BEING SMOOTH IN VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE BLOODLINES

Becoming a high-society vampire

- By Ian Evenden

Everything is dark, and I’m being asked questions. Someone is following me, what do I do? I’m caught by the spouse of someone I’m trying to sleep with, do I tell them I’m a distant cousin or hide and sneak away? There’s an intruder in my house, do I fight them or shoot them? Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines' character creator offers you the choice to answer these questions instead of getting down to it in the traditional character creator, and my answers mean I end up in Clan Toreador. Among the artists, visionaries and members of high society I feel right at home.

More importantly, Toreadorians fit right in among mortals, which is important to me. I want my twilight existence to be as a smooth-talking master of the vampiric arts, not as a wretched sewer dweller existing on rats, too disgusting to step above ground. As such, I end up with one point in things like strength and stamina on my character sheet, and two in wits, appearance and manipulation. I have points in brawling and firearms, if I end up in a tight spot, but none in stealth. And with two points in celerity I’m quick too. I'm not going to hide, but I might make a hasty getaway. I have a humanity score of seven, which is average, but which I mustn’t allow to fall lest I become bestial.

I'm playing VTMB with the unofficial patch installed, which brings a lot of quality-of-life improvements and a few surprising additions to a 20-year-old game that had the misfortune to be released on the same day as Half-Life 2, and which was notorious for its bugs at launch. Today, with patches and updates, it’s mostly a smooth process and runs well even on integrated graphics. Its narrative design and writing are still some of the best out there, and its open-ended nature means you may never play it the same way twice.

THIS SUCKS