An interesting article recently appeared on Rock, Paper Shotgun discussing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. It asks the question: Why aren't there more great games like this?
Jim_Rossignol" wrote: [Bloodlines] does what a select few videogames have articulated: giving us sudden, direct access to something wonderful and alien. But it’s drama, and pseudo-social, as much as it is videogame action. It is filled with brilliant artificial people. Bloodlines allows us - like a participant in some larger soap opera - to make decisions about what might happen to those individuals. In this case, it’s always something wonderfully dark. Bloodlines manages to be funny, humane (if not human), brutal, horrifying, and thrilling, all at once. Its vampires are larger than life and yet nevertheless alive. Their twisted traits come tumbling out in excellent dialogue and strange quests. It is heavy on heavy themes, ideas that might otherwise pervert the purity of any other action game. Seduction, sedition, schizophrenia, propaganda, pornography, purgatory: these thematic notions are the lifeblood of vampire fiction, and they’re essential what’s going on in here. The struggle between the vampire castes is at once noble and despicable, and picking your route between its pitfalls is a delight. Ultimately, though, this is about exploration: about seeing something out of the ordinary. Toxic tourism in vampiric clubland.
true , true ...
because we the players and gamers have not made them yet. lol I am in school now for game art design and I plan to remake this game or create another game simular to it as far as game play.