Vampire: Bloodlines

Even better, introduce her to the game. Two birds with one stone!

I hold the secrets of the machine.

Man, I'd need to reserve my entire summer vacation to deal with my backlog of games, sheesh.

Too many. Ass Cree, Borderlands 3 upcoming, Rage 2 to finish, Prey to Finish, loads of PC games I need to finish...

UGH.

And my wife is firmly in the JRPG camp, though I have tried with Vampire... she is a bit allergic to PC games, so it's good this one may be console focused too. may actually get her to give it a go!

Extended gameplay trailer:

I greatly recommend the Trails series to your wife, some of the finest JRP Gs to come out in recent years.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jun 11th 2019 at 1:10:45 PM

That club owners voice is so familiar.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

All of the voices were familiar to me, I just don't know enough about the V Acting scene to put a name and face to them.

Slug is definitely voiced by Brian Mitsoda, at least.

The quest giver has the same VA as Velvet Velour from the first game, I'm sure of that.

The Club Owner was definitely Brian Mitsoda.

I hold the secrets of the machine.

The person playing didn't do a great job of showing off melee combat - but I'm glad to see the hub areas are a) HUGE and b) really vertical. Love the wall scaling - reminded me of that early Men In Black scene.

The dialogue options were great.. and also nice to see shotguns won't completely own you in combat; though guns do seem rather piddly. However, melee impacts knocking people back feels good, rather than the usual of just swiping at someone and just getting an "arg" while they keep attacking.

Interesting to see how the mist and vent option works - it's essentially fast travel through levels. Really rather good.

I'm still excited -all the ambient noise, the terrible dancing, the VIBE. it just feels right.

It's worth pointing out that as a demo it's almost certainly running on the lowest difficulty possible, so I imagine on something more serious guns aren't totally nonissues.

Also, here's a gameplay video from someone who isn't the worst.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

I really hope they give you other ways than questlines to gain Experience this time. One thing that annoyed me with the old game was that because of the quest-based experience, the number of experience you could win in the game was finite. That was irritating because I constantly found myself trying to maximize Experience gains rather than just do a variety of choices.

Edited by Theokal3 on Jun 13th 2019 at 4:02:00 PM

I liked the original Deus Ex's approach - where exploration also gave you some; so finding those nooks and crannies paid off. Hopefully it'll be interactions, exploring and quests that reward it. So, how you handle NP Cs in the hubs, or if you find items, or a particularly hard to reach area.

I wouldn't be opposed to getting XP from finding secrets, but I'd prefer if they limited it to that.

I really liked that XP was limited to accomplishing things, killing people itself did not give experience and that was nice. It felt much more immersive that way.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Exactly. I like systems which, for example, give you experience in a particular THING if you use that thing. I quite liked Oblivion in how the more you use a tool, the more experience you get with the tool and thus get mechanical benefits overall.

Combat grinding feels like an artificial barrier - grinding, anyway, always feels a bit of filler, artificially granting progress or limitations.

It should be "action the pushes forward the plot / character" has a reward, definitely. And exploration does that, as it rewards curiosity and pro-activity.

Exactly my thoughts.

I don't mind if there are games that give XP for doing stuff like killing enemies but I really like immersive sims that avoid it. Thankfully it looks like Bloodlines 2 is certain to follow its predecessor's example in this context.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Not necessarily through killing, but I'd like if there was a way to constantly get new Experience, without a point in the game where you stop gaining Experience and basically get unable to have your build evolve anymore.

Would quest-experience satisfy that? It seems to me that if quest-experience is provided, then as long as you're finishing quests (or major parts of the main quest) you should be able to advance, level-cap allowing. Or do you specifically want the ability to grind?

(I'm curious, in part because I've been thinking about this a little of late. For myself, I'd likely fall closer to the feelings that Fourthspartan 56 has expressed—but I might take it further, and drop XP entirely in favour of simply awarding levels/upgrade points for accomplishing certain tasks/completing quests/etc. Exploration could still provide material or lore rewards.

That said, if XP is to be used, then I do like the idea of exploration-XP.)

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Well, problem with us gaining Experience only through quests means that once we've done all the quest in the game, it's over, we can make our build evolve again... then again, if the system still is similar to the tabletop game, I guess the ability to grind would make you OP really fast, so maybe I'm wrong to complain about it^^'

From my perspective, once the quest are all over... well, the game is over, for me. I've seldom really been one for wandering around doing arbitrary things after I've completed the main quest, I think.

But I wouldn't say that you're wrong to complain. Rather, I'd say that we have different tastes in RP Gs. There's space for both games that you like and games that I like, I feel. ^_^

(I know that I detest grinding, so a game that encourages it is unlikely to be to my taste.)

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Trust me, I know your feelings on all account, more than you think. I hate grinding too (it's my least favourite part of Pokémon in all games and killed World of Warcraft for me), and I do think the game get far less interesting once you've completed all there is to do most of the time (I generally stop playing Pokémon after a while once the League's over). Only game I really continue playing long after finishing the main quest is Skyrim, and that's because there are tons of smaller quests to ensure you still got stuff to do.

But in Bloodlines' case, the lack of Playable Epilogue frustrated me, because it left me wanting for more. I wanted to continue using my character after finishing the game, maybe see what happens to him after. There's also the fact that, when Experience is finite, you will end up with stuff you cannot buy no matter how long you play. Plenty of times I was unable to raise Disciplines to the level I wanted because I had spent too much Experience raising the skills and attributes I needed in priority.

I like grinding, I find it is quite relaxing.

But then again I am a weirdo, largely shunned by the day walkers.

It is relaxing when you just need to turn your brain off and fight random enemies for a while. But when you have to do it for several hours with no variant other than "enemy comes, you kill, next", it can get frustrating. Especially when opponents take forever to die.

Edited by Theokal3 on Jun 13th 2019 at 8:51:20 PM

Grinding is only fun when you dont die and have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!

New theme music also a box

If the game is intended to be open-ended, like Fallout 4, then they might include some repeatable quests for extra experience. If the game is intended to be closed, where once you've finished all the quests you've finished that character, then there's no need to worry about limited experience. They'll give you exactly what you need.

To my mind, this suggests that the game wasn't tied up at its end as well as it might have been—or that a sequel might have been called for.
The thing is, I doubt that I'd do even that much in any of them. Once the story is over (whether with a playable epilogue or not), then the game tends to be over for me.
to some degree, I would argue that this is part of the RPG levelling mechanic. As someone else once said (paraphrasing a bit), if you can get every upgrade in the game, then it's not an RPG. RP Gs (video-game RP Gs, at least) are, I feel, all about selecting a playstyle from a range of options, choosing the set of upgrades that suits your preferences—which implies that at least some upgrades are left behind along the way.
In the case that you describe, rather than extra XP, I might suggest an option to re-spec.
Either that, or it may be that the game was a little too stingy with XP for your tastes.
I dislike it even then. I am not a fan of grinding. :P
But each to their own! ^_^

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jun 13th 2019 at 9:49:43 PM

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