Not unlike what happens to the protagonist, actually. For those uninitiated in the World of Darkness, as I was, it neatly explains the way the world works and then plunges you in at the deep end.
The player starts off a lowly and young vampire, and is then dragged through the world by a series of plots, machinations and bloody deeds. Despite my normal disdain and snobbery for RPGs played in third-person over-the-shoulder, Bloodines has one of the richest stories of an RPG, and is engaging throughout. The story of Bloodlines is a delicious foray into a bleak world of gruesome characters, all with their own agendas and lack of conventional moral compass. Story aka “Real terror is not the sight of death, it is the fear of death.”
Some years on, the community has fixed the most egregious bugs and it has become a brilliant game. Riddled with bugs on release thanks to the ridiculous pressure placed on its developers, Troika Games, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines received less attention than it deserved. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines Review aka “…it is the blood of Caine which decides our fate.”īased on White Wolf’s roleplaying system, Vampire: The Masquerade, Bloodlines explores the appropriately named World of Darkness from the point of view of a newly-made vampire.