Line #45 NightmareFuel/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines


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7	Heavy spoilers for ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' below. Also vampires, ghosts, and other nasties. You've been warned.
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9	* [[HellHotel The Ocean House Hotel]]. Think you ain't 'fraid of no ghosts cause you're a big, scary vampire? ''Think again''. There aren't any enemies, you just get to explore the hotel while the ghosts mess with you. Poltergeist activity, knocking on doors, writing in blood appearing on the walls, the ghosts themselves, and the story behind the house add up to a really scary chapter. Do not play with the lights off.
10	** At the very start of the whole mess, you need to open the front door to the hotel, but it's locked. Thankfully the groundskeeper's shed is in the middle of the front yard, along with a bunch of piles of dirt, ditches, and construction equipment like a crane and small bulldozer. Once you go into the shed and pick up the key, you hear the sound of an engine starting, a vehicle moving then nothing. Once you go outside, that small bulldozer has moved itself to the edge of the shed, and its bucket is positioned in such a way that it looks ''ready to lift or even flip the shed''.
11	** You end up in the hotel's basement, gradually reading newspapers to determine exactly what's been happening in the hotel. You read one that describes how a family was murdered and their heads found in dryers, and then you put down the newspaper and ''the door to the dryer right next to you creaks slowly open...'' There's a sound that's triggered when one puts that particular paper down, like a pair of shoes in, well, a dryer...
12	** In the basement is a crossroad of corridors with rooms. As you approach that middle point where you can turn down any of the four paths, a screaming woman rushes by, panicked and looking back over her shoulder at something chasing her. If you look to the direction she was running from, you see nothing. If you look at the direction she ran to, even if you got there just after she passed out of sight, she has disappeared.
13	** The charming picture of said family with the father drawn as a burning demon, after which the words "GET OUT" are carved into the wall in front of you.
14	** The game does give you some credit if you manage to steel yourself, though. For instance, after said dryer door opens, you see that the other door is selectable...and you really, ''really'' don't want to open it and see what's in there. If you do, you thankfully find the keys to the room where you can turn the electricity on.
15	** Right after you run through the hotel's kitchen wherein a poltergeist completely scares you by suddenly launching every un-nailed-down object at you and making the ovens burst into flames, at once both shattering your eardrums and assaulting your character with damaging effects, you sneak down a hallway to a completely normal room. As you climb out of the vent to land in it, you hear a girl whisper: "Run...". Well, if you don't run to the other side of the room and quickly begin climbing the ladder, you get smashed by an elevator. Ouch.
16	** Towards the very end, you enter the master bedroom, the whole scene shifts to a flashback of the room back in the fifties or so, you walk across the clean room, and retrieve the amulet you needed to find. The flashback ends, and you're standing on a platform in the room, and it's revealed you've just somehow crossed a broken, skeletal room with no floor.
17	** The part where you go to the left side of the hotel in typical explore mode. You turn around and there is an AxCrazy ghost murderer right behind you. There might have been a scream. And the sudden exploding lamps and vases only add to the terror. "He's here..." Cue flash of a ghostly cowboy looking silhouette...wielding an axe. Yeah, thanks for that, ghost lady. Can vampires have heart attacks?
18	** This is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but when you first get to the generator room, if you look between to two huge pipes that stick horizontally out of the wall, you can clearly see a man holding an ax in his hands, then when you walk around the pipes, he's gone.
19	*** Or he appears to be holding a severed arm. And if you don't blink, you see he turns to the side and starts slowly walking. To the corner. That leads to where you're standing.
20	** As soon as you enter the Hotel, if you look to the right, the ghost will be standing right there, watching you, with his axe in hand, but immediately after he enters your field of vision the [[JumpScare light above him flashes]] and he disappears.
21	** Word of Advice: '''don't''' use Auspex while in the Hotel. You ''don't'' want to know more than being scared shitless by the ghosts that lurked in that HellHotel. And also, don't play it at night or with volume up.
22	* Alastair Grout's mansion. Filled to the brim with bloodthirsty lobotomy patients, more MalevolentArchitecture than you can shake a stick at, not to mention a truly epically creepy background tune interlaced with the monologues Grout left on tape that showcase his spiral from mere sociopathy into true paranoid schizophrenia.
23	** The female patients with the masks. You enter the mansion, and you see one of them in a corner, and you can't tell if she's crying of laughing. You come closer to help her, and suddenly she attacks you with a knife. And throughout the whole level you can hear them. The laughing. The laughing. It drives you mad!
24	** With the Plus Patch installed: There's an optional part of the mansion you can explore with the most bizarre MalevolentArchitecture in the game, complete with bloody hallways, furniture on the ceiling, and a fully-recreated house filled with slashed paintings and creepy mannequins that follow you around weeping-angels-style. Worst of all, while inside said house, you'll get random unexplained phone calls from several of the creepy voices that play in a Malkavian PC's head. Hearing those voices outside of their usual context somehow makes them ''more'' unsettling as a Malkavian.
25	** Remember the Anarch quest where you had to [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade take care]] of the loud-mouthed ghoul of a missing domiter? Her domiter is also in this labyrinthian wing of the mansion... [[KilledOffScreen well, his skeleton and ashes are,]] having burned to death trying to pull a lever in a strange room in the mansion that seems to have sunlight streaming into it even though it is ''definitely'' night time when you visit the mansion. No, the mod doesn't even try to explain how that's possible or what Kent is doing there in the first place, which makes the discovery even more unsettling.
26	* The More Fun With Pestilence side quest:
27	** You investigate the base of the cult that's been spreading disease all over Downtown. Turns out, the guy in charge has been infecting his acolytes and turning them into mindless, brain-eating zombies. You end up finding yourself desperately hacking your way through a literally endless horde of zombies in a dilapidated, run-down building while getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors. Oh, and unlike the bloodthirsty lobotomy patients, these guys don't just attack you. If they get too close, they'll latch onto you and start chewing through your skull to get at your brains while their friends take turns ripping pieces out of your helpless form.
28	** Brother Kanker, the nossy responsible for infecting the Downtown homeless. His hideout is in the sewers and it's designed as a macabre church with a corpse crucified to the wall. The man himself is a freaky looking fellow with blood red eye sockets, a scarred skull and has a tumor on his chest. The worst way is the way he talks. He raves about their intention of infecting the world with this plague and snarls and gasps even while he's talking. He even makes a Malkavian look sane by comparison.
29	* The section of the game where you investigate a snuff film. The subject is bad enough. Then they add the screechy music from the hotel sequence and then have warped human husks composed solely of arms grafted to a snarling, fanged head running around trying to eat your face. Then you find the mansion where it was filmed. Wallpapered in human flesh.
30	** That horribly distorted "Kill!" as they suddenly jump from 10 yards away straight onto you.
31	* The fight against Ming Xiao's true form: a horrible gelatinous blob that can spawn copies of itself.
32	* That raptor statue in the corridors of the Museum, which is realistic and just behind a corner. It was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by a member of the staff too. This moment is even creepier if you spoke with the Seer on the beach and heard her little rap about seeing dinosaurs, and her sudden spiral into absolute terror when she cries "It's open... Oh god... It's Open! Run! RUN!!!"[[labelnote:*]]It's [[NightmareRetardant not as scary]] once you find out the [[SomebodySetUsUpTheBomb context]] of the sarcophagus's contents, but there is still a ''very'' good reason why you should be [[DontAskJustRun running]].[[/labelnote]]
33	* The AbandonedHospital downtown. As you enter, you meet a guy who's scared out of his wits by what he's seen in the basement. The descent to the basement is as creepy and atmospheric as an AbandonedHospital with an unknown horror waiting for you should be... then you find out what he's scared of: a vampire who actually has to eat her victims who killed the rest of his reality TV crew and needs him dead to preserve TheMasquerade.
34	** That vampire also says, "True terror is not the sight of death, but the fear of it." The player advances through a scary hospital, constantly expecting to die a horrible death. Then you find a friendly quest giver NPC surrounded by bloody corpse bits, and in the end she's not that bad.
35	* Finding the Tzimisce in their sewer hideout, and face the above mentioned grafted horrors, as well as spiderlike abominations made from a woman grafted to two other bodies that crawl out of the vents in the [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer sewers]] to eat the dead workers' bodies, while in the background the music seems to form words: "Helllp meee...voices won't leave me alone..." Even once you get out of danger, it's still freaky--a voice from somewhere you can't see that sounds like a deranged little girl whispers to something about staying out of sight.
36	** One of those women grafted together? Yeah, she was pregnant, her womb is cut open and the fetus has been stolen. When you consider the guy who did this it becomes even scarier.
37	* The werewolf chase towards the end of the game. You're up in the mountains, believing that this is just a simple meeting with Nines. A short while later, the sight of a forest fire starts to freak Nines out. If you inquire as to why he's scared, he tells you that the mountains are werewolf territory and that the fire was probably set to drive the werewolves towards the two of you. Nines then gets bowled over a cliff by a werewolf, and you have to deal with another. By this stage of the game, you've probably picked up some heavy-duty weaponry like the flame-thrower of automatic shotgun. They do nothing. What follows is a nerve-wracking chase through an abandoned observatory, with a mountain of teeth and claws right behind you the whole time. You will doubtless find yourself whimpering a bit as the chase progresses.
38	** Perhaps the most frightening thing about the werewolf chase is that even the game's cheat codes are useless against it. If you go into the console and turn on the invisibility and invulnerability cheats (notarget and godmode, respectively), it can still see you and hurt you. Whatever keeps the invisibility code from working on it also keeps Obfuscate from working on it. Thankfully, it IS possible to kill it after all, and the game will award you extra XP for doing it. The method, however... Even after the thrashing it gives you, you almost feel sorry for it watching it getting crushed with observatory's closing dome.
39	** Nines has been shown being quite the badass so far. If you mockingly ask "Are you afraid of werewolves?", his response is when you realize you're in a real OhCrap moment.
40	---> '''Nines:''' Yeah, I'm scared of werewolves. Five-hundred pounds of hair and claw. Guns are useless and getting close is suicide.
41	* Andrei is a horrifying looking Tzimisce elder who looks like a cross between a human and the creature from ''Franchise/{{Alien}}''. The fact that he [[BodyHorror creates horrifying flesh-crafted monstrosities]] is only icing on the cake.
42	* Pisha mixes between this and fanservice. The way she slaughters a reality TV show crew while the player characters are helpless to do anything but watch. Pisha's attractiveness only makes it more unnerving. Her pleasant demeanor and voicework by Creator/MaryElizabethMcGlynn either hurt or help the fuel.
43	* Certain portions of the Grout Mansion. Specifically, it's a mansion filled with tortured and insane people kept in Hannibal Lecter-esque masks. They've been driven totally mad by Grout and there's nothing that can be done for them but send them to a horrifying grave. That doesn't even include all the ''other'' horrible stuff that Grout is keeping there. Such as his dead wife's perfectly preserved corpse.
44	** And the reason the wife is a corpse might very well be because Grout decided to remove her entire brain for study. Nightmarish and insanely sweet and sentimental given all the other objects surrounding the body were supposedly objects from their courtship. The fact that Grout is trying to "cure" her is probably his Malkavian insanity manifesting. Might even count as Heartwarming when you consider that Grout considered his wife's Mind/Brain important to him. For a man born and embraced during pre-Freudian era, it was quite a progressive attitude.
45	** And it's not helpful later when Bach sets everything on fire and the ghouls are now [[InfernalRetaliation flaming]].
46	* The ghouls are particularly nasty creatures by themselves. They're moaning, inhuman, and monstrous things that look closer to Nosferatu than humans. The idea this could be the fate of people like Mercutio or Heather is a disturbing one.
47	* The death of Heather combines NightmareFuel with PlayerPunch. Late in the game Heather might run up to you at your haven and frantically tell you she was being followed on her way home. Realizing the danger she's in the player now has the choice to tell her to stay with them or free her from her blood bond to get her out of their life entirely.[[labelnote:*]]Or tell her to not leave the haven with the plus patch.[[/labelnote]] Should you take the former option, come your mission to raid the Sabbat hideout it turns out that the people following her were ''with the Sabbat'' and about midway through the ''Hell at the Hallowbrook Hotel'' mission, you'll stumble into a room where she's being held captive. As this happens in a cutscene, you're helpless to do ''anything at all'' as a Sabbat Gangrel in warform viciously executes her before your very eyes. For most first time players this elicits either a HeroicBSOD as the Sabbat butcher them, or a RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
48	* The player character themselves can be this, taken up to eleven compared to other vampires, given how frighteningly quickly they master their vampiric skills.
49	** There's the [[TheCracker Nosfe]][[NightmareFace ratu]] and their ghoulish appearances. The Nosferatu PC can startle an old woman so badly she either faints or ''drops dead on the spot''. There's a reason why sewers exist in this game.
50	** The [[PowerBornOfMadness Malkavian]]. Some people find the happy Malkavian outfits make their attacks with fire-axes and severed arms all the more frightening. More than the outfits, their "Dementation" dialogue options are freaky. Seriously, you can make people do whatever you want, usually by driving them mad. A bit of flavor text from the Dark Ages rulebook is appropriate here. ''"Dominate might erase your memories, Vicissitude might reshape your form, but Dementation can destroy your soul."''
51	*** Malks are also equipped with Obfuscate, which means not only can they drive you insane, but you might never even see them coming before they do so.
52	** The Brujah PC is equipped with enough SuperStrength that they could snap someone's neck with their bare hands. That, combined with the infamous Brujah temper and tendency towards frenzies makes them quite scary to interact with. As if [[SuperStrength Potence]] wasn't enough, they also have [[SuperSpeed Celerity]], making them the go-to choice of a LightningBruiser playstyle.
53	** The Gangrel have Fortitude, making them incredibly tough even by vampire standards, Animalism to sic the beasts of the Earth on anyone who displeases them, and overtly Scariest of them all, Protean to transform into savage, feral killing machines. Protean attacks deal aggravated damage, which is very difficult for vampires or other supernatural beings to heal and is one of the few things that can send a Kindred to FinalDeath. The only thing tougher and more dangerous than a Gangrel with high Fortitude and Protean is a full-fledged werewolf.
54	** Even the Toreador, looked down on in the game for being pretty but useless, can be highly formidable. With [[PsychicPowers Auspex]], [[CharmPerson Presence]], and [[SuperSpeed Celerity]], they have supernatural abilities helpful in a wide array of situations, and when well-equipped can become a terrifying FragileSpeedster.
55	** The Ventrue have both Presence and [[MindControl Dominate]], meaning they can MindRape you subtly or brutally according to their whim. And they have Fortitude, making them tougher to put down than you might think.
56	* Every so often in the Hallowbrook hotel, you come across humans [[EyeScream that have had their eyes torn out]]. They were probably food for the Sabbat. Such a life is so hellish, [[MercyKill there's no humanity penalty for killing them]].
57	** Around the earlier parts of the game, if you hang about the Hallowbrook Hotel, you can hear brief sounds of muffled whimpers. Once you are in the building, you can find out that Andrei has been using the ground floor as his personal abattoir, meaning those whimpers belonged to victims you had no idea existed. There is also a slight FridgeHorror there when you realize that you walked past the hotel dozens of times, never thinking what went on behind its doors.
58	* Gorgeous Gary Golden, Golden Age Hollywood movie star turned Nosferatu spymaster in just a few nights (by Kindred standards). The conversation with him is... chilling. Even the typically unfazed Malkavian player will demand: "Where. Are. You?"
59	** It's especially creepy if you're a [[VampiresAreSexGods Toreador]], as he'll maniacally rant about wanting to destroy your beautiful appearance in all sorts of creative ways and express some very deep-seated hatred for your clan--far more so than any other Nosferatu in the game. Given that you're the only non-nosferatu in the Warrens and they're all apparently hidden everywhere around you, the genuine hatred he'll express for the Toreador PC will make you wonder if you should start running.
60	* Some of the Disciplines are this.
61	** The Tremere's Blood Disciplines Purge and Blood Boil. The first one [[NauseaFuel force the opponents to ''puke huge amounts of blood'' in pain]], while the other boils the blood of the target, making them sway and inflate until they blow into bloody chunks. And not only said chunks can kill your enemies if caught nearby, but you can even pick up the dismembered limbs as weapons!
62	** Suicide and Mass Suicide, which both force your enemy/ies to ''choke themselves to death''.
63	** The Blood Shield is also pretty scary, not in terms of what it does, but how it ''looks''. Once you activate it, your character is covered head-to-toe in blood--no joke, it seriously looks like they took a dip in a bathtub of blood. And it drips behind them as they walk like something out of a horror film. Just walking around outside with it on gives you a Masquerade Violation and sends people running in terror. And if you turn into first-person, the screen literally goes red, with red blood cells flitting in front of your vision.
64	** Malkavian's Vision of Death. It kills, via fear induced heart attack. There's nothing the victim can do to save themselves, and the last thing they see is giant centipedes crawling on their body.
65	** Animalism can induce the PrimalFear of predators:
66	*** Nightwisp Ravens has birds appear to peck the victims' eyes out.
67	*** Burrowing Beetle generates a bug that latches onto an enemy and burrows into their flesh.
68	*** Imagine looking behind yourself and seeing a Spectral Wolf about to pounce on you.
69	*** Bloodsuckers' Communion spawns vampire bats that jump on a person's face to drain them.
70	*** Pestilence summons a swarm of insects that eat their victims down to the bone.
71	** Presence doesn't ''seem'' that scary on the surface, [[FridgeHorror but if you think about it]], it's actually quite frightening in the wrong hands. It allows vampires to manipulate the emotions of the people around them--several people at once at higher levels. Because it's based in manipulation rather than brainwashing, it's more subtle than Domination, and you might not even notice it happening at all. Worse still, a vampire with Presence can make you believe you ''liked'' whatever it is they compelled you to do, and you'd be none the wiser.
72	* Andrei the Flesh Crafter's house on King's Way is made and furnished out of people. And the "furniture" might still be alive and aware of what they have become. Time to break out the flamethrowers and MercyKill the poor house.
73	** Punching the walls makes them ''bleed''.
74	* Mitnick. Unless he's lying (though in a ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' setting, probably not), its very likely that the geeky, cheerful little Nosferatu potentially has more power to cause horrific death, destruction and suffering on a scale that surpasses practically everyone in the game (or perhaps even the entire World of Darkness) up to and maybe even beyond Caine himself. How so? Even as a mortal, Mitnick was able to anonymously obtain nuclear launch codes and sent them to the President. [[ItAmusedMe For fun]]. Now that he caught the attention of the Nosferatu and has been embraced, he's potentially immortal, has access to what he calls "cool toys" and a secret, possibly eons old and globe-spanning information network to play with. Also, a spot of FridgeBrilliance if you had Becket talk about Gehenna: "A mundane apocalypse is much more likely that a supernatural one."
75	* In the Nosferatu Warrens, you begin hearing whispers - whispers like the Malkavians usually hear, but you hear them regardless of what clan you are. Are you going crazy? No. Once you talk to Gary Golden, you realize that every Nosferatu in the city lives in those warrens, and most of them are invisible. From the very moment you stepped into the warrens, you were surrounded by them - and you couldn't even see them. Those whispers you hear? They're close enough to whisper ''directly into your ear''. Being the master of shadows isn't just for show. Golden himself is the worst of the lot. He toys with you before TheReveal mentioned above, and gets so under Malkavians' skin they can actually be coherent a few moments if he pushed them hard enough in the torture. Get through his psychological torture, and he reveals that the bodies in his lair are the cast and crew of ''Film/TheMisfits''. All of this, one would add, from a character who's [[GoodIsNotNice ostensibly on your side, and wants you to succeed]].
76	** Even worse, the first time you leave Imalia's room, the door to the spare room across the way from hers will mysteriously open to reveal a blue blood pack. It's very likely one of the obfuscated Nosferatu playing poltergeist, and if you notice it, it is downright ''unsettling''. Especially because the doors in the game autoclose after a few seconds if you aren't blocking it, so the timing will make the door close again either in your face just before getting to it, or right behind you after walking through.
77	* The huge, incredibly creepy portrait of Therese and Jeanette with their father. It becomes downright sinister after you find out that Therese's father used to sexually abuse her. Since both sisters appear in the portrait, it's implied that one of them commissioned the portrait after he died. The reason why a sexual abuse and incest victim would want an enormous portrait of her abuser can only be dark or sad.
78	* During "The Hunted Hunter" quest, you'll having to go looking for clues about the whereabouts of a Kuei-jin spy in the local hospital morgue. That alone is creepy, but what's worse is that while the quest is active, the emaciated corpse of the man you were using as a lead will be sitting there in the morgue as you rifle around in his belongings. You half expect the guy to get up and attack you, just given the supernatural setting of the game, and the silent ambience of the hospital certainly doesn't help cut the tension.
79	* The Library, an area that only exists in the Unoffical Plus Patch, contains possibly the mod's most malicious JumpScare. You just stopped the Sabbat ritual, your resources are probably drained from the boss fight and now you must stealth back to the elevator you came in whilst avoiding the oblivious security guards. You hit the elevator button and watch it open...''and one of Andrei's creations jumps and claws right at your face while screaming "KILL!".'' Given how dangerous the fleshcraft monsters are, it's entirely possible to be ''killed'' by this JumpScare if one's health is too low.
80	** Not only that, but ParanoiaFuel kicks in once you get into the elevator and head back down to the basement, ready to fight more of these monsters that somehow must've started to follow you around from Hollywood. The doors open and...[[ParanoiaFuel there's nothing there]]. You head to the sewers and you can't help but feel afraid to check every corner, constantly expecting the mod to throw another one of those little bastards at you, but it never does. Regardless, you'll be wanting to get back to the surface pretty quickly after that one.
81	* During the exploration of the Warrens at one point some sort of small but really fast zombie passes by in front of you without warning. If you follow him he'll be quickly dispatched by one of the larger monsters. [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment No explanation of this is given whatsoever]] and it can be quite the scare in just how sudden it is.

Context NightmareFuel / VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines