Von Kultstatus zu Risiko: Scheitert Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 an den hohen Erwartungen?

GameStar

vor 6 Wochen

Auf der gamescom konnten wir zwei Entwickler von Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 interviewen. Ist das Spiel ein würdiger Nachfolger - oder ein Vampir-Simulator, der eigentlich einen anderen Namen tragen müsste?

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00:00Hallo! Den nächsten Slot kann ich gar nicht anmoderieren, ohne die Maskerade zu gefährden.

00:18Es geht um Vampire Bloodlines 2. Der Slot wird jetzt in Englisch stattfinden, denn ich habe zwei

00:24großartige Gäste hier, die leider kein Deutsch sprechen, aber das ist ja kein Problem.

00:29Welcome guys, good that you're here. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

00:34Sure, I'm Ian Thomas, I'm the Narrative Director for the Chinese Room on Vampire, the Masquerade, Bloodlines 2.

00:42And this is... Hi, I'm Jay Hicks, I'm the Design Director.

00:46Good to see you guys, I'm very happy that you're here.

00:49Just to make sure that everyone's at the same page, would you like to talk a bit about your game, what it's all about?

00:56Sure, so Bloodlines 2 is a game in which a very old vampire wakes up in Seattle, not knowing why they're there or what they're doing and how they fit into the politics at the time after having been asleep for a hundred years.

01:14And the game is about how they cope with that and how the power structure of vampires in the hidden world of vampires in Seattle deals with that incredibly powerful character.

01:27Mhm. And well, just to do a bit more about it, what type of game it is, what kind of gameplay can people...

01:35So Action RPG, the main character being quite an old and powerful vampire is quite good at fighting things, which Jay can talk about a lot more.

01:45But it is also a role-playing game, so there is a lot of intrigue between that character with all of the other major players in the city and it's a branching and changing story where you decide what sort of elder vampire you're portraying and that changes how people react to you.

02:10So both role-play and action.

02:13Mhm. So in the first one, which is Vampire Bloodlines, masquerade first one. It's not called the first one, but you know.

02:21In that one we played a newbie that has just been bitten.

02:25Absolutely.

02:26And now we're going to play a very elder one, a very experienced vampire. How did that change the way you approach the game and the narrative?

02:33Sure. So what happened with this is when Paradox approached us, the Chinese room, the Chinese room were, I hope, relatively well-known for narrative, for storytelling.

02:43And when Paradox approached us, we sat down with them to figure out what sort of story we were trying to tell because we're a very story-based company.

02:52And the going from a complete newbie in the world of vampires, a fledgling vampire in Bloodlines 1, and then learning about the world of vampires and growing and growing and changing the world based on what you did, was a story that had already been told.

03:10And it's been told quite a lot in the tabletop role-playing game as well. And we wanted really a different take on it. And the idea of a character who has been around for a very, very long time, but is new to this place, new to Seattle.

03:27There's a really interesting thing that happens when you take such a powerful playing piece and you drop it into a new playing field.

03:37All of these people in that world then react to this powerful character, this elder, and some of them want to use that character.

03:46Some are waiting to see how that character is going to react and change the world. But if you think about it as a, the politics of Seattle is a pool,

03:54and you've just dropped not a small pebble, a massive boulder into that. And so our lead character here is a catalyst for change and upsets the entire power structure and power struggle of Seattle.

04:09And that's what our story is about, that over a few nights, that's what the story is about.

04:14Just a few nights and everything goes. Let's see where it goes. And also he's not, he or she, they are not on their own in their head.

04:23Do you want to take your question?

04:25I would say this one's more narrative as well, but that's absolutely correct.

04:29So you are joined, and you discover this quite early on in the game, by this character called Fabian, who for some reason is a voice inside your head.

04:39And as the story progresses, you'll learn that at some point, Fabian has died.

04:48And you're then going to have to go on essentially a bit of a detective mystery, trying to figure out who killed Fabian.

04:57But we go a little step further than that. He's not just a voice inside your head. We actually, well, when you go to sleep, you get to experience the world through Fabian's eyes.

05:09You get to play as Fabian the Malkavian and investigate your own death.

05:14He's rhyming too.

05:16Yeah, he is.

05:17Fabian the Malkavian.

05:18He's that kind of guy.

05:19So we've essentially got this really old vampire who's just woken up and has been asleep for a hundred years.

05:24He doesn't know modern life or Seattle or any of that.

05:27And then you've got Fabian, who is a Seattle native.

05:30He is about a hundred years old, but he is absolutely fascinated with conspiracy theories, with life.

05:37He delights in how things work and what humans do and how they interact.

05:41And he's still very close to humanity.

05:43Whereas Fire, who is an old survivor of a character, doesn't really count humans as being particularly important anymore.

05:51Mortals, rather, as being particularly important.

05:53So you've got the two of them kind of complementing each other.

05:56And Fabian essentially acting as a kind of tour guide.

05:58But he's a Malkavian and for people who know the background and know the RPG,

06:02Malkavians are known as either mad or prophets or visionaries or whatever you want to call them.

06:09His delusion, if it's a delusion, is he thinks he's a gumshoe detective.

06:14So you have an old, a vintage vampire up against a guy who thinks he's a vintage detective.

06:21And he frames all of his experiences through that idea of being a detective.

06:25Whether he's right, remains to be seen.

06:28I really like that because you do not do the fish out of water thing.

06:33You do fish back in water, but also with another fish.

06:36Yes.

06:37Multiple fish.

06:39So it's also a good way to, you know, help to introduce the world itself.

06:45Because we cannot, you know, we cannot think that everyone who played the first game will play this.

06:51People maybe haven't played it before.

06:53How is it if I've never heard of it, which would be criminal.

06:57But there are people, we do not judge, that did not play the first part.

07:02But how do you plan on including everyone that maybe didn't get to play the first one?

07:09So there are, the first game, I think it's worth saying, is a similar story and a similar feel in a totally different city.

07:18There are lots of plot connections, but it's not a direct sequel.

07:21So you don't need to have played the first one.

07:23This is also obviously the computer game version of a very long term tabletop role playing franchise.

07:31So there's a lot of material out there.

07:33And there's lots of things that people who know those will hopefully pick up very rapidly on.

07:37But one of the reasons that we have Fabian there and one of the, as you say, the kind of fish out of water thing that's going on, is you don't need to know anything about this world and this background and about Seattle and about how vampires work in Seattle.

07:53Because Fabian and Fire between them, because they both talk, will introduce concepts to you when they become important.

08:01For example, very early on in the game, and this is a real common thing for people who know about vampires.

08:08Vampires can sleep for a very long time, torpor.

08:10If a vampire goes into a new city and the cities are ruled by a vampire organization that's in charge of keeping everybody secret, which is the masquerade of Vampire the Masquerade.

08:19If you go into a new city, it is only the correct thing to do to go and meet the prince of the city, the ruler of that city and go, can I have permission to be here?

08:30Now, this is not the thing we'd expect a player to know at the beginning of the start of the game, but obviously that becomes important quite early.

08:34And so that concept of introduced, the concept of the prince, the concept of the ruling clan.

08:39So it's a drip feed of those key pieces of information that all you need to know to play.

08:44But there's a lot of stuff in the background that if you know the deeper lore and you know the original game and you know the tabletop game, you'll start to see connections and symbols and Easter eggs and all sorts.

08:56I think it's really important to say that we're now working with White Wolf directly.

09:02So we have access to people who worked on the original board game and have stuck with it ever since.

09:11So if you ever need a fact check or anything, it's just one phone call away. It's fantastic. It's such a good resource for us.

09:20And it's been great to develop this story with them because when we're going, oh, for this story, we need this kind of thing to happen.

09:27And we go to the law masters of White Wolf and Paradox and go, does this work? And they go, well, no, not in the vampire law. That thing can't happen.

09:37But how about this? It has the same effect. And we just twist it. So it's very, very much bound into the existing long term.

09:44Yeah. I mean, everything that happens in our game is now canon in this universe. So it's going forward. That's lovely.

09:50That's pretty cool. So we just talked about fighting would be more your area of expertise. Would you like to talk a bit about that?

09:58Yeah, absolutely. So at the beginning of the game, you're going to choose one of the clans.

10:03If you buy the base game, you're going to have a choice of four clans. And each of those clans has their own sort of unique sort of play style.

10:12So you've got the Bruja, who are your up close and personal brawlers. So they've got some really cool abilities like lightning strike.

10:19I don't know if you've seen it, but it sort of allows you to paint an array of punches across a group of enemies.

10:26And you look like quickly like smack, smack, smack, smack, followed up by a real big haymaker, which will probably finish off anyone that you're fighting.

10:33Then you've got like the Banu Hakim, who are more of your stealthy prowlers who will sneak around and using their obfuscate abilities like unseen aura, which allows you to escape into the shadows.

10:48And it's probably worth saying, even at the very beginning, because you are an elder, you start powerful.

10:53You start beyond the range of most, certainly all mortals that you meet, and most vampires that you meet.

11:01So you're already powerful.

11:03You're not doing the thing to me why I start really, really powerful and then I lose everything.

11:07No, no, no, no, no, no, not at all.

11:09You start, you start, you start in your weakest form.

11:13That is true.

11:14You are already damned.

11:16Your weakest form is already up there.

11:18We set the tone right from the beginning.

11:21And it was shown in the video that's playing for the people at home.

11:24There's a guard who comes out at you and he's like, what the hell's going on here?

11:29You know, and you get to smack him and you see him flying.

11:35We really set the tone with that.

11:37Yeah, additionally, yeah, like I said, there's multiple more plans.

11:40You also have some additional abilities that are quite vampiric.

11:44So you've got access to telekinesis, which Fire uses for multiple purposes.

11:49So that can be used in combat.

11:51You can grab enemies, pull them towards you.

11:53So say you're on a rooftop and you want to see them plummet, just yank them off the edge.

11:58You can also use that to maybe manipulate bodies.

12:01So you don't want to get discovered when you're sneaking around.

12:03So you can pick someone up, drag them around with you.

12:07Maybe use them as a human shield.

12:09Hold them up.

12:10They can take the bullets for you.

12:12Additionally, maybe it's more of a diversionary tactic.

12:16So picking up some bottles and throwing it, you know, that old chestnut, right?

12:20And you have a lot of physicality generally because we wanted to give you that impression of being a predator.

12:26And so you're locomotion through the city of Seattle.

12:30The rooftops are your fastest way of getting around.

12:33You are superhuman.

12:35You can glide from rooftop to rooftop.

12:38You can scramble up pipes.

12:40You can make long jumps and dives and changes.

12:43But it does not look human.

12:46Yeah.

12:47You could do that stuff at the ground.

12:49But then people will start to ask questions.

12:51People will get upset.

12:52Eventually, the police will be called in.

12:54And you have just broken the masquerade that that one vampire kind of immutable law of do not give away to humans that the supernatural exists.

13:02So you could move that path, that fast on ground, but you don't.

13:05You keep to the rooftops and you are the predator looking down at the humans in the city.

13:10And you have various reasons for predating on those humans, for drinking blood from those humans.

13:17There are story reasons and game mechanics reasons for you seeking people of a particular type to hunt, to take off, draw off down an alley and then feed from.

13:27It's worth mentioning, like, the masquerade, essentially, for people who don't know, it's the vampire's way of staying hidden.

13:34It's imperative for their survival.

13:36They know that if they were to be discovered, they would be outnumbered by the humans and outgunned, essentially.

13:43So they have to stay hidden.

13:45And so we have all these mechanics in the game that we encourage you to use in the right place.

13:51Don't use it in front of the pedestrians.

13:54You don't want to get caught.

13:56Yeah, essentially, the way that works, the camera are watching you.

14:01So if you have too many infractions in a shorter amount of time, it's not like a big, long, extended thing.

14:11If this is more minutes and minutes gameplay, if you have too many infractions too quickly, what's going to happen is they're going to take you out.

14:19Not that good.

14:21Don't give the game away.

14:22Don't give the game away.

14:24Okay.

14:25So I do have a question.

14:26Because if you're at home, you've probably seen the material that we have.

14:32And I've seen the character walking through a very old, decrepit building.

14:37Probably people there that have been, I don't know, lying around there for longer because they're dead.

14:42Also rats and stuff.

14:44And he's barefoot.

14:46Do we get shoes?

14:48Yes.

14:49Yes.

14:50Yes.

14:51So Fire, who can be a male or female character, the player character, wakes up in an abandoned building after, we quite quickly figure out after 100 years.

15:02They are wearing what looks like it could be some kind of robe or maybe operating gown or something like they've been experimented on.

15:11And they've got these weird scars on their arms and they don't know why.

15:15So they don't know why they're shoeless, but they've woken up over 100 years.

15:19And yes, as you say, they are shoeless until they manage to find a place of safety in Seattle.

15:25Fabian, who we've talked about, helps guide them to somewhere where they can have a bit of a rest in safety and they can put on something which doesn't make them stand out in the middle of Seattle.

15:35Because running across the middle of Seattle covered in bloody robes is a good way to start the police asking questions.

15:41If it's not Halloween.

15:44Yeah, because that worried me. Even if you are, you know, not dying as mortal people do, it would still be disgusting.

15:53I'd like to speak a bit more to the outfits though, because we've actually included a ton of different outfits.

16:01So every ability that you unlock gets you a new outfit.

16:05And those outfits have gameplay repercussions as well.

16:08So when you're out about talking to people in the city or even main characters, what you are wearing will affect the outcome of your conversation.

16:18Yeah.

16:19So we have a system, right, where to unlock the new abilities.

16:24So you can essentially take abilities from other clans and bring them into your main four abilities.

16:31Right.

16:32And to do that, you have to collect resonated blood from from around the city.

16:37And for those of you who don't know that they're essentially it's essentially like a currency that you're going to be collecting from from drinking blood from these these people.

16:47And you'll see them when you're looking at them with your your vampiric senses.

16:50They'll sort of be glowing a color that matches the type of resonated blood.

16:54And if you feed on them, you will collect an amount of that blood and then you'll take that to a clan contact of the clan that you're interested in.

17:05Right.

17:06And they will then allow you to drink some of their blood to help you regain this lost knowledge, which allows you to get these abilities.

17:15So then you get the ability, you get the outfits and then the outfits helps you get other things for other ones.

17:22So it's a bit of a loop that's going on there.

17:24So you got a dress for the blood you want.

17:26Well, exactly, because you've got to meet people who are feeling the mood that will give you the right sort of blood.

17:32And you go up to that person and you you maybe have to push them over the edge into that mood.

17:37It may be that you want to seduce them and make them feel absolutely delighted at meeting you.

17:41And then you feed because you want them in that state before you and if you're wearing the right outfit, if you're wearing the right outfit, it may be easier to convince them.

17:51But if you're not wearing the right outfit, they may just tell you to get off.

17:54And that plays in with the masquerade, right?

17:56Yeah.

17:57So if you go and flirt with a civilian and they fall for you, they become absolutely besotted with you, you won't want to just feed on them in broad daylight right in front of the police or anyone.

18:10Right?

18:11So obviously the simplest thing is to take them down an alleyway and have a little feast.

18:15And yeah, another thing I wanted to mention that we've only announced recently at Gamescom is it's more than just outfits now.

18:23So you can customize your hair, you can customize your makeup, tattoos and all sorts of things.

18:29Like there's so many different types of piercings.

18:33And my absolute favorite is the eyes.

18:36We've gone absolutely bonkers with the eyes.

18:39You could make yourself into the darkest, nastiest looking vampire.

18:43It's awesome.

18:44Also playing into the whole role playing.

18:47Exactly.

18:48You've got such a huge role playing community within the world of darkness.

18:52And yeah, I'm really hoping to see in the future people role playing some of the characters.

18:57I was thinking about being Benny, who's the current sheriff of Seattle.

19:03And to play into the role playing side of it, when you actually get into talking to the various characters you'll meet,

19:09these kind of pivotal figures that I talked about, the political game, if you like.

19:15Rather than it being something like Paragon Renegade's sort of opinion system,

19:22every character, every major character has their own viewpoint about who you are and what you are like

19:27and how you present yourself as the main character.

19:30So you could talk to that person and you could go up to them and say,

19:35I am an elder, I demand that you do what I want you to do because I've been around for 400 years.

19:40And obviously they'll have an opinion about that.

19:42Some of them might like that. Some of them will obviously react in a different way to that.

19:45Others, you might want to suck up to them and flatter them and then they'll like you for that.

19:52And you'll start to get conversation options and behaviour from them that's different.

19:57So it's a balancing act. How are you going to present yourself?

20:00Are you going to role play as this one type of character all the way through?

20:03I am this big character or are you going to be a bit more chameleon and play this kind of game?

20:08And then you get into situations where you have a room full of people and they ask you a question

20:12and you have to pick a response as any other dialogue.

20:15If I pick that response, those two people will be really pleased with it, but that person will.

20:22So there's this juggling game, this game of politics in a city of vampires.

20:28And all of that has consequences in all sorts of ways.

20:32Also, they hold their grudges longer because they don't die.

20:34Oh yeah.

20:35They hold so much grudges against me. I'm always being the...

20:39I'm not going to say it's rude, okay?

20:41You said they hold them longer because they don't die.

20:44And in normal circumstances, it's rare for vampires to die often because they're quite good at staying alive.

20:51Funnily enough, in these nine days, the body count goes up quite high.

20:56It's quite a violent few days.

20:57I wonder how that happens.

20:58Yeah.

20:59It's peculiar, isn't it?

21:00Yeah.

21:01Oh yeah.

21:02Since we're nearly at the end, I do have one other question I want to ask you.

21:05Because if I do interviews, I'm always interested in what you guys would like to talk about

21:10that no one asked you before.

21:13Not because I want to be original, but I really want you guys to be able to talk about something that's maybe on your mind.

21:19Yeah.

21:20Can I jump in there?

21:21So, I think Bloodlines 1, right?

21:26A lot of people played it, right?

21:28And they absolutely love it.

21:29It's become a cult classic.

21:31But if you talk to everyone, they all have their own sort of thing that they took away from it.

21:37It's something that they grabbed onto and they love, right?

21:41And I feel like that is what I want people to get out of this.

21:46It's a game for so many different types of people.

21:49We've made it so it's fun for people who just really like your narrative adventure games, right?

21:55But on the flip side, we've also made something for the action brawlers out there who really like some fast-paced combat.

22:04And, yeah, I just want people to have their own experience.

22:08Try it, please, before you judge it.

22:12I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

22:14And for me, it's more of a kind of game dev general thing, I think.

22:19I love characters.

22:21I love narrative.

22:22I love working with actors.

22:24And this game has developed and developed a lot.

22:27We've been adding content kind of constantly as we discover what works, what doesn't work, what we think we need to put in.

22:33We have some, I think, very memorable characters.

22:37And it has been an absolute delight to be in the voiceover studios with the actors

22:42and give them challenges, things that they didn't think that they could do

22:47and things that we didn't ask them to do when we cast them.

22:50In particular, the role of Fabian, and we are not announcing actors yet,

22:54but the voice actor has to do real clever, fast footwork all the way through.

23:01He does some incredible work, as do many of the actors.

23:05It's just when you play the game, you will see he has to be dexterous in a way that you would not expect.

23:09And all of those actors have delivered such amazing work.

23:13So they were all laughing at things and giggling at things in the studio.

23:18And there are lines, there are some characters who we will record

23:22and everybody back in the development studio will just stop everything

23:26and listen to the lines that come to that character.

23:28Because they're either amazing or scary or funny or whatever it is.

23:34But that's been a joy to work with that cast.

23:36Can I just say, Ian's done such an amazing job of writing these characters.

23:40And everybody else.

23:42I wet myself laughing with some of the characters.

23:44Especially, I'm just going to say it, the romancing.

23:47Oh, it's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

23:52You will be wetting yourself laughing.

23:54I will say, it's a team who did the writing. It's not me.

23:58Ian's team, sorry. Yeah, absolutely.

24:00Okay, thank you guys very much for talking about Empire Bloodlines 2.

24:04All the best for your game. Thanks so much for being here.

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