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Jack likes misdirection anyway. There's a combo Discipline based on Dominate and Obfuscate called Smiling Jack's Trick, which...quote:Attributed to the rogue anarch Smiling Jack, this power causes a target (of equal or weaker generation as per standard Dominate rules) to confuse one Kindred with another. For a brief period, the subject consistently mistakes the user of this gift with another Kindred in the immediate vicinity. According to the story, Jack found himself caught by a scourge and his lieutenant. Invoking this power, Jack made the scourge believe that his lieutenant was actually the anarch and vice versa. As the scourge turned his attentions to the lieutenant, Jack escaped into the night, cackling all the while. So yeah, he's not exactly the idiot thug he sometimes likes to present himself as.
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Mar 17, 2014 19:04
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I figured that was both obvious, and aside from a few very lucky idiots, true of all kindred. Even LeCroix was incredibly scheming and smart, he just got outplayed in the end. I figure if you go to a chess tournament even the loser is pretty great at chess. Same principle applies to most kindred who're older than a hundred years.
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Mar 17, 2014 19:08
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I loving love how this thread had 30 replies to it today. I love this game.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:21
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RagnarokAngel posted:I think it's also assuming a lot about Jack. He might be more conniving than he appears, he just plays sorta dumb to put people off guard. Well considering how the main plot point is how Jack is an utterly amazing bastard who managed to kill the most influential vampire in the city in the most hilarious way possible, while orchestrating it so nobody else knows and manages to play everyone about the entire thing, yeah Jack is definitely more conniving than he appears
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Mar 17, 2014 21:27
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Gyshall posted:I loving love how this thread had 30 replies to it today. I love this game. It really is one of the most interesting games ever made and its a shame that they don't make stuff like it anymore. I'm not talking about vampire RPGs, just the whole concept of combining an immersive environment/atmosphere with a unique character and dialogue. And making it long and sometimes confusing and hard. I know everybody hates the sewers and the final hours clearly have zero budget but there is something about Bloodlines roughness that gives it a lot of appeal.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:37
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Its sad that this game is nearly decade old yet very few RPGs since have rivaled it in atmosphere and roleplaying.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:51
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To be fair the game was a broken buggy mess on release and the company went out of business it was such a bomb. Still after it got fixed by mostly fans it became pretty neat.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:57
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Pryor on Fire posted:To be fair the game was a broken buggy mess on release and the company went out of business it was such a bomb. Still after it got fixed by mostly fans it became pretty neat.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:00
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The interesting thing is that in principle the game doesn't seem to be all that complex and extensive so it shouldn't be too difficult to replicate the formula - which actually may be the issue. Most developers probably aren't interested in making games that are more about dialogue and intrigue than about ***core gameplay***.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:01
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Yeah, Obsidian and CD Projeckt are like the only devs that have really tried so far.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:04
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Accordion Man posted:That was Activision's fault, not Troika's. I'm not 100% convinced of this. They also did Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum. Both great games but horrifically buggy on release.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:04
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Malek posted:I'm not 100% convinced of this. They also did Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum. Both great games but horrifically buggy on release.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:06
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I thought Valve forced Troika to release Vampire too soon / using an inferior version of the engine as part of the license agreement?
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Mar 17, 2014 22:08
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Accordion Man posted:Yeah, Obsidian and CD Projeckt are like the only devs that have really tried so far. And of those two, Obsidian often releases games that are as, if not more, buggy than this at release.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:13
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It is probably more the developers pitching the idea for these dialog focused games (read: interactive fiction) and the publishers going are you guys on  One of the reasons I'm looking forward to
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Mar 17, 2014 22:18
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Fuzz posted:And of those two, Obsidian often releases games that are as, if not more, buggy than this at release.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:20
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Accordion Man posted:And that's usually because they get screwed over in development (KOTOR 2) or they had to use a really buggy engine. (New Vegas) Otherwise their games aren't that buggy, like the South Park game. The New Vegas argument is bull, though, because FO3 wasn't nearly as buggy and came out almost 2 years earlier and from what I recall supposedly had a shorter development period, plus Obsidian recycled a ton of assets.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:25
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Bethesda did the QA for New Vegas, not Obsidian.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:26
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Plus the majority of the bugs seem to lie in the scripting portions... at least they're not using Python for the scripting after Bloodlines.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:28
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Accordion Man posted:Its sad that this game is nearly decade old yet very few RPGs since have rivaled it in atmosphere and roleplaying. I'm trying to think what games have come close... New Vegas till you have conversations with NPCs. And all those Bioware games are too slick and polished.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:29
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Gyshall posted:One of the reasons I'm looking forward to Dungeon Siege 3 was very stable and I haven't heard anything bad about South Park: The Stick of Truth, so Obsidian seems fully capable of releasing a mostly bug-free game. CatchrNdRy posted:I'm trying to think what games have come close... New Vegas till you have conversations with NPCs. And all those Bioware games are too slick and polished. Deus Ex and Alpha Protocol are the first ones that come to mind.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:29
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Samuel Clemens posted:Dungeon Siege 3 was very stable and I haven't heard anything bad about South Park: The Stick of Truth, so Obsidian seems fully capable of releasing a mostly bug-free game. I loved Alpha Protocols timed dialogue system! And the voice acting was pretty good. The characters though are unmemorable and the details of the spy plot never grabbed. And the "countries" were just arcade shooters, not much for world building.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:35
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Sorry but if you think Brayko is unmemorable then you probably have Alzheimer's Heck, there's also Heck. Alpha Protocol was several different cheesy spy movies mashed together and you could choose which one you wanted to play or create some sort of amazing hybrid. It was awesome 
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Mar 17, 2014 22:43
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CatchrNdRy posted:I loved Alpha Protocols timed dialogue system! And the voice acting was pretty good. The characters though are unmemorable and the details of the spy plot never grabbed. And the "countries" were just arcade shooters, not much for world building.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:44
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Ddraig posted:Sorry but if you think Brayko is unmemorable then you probably have Alzheimer's This is 100% the truth. Also they need to make a Steve Heck game.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:52
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Accordion Man posted:I mostly agree, though as the person above me just said the characters can be pretty great. I love AP and I'd say it rivals Bloodlines when it comes to roleplaying, but yeah it really lacks a strong tone and atmosphere like Bloodlines had. Alpha Protocol's strength was that each play through was like a completely different game. Bloodlines has some of that with the Nosferatu and Malkavian options (especially Malkavian), but not to the same degree as Alpha Protocol.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:55
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Aleph Null posted:Alpha Protocol's strength was that each play through was like a completely different game. Bloodlines has some of that with the Nosferatu and Malkavian options (especially Malkavian), but not to the same degree as Alpha Protocol.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:56
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steinrokkan posted:I thought Valve forced Troika to release Vampire too soon / using an inferior version of the engine as part of the license agreement? The agreement stated that they couldn't release the game before HL2. But yeah, the version they shipped with was older and buggier. Some of the systems, like AI pathfinding, were of their own design because the Source equivalents weren't functional enough when they hit main production.
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Mar 17, 2014 23:35
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Ddraig posted:Sorry but if you think Brayko is unmemorable then you probably have Alzheimer's That is true Brayko and Heck were pretty awesome, I even liked the teen Russian goth assassin. I'd play a game based on its dialogue options alone. But everything seemed to pale and fake compared to the paranoia of being a vampire pawn. The environments felt very Mass Effect sound-stage like.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:09
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That and the Hotel is still the single scariest videogame level ever. Ever.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:17
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Cradle?
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Mar 18, 2014 00:21
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Sorry, Condemned: Criminal Origins has it beat on two counts: The Department Store and Farmhouse
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Mar 18, 2014 00:23
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Ddraig posted:Sorry, Condemned: Criminal Origins has it beat on two counts: The Department Store and Farmhouse Also that. The farmhouse not so much, but those loving mannequins... Those loving mannequins......
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Mar 18, 2014 00:28
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:Cradle? We have a winner.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:54
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That loving hotel level. gently caress that level.
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Mar 18, 2014 01:11
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Fuzz posted:The New Vegas argument is bull, though, because FO3 wasn't nearly as buggy and came out almost 2 years earlier and from what I recall supposedly had a shorter development period, plus Obsidian recycled a ton of assets. I've never bought this since I've seen way fewer crashes with NV on my computer. I think both games are super buggy and which one you have a worse time with probably depends on when you bought it and what you did in it. I tend to get memory ceiling crashes way more with FO3 for instance. That said, even Bioware games are buggier than the norm because just making an RPG with a minimal amount of SSMA and branching dramatically increases the possible avenues for errors over a standard game. A game with large, semi-open environments like Bloodlines, or something with complicated and interesting quest design like New Vegas, is necessarily going to be less stable and more expensive to do QA for.
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Mar 18, 2014 02:06
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Yeah I certainly don't envy the programmers behind open world games. Are there any really actual honest to goodness decent open world games that shipped without bugs?
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Mar 18, 2014 02:34
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Malek posted:Plus the majority of the bugs seem to lie in the scripting portions... at least they're not using Python for the scripting after Bloodlines. Could you explain this to one of us non-programming types. Python isn't good for this kind of thing I gather?
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Mar 18, 2014 02:41
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Yeah, Troika has a bad history when it comes to releasing buggy messes--let's not kid ourselves, it would have still been a mess on release. That said, Activision is at fault for the rushed last act of the game, and Valve does bear a bit of the blame for the timing constraint--they couldn't release before Half Life 2, but it's Activision who decided to release it on the same day, which is like dropping off your infant at Dingo's Daycare. Even a 2 week delay might have given it some air and still shipped in time for Christmas.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:48
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DeathChicken posted:That and the Hotel is still the single scariest videogame level ever. Ever. Nah. It's scary the first time around, but it's very very scripted. Upon replays the hotel loses a lot of its scaryness. It's still atmospheric, but I'm not scared at all. I know that when I enter the chandeleer is going to drop, that if I go to the far left and turn around, there will be an axeman in my face; I know that the boilers (generators? What are those things?) will start exploding their screws when I restore the power, etc etc etc. The first time through it's scary as hell, the second time you go through the motions and follow the pre-scripted path. Conversely: the Cradle consists of a (relatively) large level with amazing sound designs, and with AI opponents that are scary as gently caress but that patrol in ways that are difficult to predict. You're also a vulnerable thief, not a supernatural monster. The "enemies" in Ocean Hotel (objects flying around, phantom fire) are neutered after they trigger - paintings can only hit you once, once you're past the fire it no longer threatens you (and it's never all that dangerous anyway). While in the Cradle, you have tools to destroy the AI, but not nearly enough to kill all of them. And the noise your tools make will draw other AI to you, making it a very risky strategy. This reinforces the feeling of vulnerability far more than Vampire does. These are far too many words to say that Thief's the cradle has scarier level design, in part because of the genre (sneak-em-up vs supernatural badass RPG) and in part because of design decisions. Both levels are incredibly charming though, in their unique ways. Ddraig posted:Sorry but if you think Brayko is unmemorable then you probably have Alzheimer's Though granted Omen Deng, Shaheed, Madison, Mina, and that one russian dude are pretty drat boring. it's still a pretty good cast of characters all things considered. double nine fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Mar 18, 2014 |
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