Bloodlines 2.02 - Fuckin' Nuclear

This century gleams.

Above each doorway, beneath humblest eaves, upon a myriad stalks like sunflowers returning their gift, a brash future glares its challenge against the inheritors of darkness. The sparest tenement boasts electric candle-flare enough to shame the gaudiest palace feast in centuries past, each street aglow to the horizon with an ocean's conflagration of spermaceti. The City of Light dims in remembrance. Above, the Milky Way washes out to a milky pudeur at such garish displays, the stars I called my faithful guides across lifetimes of wandering blinking out in annoyance, mocked by fools lighting their own way to dusty death. This Promethean gift the kine take as their due, with such galling aristocratic detachment: 

Oh, little matchstick girl, will you sell me a whiff of phosphor? Your city of pitch footing and coal gas galloping chokes my senses, your gleaming metal facades scorch alive old fears of the witch-hunter's heated brand. And there, secreted in your coat, buzzing and chiming for your limited attention: what cacodaemon thought to wed a pocket Victrola to an ever-flowing gossip rag?

 

Had I foreseen this incandescent, screeching madhouse, I should have hunted down those fools Marconi and Tesla in their cribs and by hallowed leechcraft eased the world of this plague of buzzing fireflies, this insult to the mute eternal night beyond. 

__________________________________________________________

 

 

Feeling Bloodlines 2's tedium set in more firmly with every simpleminded fetch quest and slapfight against identical mooks, I'll set aside my many other complaints to ask: will any detail of my character or the setting ever prove relevant? Why force a premade player character on me if you're not going to give him any personality?

 

The culture shock of a creature four centuries old and a century absent is elided in a single paragraph of dismissive exposition, then ignored, begging the question of why an "elder" vampire was warranted in the first place. At every step, TCR's gaggle of sorry excuses for writers pass up chance after chance at colorful dialogues which would've taken no more development effort than voiceovers triggered by environment. The Christmas tree you see as you walk out your door the first time could've been a commentary on shifts in religiousity, a visit to Fletcher's bar with its speakeasy history could be punctuated with: 

"Ah, but those were gayer days."

"Oh. About that word..."

 

Could The Nomad comment that The Great War was good eatin' and such fruitful catastrophe could never be duplicated? Maybe give us an aside about women's suffrage or flapper fashions vs. modern ones? Something about the damn dirty commies? It's bad enough our protagonist has zero opinion on new technologies, but could he not show some passing interest in the improvement of those he would have encountered in more primitive forms, like the velocipede or motor carriage? Sure, piling on too many such asides could sound goofy if they're not properly spaced out and interspersed with more serious, plot-relevant content.... but come on... nothing?!

 

Even when their own script sets up an obvious opportunity, they fail to follow up on it logically, like the fact a vamp sleeping since 1920 should react with confusion at Benny's "nuclear" comment. Maybe you could insert short information age training dialogues at the start of each night in your haven. Or imply the PC speed-read a few books like Armand in Interview. Or hell, yes, try to imagine how modern light pollution would look to someone who went nappy-naps back when street lamps still ran on oil. Take advantage, in some way, any way, of the backstory you so thoughtlessly spat out. Have a reaction, an opinion, of some kind, beyond "give me quest!" It's not as though game design is lacking in examples to follow. Your ghost buddy is even a direct counterpart to Joey Mallone from Blackwell, where he played so much more fruitfully off the heroine. Or hear how much mileage Gabriel Knight got out of its protagonist and narrator snarking at the much sparser pixelated scenery back then.

 

Bloodlines 2 is an astoundingly lazy product in many ways, but this becomes especially obvious in facets of development where even a minimal effort and interest would have easily borne proportionately far greater fruit.