,

Tremere is arguably the most powerful modern clan despite being the second youngest, they didn't get there playing fair. The clan is a hybrid cult/pyamid scheme founded by failing mages desperate to keep their immortality.

Because the original founders used magic to become vampires they lacked a true clan founder and bloodline, which they promptly solved by finding the first torpored antedeluvian they could and diablerizing the shit out of him. Doesn't help that the guy they ate was probably the one legitimately nice clan head and the Salubri were nearly destroyed as a result

Vampires fucking hate the Tremere because they started as a bunch of human bandwagoners with no respect or care for any of the vampire's shared history or customs (why would they, they're a bunch of medieval alchemists) who always look for the easiest shortcut regardless of consequences

Diablerizing an antedeluvian is a big deal with a capital B and means they will never be fully trusted by anyone with a brain ever again

it's being developed by Hardsuit Labs, the idiots that made fucking Blacklight Retribution

hardsuitlabs.com/new-project/

It's all misdirection. Avellone is actually writing Borderlands 3

Why would they hire an acclaimed writer for just a remake?

Even better if true.

>everyone already explained everything to the dude
>regurgitate everything already said
why?

>why would you hire the dude that worked on some of the best RPGs of all time
beats me

really liked damsel

Because someone always has the bright idea they can outdo the original.

And if that happens to be true, I just wish it gets the RE2 treatment.

The first half of Redemption is fucking incredible. That clocktower mission is masterful.

The second half is fucking terrible. Everything is extremely poorly made, cheap, unfunny, just completely obliterates the goodwill built by the first.

Major tabletop vibes in writing, controls like Dungeon Siege or whatever.

>wanting this
>with V5
>with Paradox
You people don't know what hell you're in for. Sometimes, dead is better.

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Although, be honest, a Paradox GSG where you play as an ancient vampire (or even an Ante) and carefully control your bloodline from behind the scenes whilst trying to get one over other vamps would be amazing

Your opinion is wrong.

not that guy but
>tfw remembering dungeon keeper
>command and conquer
does Simcity still count?

yeah it never ends good, just let it be

Reminder that the Werewolf game is still supposedly in development (although no news recently)

Again, V5 already ruins it.

I think the problem was they announced that one way too early. Like, literally couple of months after the deal was signed.

It probably proved to be more ambitious which is confirmed by all the delaying, so we'll get something toward the second half of 2019.

What's the in-universe explanation for how vampires walk among the living.
Do they not feel cold to touch? Do they not smell of dead flesh?

They feel cold to the touch, though they can use blood to "heat up" so to speak.

>do they not feel cold to touch
Like that isn't the case with humans

>do they not smell
*cough* magic *cough*

They don't have any odor and by the time they notice the coldness they are already being sucked dry. Also they can use blood points to temporarily raise their body temp to "normal"

They don't smell like dead flesh - they're perfectly preserved. Although might smell a bit like blood close up.
They do feel cold to the touch - but even humans do sometimes.
If a vampire walked right past you, you wouldn't notice unless you had some sort of supernatural intution.

Vampires would have some issues if they live in cold climates because they wouldn't have visible, but that's what smoking is for.

>want to play the game
>unofficial patch (downloaded from moddb) virus scan stuck at 99% for an hour now

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it gets fucking stupid in terms of gameplay near the end, so yes. There are some fixes but most of it is unsalvageable. There is a reason why everyone always just plays the beginning part and then stop or restart and play the start again.

Vampires can't smoke without a good chance of sperging out :')

>Do they not feel cold to touch? Do they not smell of dead flesh?

No, they have a Discipline that costs some Vitae called "Blush of Life", it makes their bodies function like normal in every way similarly to living humans but for a relatively limited time

it's not a virus, just lots of dolphin porn.

It literally said they smoke to fake breath on cold days in the old Rulebook. Fuck off.

RAW > Fluff
:')

Toreador master race reporting in

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>wanting to fuck a corpse
ewwww

>not willing to stick your dick inside literally anything and everything
lol

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On my first Malk playthrough, the dialog choices are hilarious although sometimes I am not sure what the result will be.

Take on the role of the ancient vampire and manage awesome innovative mechanics such as Humanity, Military Vitae, Diplomatic Vitae and Administrative Vitae as you blob your way through Jihad.

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Did this guy ever draw porn?

It gets too combat-focused towards the end. The sewers, the chink-vampire hideout (the absolute worst in my opinion) and the hotel are really fucking tedious and will punish you if you didn´t skill properly. The game is still absolutely fantastic and you should stick with it.

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