Tag: source

#oneaday, Day 181: Vampire: Bloodlines

Body clock buggered up today. After getting to bed late last night, I slept solidly until about lunchtime. Nice, but ultimately unproductive, as it means here I am at 3AM in the morning.

Actually, there's another reason I stayed up so late, and that is Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

This is a game I've been meaning to play for absolutely ages. I'm a big fan of the White Wolf interpretation of vampirism and, to be honest, vampires in general. Just not the Twilight variety. Granted, I have never read or seen Twilight beyond reading a two-chapter preview on iBooks on my phone, but already both Bella and Edward seemed to be some of the most unsympathetic arseholes I've ever had the misfortune to come across in a book.

But that's beside the point.

White Wolf's interpretation of vampirism focuses much more on clan-based political intrigue, with each clan having its own unique outlook on life, special abilities and, in some cases, quirks. Part of the reason for this is for gameplay balancing in the pen-and-paper RPG. Instead of picking a character class, you pick a clan, and that determines your specialisms. But the pen-and-paper Vampire RPG is heavily focused on the RP bit as opposed to the G bit, meaning that these character backgrounds are hugely important from the perspective of actually playing your character in a realistic manner.

Bloodlines was the second Vampire game to hit the PC. The first, Redemption, was a mixed bag. It was notable for having a pretty good script, solid voice acting and (at the time) quite nice graphics. But the Diablo-style clicky-clicky combat really didn't work from the close-up over-the-shoulder camera view adopted. The AI of party members was beyond "dumbass". And there were lots of monumentally irritating bits where you had to sneak a four-person party through areas of sunlight. I never finished it as it got a bit frustrating, though I would like to return to it one day.

Bloodlines took a different approach. Based on an early version of the Source engine, it plays more like Deus Ex than anything else. You walk around LA from a first- or third-person perspective, meet people, talk to them, possibly suck their blood, fight them, complete quests in a variety of different ways and get involved in all the point-toothed intrigue you could shake a stake at.

The game was renowned for being hugely buggy on its original release. I haven't noticed any showstopping bugs since I've been playing this evening—one or two minor graphical glitches, sure, but that's more the old Source engine than the game itself I think. What I have noticed, though, is that it's an utterly fantastic game. While it appears that the overarching narrative takes a while to get going—I played several hours tonight and couldn't tell you what the "main" plot thread was—one of the best things the game does, much like Deus Ex, is immerse you in the game world. There are people in this world going about their business, and they are genuine characters whom you get to know and recognise.

One of the most compelling, immersive things about playing as a White Wolf vampire is the idea of the "Masquerade", where vampires must hide their true nature from humans. In game terms, this means that you mustn't let people see you feeding, using any obviously supernatural abilities or doing anything "vampirey". There are get-out clauses to this, though; seduce a human using your vampiric seduction skills and they won't mind you biting them, for example. But if anyone sees you doing that, you're in trouble.

So far I've really enjoyed what I've played. The balance between the RPG stat-building and the action-based combat is good, and some of the dialogue is genuinely well-written. The World of Darkness is introduced gradually in such a way that isn't daunting to new players but isn't patronising to those who know the lore.

In short, then, I can highly recommend the game from what I've seen so far. It's currently available on Steam and via Direct2Drive. Good luck finding a physical copy if that's your thing.

Dear Esther

I remember first hearing about Dear Esther a while back, during one of those interminable "games as art" discussions. It was held up as an example of using one particular genre of gaming (the first-person shooter, in this case Half-Life 2) as an interesting means of storytelling. Half-Life 2 itself is, of course, well-known for integrating storytelling and gameplay together, but Dear Esther set out to be something altogether different. Designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as a "multimodal, environmental storytelling experiment" which "presents a sparse environment with no embedded agents, relying purely on the player's engagement with and interpretation of a narrative delivered through semi-randomised audio fragments". (source)

That's a very dry description of what this mod is doing, but it's an accurate one.

Dear Esther places the unnamed player on a seemingly-deserted island, starting on a jetty facing an abandoned house. The beautifully-delivered narration begins immediately, reading from a letter to the titular Esther and gradually developing as the player passes around the island.

The interesting thing about the story is that there are several threads running at once, and the randomised delivery of the audio cues throughout means that after a while, they all begin to blur together until it's not clear where one story ends and the other begins. Pinchbeck notes that "two plots develop simultaneously: the avatar's visit to the island following the historical record of a 17th century cartographer, and repressed memories of a car accident". The way these plots intertwine and seem to share themes and ideas in common, as well as wildly disparate elements too, mean that, in Pinchbeck's words, "a closed reading, or understanding, of the events is impossible to ever reach."

In this sense, Dear Esther is a dream come true for people who enjoy finding their own interpretations of games. The mod reminded me a lot of Flower, if not in execution then certainly in atmosphere. Flower makes very little of its story (if indeed there is one) explicit and is very open to wildly different interpretations. One could take it literally or metaphorically – and it is the same with Dear Esther. The game raises unspoken questions about whether or not the island you are walking around is actually real, who the mysterious characters the narrator refers to really are and, of course, who Esther actually is.

Pinchbeck himself was surprised at the positive response to his deliberately open narrative, noting that "the notion of an unfolding mystery that is never solved actually appeals to [players]" and that "the atmosphere and drive to find out more about the story is enough of a pull to get them all the way through the experience".

It's true. Dear Esther presents an intriguing mystery that makes it clear from the outset that there are no specific answers, yet there is a clear "goal" for the player to attain. This was achieved through use of the environment combined with the spoken narrative. Although the environment of the game is very "open-plan", being based on an island, at no point did it become difficult to determine where to go next, as there was always something that "looked interesting" over the next ridge. As the narrative progresses, a huge aerial in the middle of the island becomes visible with a large flashing red light, and the fact that this is almost constantly visible gives the player some indication of 1) where they are going and 2) how much longer they have to go.

Music is also used very effectively throughout. Haunting piano and string themes drift eerily over the speakers as the narrator slowly speaks his lines. As the story builds to something of a climax towards its "conclusion" (for want of a better word) the music becomes thicker, more intense, and with more mysterious, unidentifiable noises creeping into it. It gives a sense of progression in a game which leaves more questions unanswered than answered at the end.

There's certainly no denying that Dear Esther, like Flower, is an experience that will make you feel something. That "something" will be different to different people, as Pinchbeck notes that:

"…we have been surprised how many players report being scared. Several others describe the experience as eerie, moving and very sad. These last two are emotions that normally fall beyond the affective range of games, especially first-person games."

Lewis Denby, writing on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, had plenty to say on this subject, and it's well worth reading his excellent article. One particularly interesting point he had to mention was:

"I love my Marios and what-have-you as much as the next person, but I still feel games have an incredible untapped potential for negative emotions. Some have tried – Braid stands out for having a bloody good go – but we’re still a little too comfortable with enjoying everything we play. Any stretches of sadness in this medium tend to be restricted to self-indulgence or vapid tearjerker fare, and even they invariably make way for happy endings and bunny fluff."

Dear Esther, he says, is noteworthy for taking players into uncomfortable emotional territory and refusing to give in throughout. The whole experience is infused with a kind of melancholy throughout, and the final moments of the story as it comes to a close without any real "resolution" are heartbreaking.

All this in a barren, empty landscape with no human interaction, no speech besides that of the anonymous narrator, no guns, no white-haired pretty boys, no anime cutscenes – and yet somehow, deprived of all that exterior fluff, Dear Esther manages to present an intriguing story which has compelled more than a few people to play it through several times and develop their own interpretations further – and all this using an engine which is renowned for its fast-action run-and-gun FPS gameplay. It just goes to show what a little bit of creativity can achieve.

Dear Esther can be downloaded here.

Pinchbeck's notes on the mod can be read here.