Bloodlines Is Not A "Shooter" game

Bloodlines Is Not A "Shooter" Game

An article by Tessera

Seemingly ever since its release, there has been a minor debate amongst Bloodlines players regarding what type of game it is. There are many people who mistakenly feel that Bloodlines was intended to be a first-person-shooter (FPS) type of game. I am writing this article in order to express my own opinions and hopefully, to refute the opinions of others who hold an opposite view to my own.

The perception that Bloodlines is "supposed to be an FPS" is no doubt due to the fact that Bloodlines was built upon the same game engine as a very famous FPS: Half-Life 2. So naturally, if Half-Life 2 is an FPS game, then Bloodlines must likewise be an FPS, right..? They are both using the same game engine, after all.

Well... except that they are NOT using the same engine. Not exactly, anyway. Let's start there.

Bloodlines was developed using an alpha (unfinished) version of the original Source engine. When Valve delivered that engine to Troika, large parts of the engine were still incomplete. The physics engine was largely unfinished. The AI was completely missing. The lighting system was only partially complete. The modeling system was undefined, which meant that Troika had to invent their own proprietary models in-house. Many of the DirectX functions were only partially working. The list goes on and on, but the bottom line is that nearly half of the Source engine which eventually showed up in Bloodlines was created entirely by Troika. Those segments of the Source engine which were developed by Troika have very little resemblance to the Source engine that Valve used for their own Half-Life 2 game. I won't go so far as to say that they are entirely different game engines... but they are different enough to warrant the statement that they are NOT the same engine at all.

Therefore, to claim that VTMB is an FPS game, simply because it was built using the Source engine, is entirely false. Numerous differences exist between the Troika version of the Source engine, and every other version of the Source engine to date. It really is a weird, one-of-a-kind animal which defies any attempts to classify it.

And even if the Bloodlines engine was 100% the same as the Half-Life 2 engine (it isn't), then so what..? Civilization IV and TES: Oblivion were both built upon what was essentially the same version of the GameBryo engine. Does that mean that Civ IV and Oblivion are the same type of game..? Just because they both use the same engine..? Of course not... one is a turn-based simulator, and the other is a roleplaying game. They have absolutely nothing in common, aside from the core game engine that both of them use.

So much for the "they both use the same game engine" argument. I hope that I have just explained why that argument is worthless.

But I have other reasons... more important reasons... for asserting that Bloodlines is not a "shooter game."

Bloodlines is a 3-D roleplaying game, based upon a pen-and-paper "tabletop game" which preceded it. It is a quirky "game noir" in which we, as the player, take on the persona of a dark creature of the night: an honest-to-goodness vampire. As we play the game and as our character develops, we quickly discover that shooting at things is generally not the best way for us to make our way through VTMB's game world. In fact, within the first hour or two of game play, we learn that it can be far more effective to use our social skills and our inherent vampiric abilities to obtain the things which we seek. Cleverness, deceit, discretion and stealth are generally far more effective means to an end than simply whipping out a shotgun and making a bloody mess of things. Oh sure... the shotgun will definitely get SOME of the jobs done... but often with negative consequences, which can come back to haunt us later on.

A good RPG requires intelligence and imagination to be enjoyed to its fullest. Troika was well-aware of that fact, having been the creators of several mature RPG's in the past. The three developers who started Troika are also the same guys who, prior to creating their own studio, worked on such classic RPG titles as Fallout, Fallout 2, Black & White, and several other games which all shared one thing in common: they each "broke the mold," so to speak. That tradition was carried over when Troika began producing their own games... and Bloodlines is no exception. Just about every aspect of Bloodlines is so different from every other RPG that it truly belongs within a category of its own. Any attempts to pigeonhole VTMB should be considered inappropriate, as it is really quite unique. If I had to slap a label on Bloodlines, then I suppose "mature RPG-noir" would be as good a label as any.

There are several other aspects and clues which make it abundantly clear that Bloodlines was never intended to be a simple FPS game, a la Half-Life 2. As a matter of fact, we get the first such clue during the opening tutorial, when Jack talks to the player about guns:

"I don't use guns much. They're noisy, they're clumsy, practically useless against vampires. But still, a Kindred's gotta keep up with the times and in modern day Los Angeles, that means comin' strapped."

Consider those lines of dialogue carefully. Essentially, Jack is telling the player not to rely upon guns very much. Sure, they can be useful in certain situations -- but generally speaking, Jack doesn't like them and doesn't advise using them. That's our first clue that Bloodlines was not intended to be a simple pow-pow bang-bang shoot-at-the-bad-guys game. Right from the start, the devs at Troika wanted us to know that there's a whole lot more to it than that.

The game engine itself likewise forces us to realize that Bloodlines is not an FPS game. Unlike the Half-Life 2 version of the Source engine, the Bloodlines version actually forces the player character into third-person view. Any time that you use your melee skills, for example, the game engine automatically switches to an external third-person viewpoint. The same thing happens whenever we feed upon an NPC. You can force the game to revert back to first-person view if you want it to, but that is hardly the point. Any game which attempts to force us into third-person view is, by definition, not a "first-person shooter" game. Obviously the devs at Troika wanted us to see our character as we perform certain activities. Speaking personally, I play the entire game in third-person view... except for the rare occasions when a gun happens to be the most effective choice for a given situation. And when I say "rare," I mean RARE. From start to finish, my Malk uses a gun only three times during the course of the entire game: against the main "spider chick" in the Hollywood sewers, against the Sheriff when he turns into the flying Chiropteran Behemoth in the end game, and against Ming Xiao in the final battle against her (also in the end game). That's it... those are the only times that my Malk ever uses a gun in Bloodlines. For the entire remainder of the game, she either uses her vampiric abilities, or her social skills, or else she simply uses melee and whacks everybody to death. But a gun..? Practically worthless, despite the fact that out of all of the different clans in VTMB, Malks can potentially be the best choice for a "gun bunny" build.

Now then... and I need to get into this next part of the discussion... there are some people who feel that the reason guns are so ineffective in the default game is because Troika somehow screwed up. They claim that the game is "imbalanced," because guns are not as effective for our character as these people think they should be. So in order to prove their point, that particular faction of Bloodlines players has urged good ol' Werner Spahl (aka "Wesp5") to make all sorts of arbitrary changes to the ways that guns function within Bloodlines. And like a good little people-pleaser, Wesp has obliged them... by introducing all sorts of unwarranted modifications to the way guns are defined within the Bloodlines data files. Basically, these folks have taken it upon themselves to declare that Bloodlines is indeed a first-person shooter game, despite all of the indications to the contrary. And just to prove their point, they have effectively ignored the original intentions of Troika's devs and instead, they have FORCED the game engine to accept a slew of new stats and conditions with regards to firearms and how they function.

You can probably guess how I feel about what they have done to butcher the game mechanics. As I see it, we are dealing with a group of impatient players... who either lack the skills to play the game the way it was intended to be played, or else they simply do not have the patience to switch back and forth between different abilities, depending upon the situation. No, they would rather just load up a gun and then go wildly into the night... gleefully shooting at anyone and everything that gets in their way. But if they had tried to play it that way in the default game, then they would have become quite frustrated indeed... because guns were never intended to be our primary means to an end. But never fear -- because at their urging, Wesp has made it possible for lazy and unskilled players to pretend that Bloodlines is simply Half-Life 2 with fangs.

All of that would be just fine and dandy, were it not for the fact that there are thousands of people out there who have unwittingly installed one of Wesp's "patches," assuming that it contained bug fixes and changes that are absolutely necessary to the game. Those poor suckers have no idea just how much they have been cheated... cheated out of playing a much more diverse game, which SHOULD require a lot more brains than brawn in order to be successful. In short, I am saying that playing the game Troika's way is ultimately a lot more satisfying, because it forces the player to adapt and change and make intelligent choices. Playing the game Wesp's way, on the other hand, is about as much fun as bringing a machine gun into a Wal-Mart. Sure it might be fun once or twice, but playing in a one-dimensional mindset gets old really fast. Playing it Troika's way is more tantalizing and provides quite a bit more replay value to Bloodlines. Playing it Wesp's way is exactly the opposite: it reduces the game in such a way as to make it be entirely too homogenized, thus eroding its replay value.

The fact of the matter is that the guns in Bloodlines were intended to be rather weak, as compared to their real-world counterparts. This was done in such a way as to ensure that against other supernatural creatures, they would be largely useless overall. Against a mortal human being, a gun is extremely effective in Bloodlines -- often killing the target in a single shot. But against a supernatural creature, such as another vampire, it usually takes five... ten... maybe even twenty shots before we can do much damage with a gun. This is not due to any sloppiness on Troika's part... is is entirely by design. Let's do a flashback here, to those opening comments made by Jack during the tutorial. "Practically useless against vampires," Jack said. And in the default game, that is precisely the way guns function. So to make any arbitrary changes to them, simply because you want to convert Bloodlines into some half-assed FPS clone, is a major and imbalancing mistake. The irony here is that the supporters of such changes claim that their patch "makes the game more balanced." Well sure -- if you're a single-minded gun nut, who is totally lacking in skill, imagination and patience. But I think that I have just pointed out that those people are seriously mistaken in their views. I have no idea what game they are actually playing, but it sure as hell isn't Bloodlines. This is a game about what it is like to be a vampire -- not a game about Rambo and his arsenal of firearms.

And there are still more clues that Bloodlines was never intended to be an FPS game. For one thing, our supply of ammunition is fairly restricted within the default game. Oh sure, we can keep running back to Fat Larry or Mercurio, and keep buying up ammo until we go broke. But then... well, we'd be broke, as I just said. And there are far better things for us to be spending our money upon than bullets. Naturally, this inescapable fact has likewise been undermined by the "Wesp crowd." Not only has their patch added a great deal of extra ammo to just about every single area of the game world, but they have also made it much easier for the player to obtain oodles of extra cash, so that they can buy more and more and even more bullets. Not only that, but they have also made several of the more powerful firearms available at a much earlier stage of the game than was ever intended by Troika (such as giving the player an opportunity to obtain the Colt Anaconda during Act One... two full acts before Troika ever intended for us to have it). All in the name of "better game balance," mind you. Uh huh.

Bloodlines is a mature roleplaying game about vampires. The most enjoyable way to play it is entirely up to each of you. My contention within this article is that the game was NEVER intended to be a simple, first-person shooter game. Every single interview that has ever been conducted with the original writers and developers SHOULD have made that fact crystal clear, to everyone who even bothered to read those interviews. As for me, I happen to agree with those writers and developers: that the best way to fully enjoy this game is to explore ALL of the different aspects of how it is to be an actual vampire. Any idiot can shoot a gun... you don't need to be a vampire to do that. But only a vampire can do any of the numerous other things which are available to us within the default game.

That is what Bloodlines is truly all about: immersing yourself within a diverse roleplaying adventure about vampires -- not simply shooting your way through the world like a simple-minded Neanderthal. We already have simple-minded FPS games like Half-Life 2 for that. Bloodlines is a different game entirely: it is a game for those amongst us who know the difference between an immersive RPG, and a simplistic FPS. Bloodlines falls into the category of the former... not of the latter.

- Tessera -