Time of Judgement for Vampire the Masquerade
Devin Cambridge, 2004-05-18

The original World of Darkness ended recently with the Time of Judgment, a coordinated finale to the multitude of titles that comprised the dark worlds created by the pen-and-paper RPG maestros of White Wolf. As part of this final series, Vampire: the Masquerade culminated in Gehenna, an event prophesized at the game's initial release. Though White Wolf closed publication of the original World of Darkness on April 30^th of this year, a new World of Darkness publication along with a new Vampire series, "Vampire: The Requiem," is in the works at the Stone Mountain, Georgia studio. In the original timeline, Vampire The Masquarade: Bloodlines, the long awaited computerized version developed by Troika Games and published by Activision, leads into the final nights of the vampire world.

Last year, VTM: Bloodlines piqued my interest. The game used the then announced Source engine from Valve. One year later, VTM: Bloodlines flexed its muscles with a full booth under the Activision marquee. The game looks beautiful. The character creation sheet looks much like last year with the addition of a side menu for skill targets. In the game, performing a task will require a skill target. To reach the skill target, players will need to combine spent points in statistics with points in skills. This works much like the pen-and-paper game system. In-game skill examples included a hacking demo on a laptop which yielded information about the in game story line and a lock picking demo. The real display comes from the NPC interaction. The NPC response tree varies according to appearance, skill level, discipline level, and clan affiliation. In addition, the game provides top notch voice acting which helps with game immersion. On the technical side, the graphics still look extraordinary. From the red light ambience at the bar to the reflectivity of the water in a dungeon sequence, the demo really tantalizes the senses. Three new character dialogue sequences showed the depth of the facial animation tools included in the Source engine. Since we now got a chance to see a non-vampire character speak, I could not help but notice how real the teeth looked when one of the NPC's talked.

While at the booth Leonard Boyarsky, cofounder of Troika Games, provided a quick interview.

RPGDot: Can you talk about some of the aspects of the pen-and-paper game that did not make it into Bloodlines?

Leonard: We don't have diablerie; we have often talked about including that in a sequel or add on pack. Also, the players can't play the Sabbat. They can only play the Camarilla clans in Bloodlines. Plus, we've tweaked a lot of the disciplines in order to make them more appealing in a real time game. I think that is one of the biggest changes, making the disciplines work in a real time computer setting. But, we still have all the depth and complexity in the dialogue. You can still seduce people and you can still use persuasion, dementate, or dominate on people during dialogue. It's been a real balancing act. We want to keep the game fun in the new setting without loosing the spirit of the pen-and-paper RPG.

RPGDot: Last year, we saw the animalism discipline. Have any of the disciplines fallen by the wayside?

Leonard: None of the disciplines have been left out. Some of the disciplines like animalism have changed. We made some of the disciplines more lethal. Some of the [test] players were not using the disciplines because of the blood costs. It became a blood vs. payoff issue. [So we changed them]. We wanted people to focus on the disciplines and experience of being a vampire instead of just grabbing a gun and shooting things. So, we tried to make the disciplines as appealing as possible, which in a lot of instances means making them as lethal as possible.

RPGDot: From the demo, we can see that the thaumaturgic paths (sub-disciplines within thaumaturgy) have not been included. You mentioned in other interviews that you would have liked to include them. What influenced your decision not to include the paths in the game?

Leonard: [The decision not to include the paths] was a time issue and it is still on our wish list. We were originally [thinking] about including two to three paths and of course you could choose the path. If we have time, we still have some plans on the drawing board. When we went back to revamp the disciplines we didn't have time to add additional paths. We wanted to make sure that the path that we did have was fun to play. We have a lot of things for alternate versions of things in the game and we will have to see if we have the time to include them.

RPGDot: How much more development time do you think you will have?

Leonard: We are shooting to release in the fall. That's all that we are committing to right now. It gives a window to shoot for end of development.

RPGDot: So, are you at pretty much at the refinement and wish list phase or do you still have some base level programming left?

Leonard: Right now, we are on the cusp of moving into the polishing phase, we have a few base level things to do, mainly bug fixes and addressing balancing issues. Overall most of the features are there. We are pretty much done with the disciplines and we hope to know within a month whether or not we hit the wish list.

RPGDot: Many people feel the first computer title, Vampire the Masquarade: Redemption focused too much on multiplayer game play and not enough on the single player content. Did the first game affect how much time you spent on the multiplayer aspect?

Leonard: Although we didn't work at all on the first [Vampire: The Masquerade computer title], we tried to do something similar with Arcanum. I think a lot of RPG makers have come to the conclusion that you have to focus on the content of the single player RPG. In this case, our multiplayer, [vampire vs. hunters], is much more action orientated. We asked ourselves, did we really want to make a multiplayer aspect? Did we want to make a hard core RPG multiplayer? We looked at the engine and decided we could do an action multiplayer and that it would be fun. [Because the engine is a FPS engine], we could put out a multiplayer game [with minimum effort], yet focus on the single player RPG with branching dialogue, which is what we do best anyways.

RPGDot: How far along is the dialogue?

Leonard: We almost done with the dialogue. We are in the reviewing and fixing phase right now. We are going into the studio pretty soon to do our last recording.

RPGDot: The World of Darkeness has ended and your storyline playes a pivital role in the prestory to Gehenna,  how do you feel about releasing after the big event?

Leonard: It would have been nice to come before [the big event]; however, it doesn't bother me too much and I hope it doesn't bother the fan's too much. My team and I were really flattered that we could become part of the big event and become the prequal to the big event. It was really nice to be part of white-wolf cannon. It's one of those things that would have been nice.

I decided to take the time to ask a few questions outside the Vampire arena.

RPGDot: Black Isle is now gone and with it Fallout 3. Would you like to get a hand on the Fallout francise?

Leonard: I would love to [work on Fallout again]. That was the first game that Tim, Jason and I had a hand in creating. That was our baby, and it's is kinda like someone has adopted our kid. We would love to work on it. We will see what the future brings. On the other hand, it is interesting to see what other people do with it as well. … I guess the short answer is "yes, we would love to work on it again."

RPGDot: Are there any other genres out there you would like to tackle?

Leonard: We like to look at a lot of different stuff.  When you are up late at night thinking about dialogue trees with fifteen dozen resolutions, you start thinking about shooters. You think, "Oh my God, I should make one of those." We are still pretty committed to RPG's, but we still like to kick around other ideas. Even though our company consists of some pretty hard core RPGers, their tastes range pretty wide. We have people that like to play RTS's or FPS. We have a lot of different influences. Which is why we try to push the boundary with games like Vampire. It is not just another isometric game or turn based game. It gives us challenges that are pretty fun to face. As for specific genres, we have looked at everything from real time stategy games to multiplayer fighting games. Up until now we have been happy doing RPGs.

RPGDot:  Thank you for taking the time.