I was recently involved in an interesting discussion with a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game. This person disliked the recent RTS version of the franchise, Dawn of War, because it didn't slavishly follow the rules of the tabletop games. Instead, the developers tried to channel the spirit of the franchise into the best RTS they could make, dumping aspects that may have been true to strict rules of the game in favor of making the experience more fun. I believe they succeeded brilliantly and said so in my review.


What does this have to do with Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, you ask? Simple. In past demonstrations of their Source-powered RPG, Troika has gone to great lengths to point out how true they're being to the franchise. While all of that still stands, when they recently stopped by GameSpy to show off the Chinatown hub of the game, the conversation revolved around what was going to be different. Troika's looking to channel the spirit of Vampire: The Masquerade -- to reach that "aha!" place where a gamer feels that this a true Vampire experience, even if some of the nitty gritty details have been changed.