Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines: Difference between revisions

[[File:1174331955_vampire__the_masquerade_bloodlines_4396.jpg|frame|''"Hurry up, I can only amuse myself for so long..."'']]

''Bloodlines'' was also the first game to make use of the licensed [[Half Life|Source engine]] from Valve and was technically the first Source engine game completed, but part of their licensing agreement prohibited the game from being released before ''Half Life 2.''

* [[Adam Smith Hates Your Guts]]: Justified in that the humans don't actually know the issues in Kindred society.

** Except for Vandal, the ghoul at the blood bank, but he's got ulterior motives.

* [[Adult Child]]:

{{quote| '''Malkavian''': "It was stolen. But there were lots of dinosaurs, so I had fun."}}

** Debatable. She's an example of an actual type of oWoD hunter -- a heavily anime-influenced type, but the whole concept of cybernetically enhanced Japanese hunters existed before this game.

* [[Ain't Too Proud to Beg]]: {{spoiler|1=Sebastian LaCroix,}} in all but one of the endings.

* [[All for Nothing]]: [[Canon|Canonically]], it doesn't really matter ''what'' you do, as {{spoiler|the world is about to end anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it.}} Note that White Wolf's stance on their own canon is "ignore what you don't like," and many ''Bloodlines'' players implicitly ignore this.

* [[Alliterative Name]]: Velvet Velour.

* [[Badass Longcoat]]: Several outfits.

* [[Bedlam House]]: Grout has turned his mansion into one of these for the sake of "research," and also appears to have been the head of one in the pre-Freudian days of psychology.

* [[BFS]]: One of the many reasons no one messes with the Sheriff.

* [[Bi the Way]]: Jeanette and Velvet. Also the main character if female.

* [[Black Comedy]] and [[Gallows Humour]]

* [[Black Eyes of Crazy]]: The Sabbat sport these.

** Malkavian Thin-blood Rosa got hit by this pretty hard, she got all the madness of a malkavian, and the vampire's thirst, but almost no benefits of actually being a vampire (Though, she can still see the sun and eat and drink mortal food, for all it's worth).

** Ash Rivers feels like this VERY much. {{spoiler|Especially the second time you see him.}}

* [[Bloody Handprint]]

* [[Body Horror]]: Headrunners. Spider Creations. Belials. [[Complete Monster|Andrei]] the Tzimisce.

** "[[Lampshade Hanging|Did I just fight a landshark?!]]"

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: A Sabbat thug preparing to deliver a thrashing looks over his shoulder into the camera and warns, "Those of you in the first two rows will get wet..."

* [[Contemptible Cover]]: [[Fetish Fuel]] laden [[Lesbian Vampire]] Jeanette Voerman leers from the cover.

** To add fuel to the fire, she's involved in only the earliest quests. Once you leave the starting area, she ceases to be involved in the plot to any extent and the player has no need to see her ever again. {{spoiler|And that's assuming you didn't get her "killed".}}

* [[Cosmetic Award]]: A certain series of missions rewards the player with nothing but posters. Other quests also have effects minimal enough to bring their purpose into question.

* [[Cosmic Horror]]: There's ''something'' down in the Hollywood sewers, other than vampires and their work, judging by the abandoned logs of the supervisors. What is it? [[Nothing Is Scarier|You never find out.]]

* [[Creator Killer]]: While by ''no'' means a bad game, ''Bloodlines's'' underwhelming sales proved to be the final nail in Troika's coffin. Being rushed to release against ''[[Half Life]] 2'' didn't help at all.

* [[Cultural Posturing]]: Ming Xiao is rather un-subtle in posturing about just how much better Kuei-Jin are to Kindred. If you play a Malkavian, you can throw her superiority about lacking "childish Caine superstitions" right back at her by name-dropping the big bad bogeymen of the [[All There in the Manual|Kindred of the East]], like the Yama Kings and the Demon Emperor of the Sixth Age. Which freaks her out royally as, in their own worldview, the Fifth Age is about to end.

** Mitnick, the Nosferatu hacker, being the prime example. He states outright that his embrace was the best thing that's ever happened to him, because he got all kinds of new toys and lives forever. Even the hideous disfigurement due to being a Nosferatu doesn't bother him, because he said that he wasn't too good looking anyway. Although one has to say that he is not that bad looking, by Nosferatu-standards.

** Most ghouls feel basically the same way. They have weaker powers and have to rely on a long-term relationship with a vampire, but they tan.

* [[Dark Action Girl]]: All female PC's. Brawl, melee, guns, psychic powers, bloodmagic: make your choice. They are all inevitable dark and capable of killing lots of things.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Some of the dialogue options allow you to be this. Additionally, Beckett, as well as Deb from the [[Show Within a Show|in-game radio show]].

** The Journal has it's moments.

**** This was actually added in the "Unofficial Patch" and was not originally in the game.

** When Jeanette asks you to slash some paintings and steal a donations box, you can comply and carry it out as normal, but since you're stealing from a charity, you'll lose humanity. If you refuse initially, Jeanette will re-affirm it's going directly to the vampire, and not to an actual charity, removing the "wrong" factor and thus the humanity loss attached to it.

* [[Different As Night and Day]]: Jeanette (the obviously Malkavian nymphomaniac party-girl) and Therese (the obviously Ventrue strait-laced businesswoman) Voerman. {{spoiler|The player later learns they are actually the same vampire; Jeanette is a [[Split Personality]], the manifestation of Therese's Malkavian insanity and the result of her disassociation from being molested by her father as a child.}}

** Interestingly enough, {{spoiler|Therese always stands on the left side of the room's screen, as in left-brain, and Jeanette always stands on the right. When she's having her [[Freak-Out]], she stands in the middle.}}

** If you are a Malkavian {{spoiler|you know from the spot that they are the same person}}, though it is cleverly hidden in the very colorful speech and almost impossible to get during your first playthrough. The Malkavian {{spoiler|calls Jeanette and Therese the white and black daughter of Janus respectivly. Janus is a roman god with two faces.}}

* [[Disposable Sex Worker]]: played pretty much straight. It's hardly a ''good'' idea to go around murdering prostitutes, but the consequences are entirely personal, not because anyone, you know, cares about the prostitute. If you remember to stop just before they cork it, you can go on a cheery prostitute-drinking spree to no penalties whatsoever.

* [[Door to Before]]: After you finally get through [[Scrappy Level|the Sewers]] into the Nosferatu hideout, you find a door that leads you straight back to Hollywood.

* [[Double Agent]]: Not only possible, but recommended, especially for the quest "Fun With Pestilence/A Plague for the Angels". That way, you get respect from both factions, double the experience, ''and'' an extremely useful magic item.

* [[Gratuitous Japanese]]: Yukie - and the voice actress is extremely bad at it, getting some of the pronunciation completely wrong, particularly with trying to say <s>"Los Angeles"</s> ''Rozu Angerezu'' with a Japanese accent.

* [[Gratuitous Russian]]: By mafiya goons, used apparently correctly.

** Incidentally, as Dr. Gimble himself has a prosthetic arm (and in fact according to one dialogue option admits the injury was self-inflicted), it's entirely possible the arm he was hitting you with... was his own.

** Another severed arm can be found in the Hollywood sewers. {{spoiler|It belongs to an NPC that you talked to only moments before.}}

*** Somewhat more subtle however, is {{spoiler|the appearance of Cain's backstory when your getting ready to drive around Los Angeles during the Endgame sequence. This does not make ANY sense, whatsoever, however the game otherwise implies that the Cab Driver is Caine himself. Ignoring later retcons, of course.}}

* [[Ironic Echo]]: {{spoiler|The last living member of the snuff film producers in Hollywood claim they only killed junkies and runaways, the something of society. The maker of the creatures that killed them claims he made the creatures out of the exact same thing.}}

* [[It's All Upstairs From Here]]: {{spoiler|1=Most of the endings have the player character fighting his/her way up the LaCroix Tower.}}

* [[It's Up to You]]: You are apparently the ''only'' agent (or at least the only competent agent) that Sebastian LaCroix has access to, despite his being a Prince, a Ventrue Elder, and rich enough to own the tallest skyscraper in downtown Los Angles. Also, in a city full of vampires that have been around the block a time or three-hundred, only you (a newly turned Childe) can defeat the ghosts/zombie cult/vampire-hunting fanatics/etc.

* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: One of the best melee weapons in game. {{spoiler|You can find a superpowerful one during the sidequest Hell at the Hotel Hallowbrook, somewhere inside the abandoned hotel filled to the brim with Sabbat vampires, ghouls and Andrei.}}

* [[Kick the Dog]]: The fate of your ghoul if they remain with you late in the game.

** Fire is also one of your main weaknesses. Will be used against you from time to time.

* [[Knight Templar]]: Bach and the Society of Leopold as a whole.

** Andrey makes it a point to turn every single line he speaks into a work of fine art.

** Lacroix tends to get pretty melodramatic whenever he contemplates the burdens of leadership.

** And if that's not creepy enough, wait until you see what he meant by "precautions to protect my beloved wife"--{{spoiler|her corpse is sealed inside a huge Victorian belljar, surrounded by objects from her childhood and their courtship.}}

*** Maybe not totally insane: he has a medical mind and has accepted the concept of {{spoiler|life beyond death}}, so protecting {{spoiler|her body}} wouldn't seem useless. At least, none of the hostiles (the non-inhabitants, I mean) {{spoiler|had touched her body yet}}, and some probably had motive to.

*** {{spoiler|Grout's wife might have been a Malkavian too.}} It's mentioned in the game that Malkavian insanity can take any form, including total catatonia, and it would tie in with Grout's search for a cure.

** [[Helloween 4545]] did an excellent Let's play as a female tremere.

* [[Lesbian Vampire]]: Jeanette can even sleep with a female player character (if you have enough seduction, I think) while Velvet will even go as far as sending you e-mail with hammy love poems all the time. Also the female player character (not Nosferatu) can seduce young girls and such.

* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: {{spoiler|Knox can play you like a fiddle.}}

** However, with enough stats, [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|you can call him on it.]]

* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: The plaguebearers. All three of them are good examples of what happens when a vampires humanity is completely abandoned.

* [[Omnicidal Neutral]]: At the end you have to choose whether to side with [[La Croix]], Strauss, Nines, or Ming Xiao; which choices are available depends on their actions up to that point. They always have the option of siding with nobody and taking out both the Camarilla and Kuei-Jin.

** Protean disciplines allow the player to do this.

* [[Only Sane Man]]: Compared to much of her caller base, radio hostess [[Show Within a Show|"The Deb of Night"]] combines this with a [[Deadpan Snarker]] approach; even when [[Cassandra Truth|unknowingly interacting with actual elements of the World of Darkness.]]

* [[Pineapple Surprise]]: "Nines" Rodriguez saves the PC from a gang of Sabbat shovelheads by threatening them with a grenade.

* [[Point and Click Map]]

* [[Rule 34]]: Dear God! Practically ''every single character in the game'' features in ''someone's'' fantasies or artwork. Threesomes of Damsel/Heather/VV, Ming Xiao using her Naughty Tentacles, [[Twincest]] {{spoiler|and [[Screw Yourself]]}} between the Voerman sisters, Venus wearing denim shorts, the blood-stained savagery of shark-toothed Pisha, and even the ''putrid horror of Imalia'' are far from the being only common themes. Even male characters are not immune: there are jokes about [[Flamboyant Gay]] Sebastian LaCroix, [[George Romero]] was made bisexual by the Unofficial Patches, a girl interviewed on the in-game radio wants to have Ash Rivers' [[Dhampir|baby]], while Beckett, Mercurio, Nines Rodriguez, and Smiling Jack simply ''ooze'' with raw animal magnetism. The sheer sex appeal of so many gorgeous characters is apparently part of what makes the game a cult classic even years after release.

** [[This Troper]] has even seen a picture involving ''all'' the female cast (both PC and NPC) at once, minus the Nosferatu females, and the Malkavian male PC - though the fact that both Voermann twins are present at once, as well as Heather in both her normal and "gothic" looks, strongly implies the mass lesbian orgy is just a figment of the Malk's demented little mind.

* [[Schmuck Bait]]

** Gorgeous Gary Golden, a former movie star, loves to make these.

{{quote| "Forget it, boss. It's Chinatown."}}

** The ship the Elizabeth Dane is the name of the Leper Ship in John Carpenter's "The Fog"

** There are several references to being shot like "Old Yella"

** In a minor side-quest in Hollywood, LaCroix asks you to make a critics review of an Italian restaurant to be a bad one. If you are playing Malkavian and have enough dots in Dementation discipline you can use "Maggots. You are eating maggots." Line from '87 movie about vampires -- ''[[The Lost Boys]]''.

*** You even get to [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade it]] in a subsequent dialog choice:

'''Malkavian PC:''' How could they do that to you? [[Sarcasm Mode|I bet they didn't]] [[Lampshade Hanging|get that idea from a movie]]. }}

** Mitnick the computer hacker is a reference to [[wikipedia:Kevin Mitnick|Kevin Mitnick]], previously one of the world's most notorious social engineers. He now runs an IT security consulting service.

** There's a reference to ''[[Futurama]]'' in the Santa Monica health clinic: if you examine the patients' files on the doctor's computer, one of them suffers from frequent bouts of sexlexia.

*** You can also use Zapp Branningan's classic pick-up line--"I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies"--on a would-be Blood Doll in Hollywood. It works about the same as it did for Kif.

** And, of course, the Italian Giovanni's desire for an "[[The Sandman|endless night]]".

** Perhaps more subtly, if you choose to {{spoiler|save Heather Poe by giving her your blood}}, the cutscene goes through the exact motions of the scene in ''[[The Vampire Chronicles|Interview with the Vampire]]'' ([[The Movie]]) where {{spoiler|Lestat Embraces Claudia.}}

** [[Monty Python's Flying Circus|"Nobody expects the Malkavian Inquisition."]]

** A radio ad for a brand of butter called "I Thought it was Margarine" (All the crappy taste of margarine, with all the saturate fat of butter.)

*** It's probably a mixture of both. There's a dead psychotic in the room ([[And Zoidberg|And Gimble]]), and the bounty hunter is called '''Carson''' ([[Don't Explain the Joke|as in Johnny Carson, who was always introduced with that catch phrase]]).

*** It's a pretty explicit Tonight show reference. [[Never Heard That One Before|Which Carson does not appreciate.]]

** When you rescue Kiki from the Tong the first thing she asks you is [[Star Wars|Aren't you a little short for a Tong?]]

** If you turn off the power for the house of drug dealers at the beginning of the game, one of them angrily shouts that he was about to unlock [[Street Fighter|"Sheng Long"]]

** If you talk to the group of thin-bloods at the Santa Monica pier, you can, with sufficient Persuasion, {{spoiler|convince one of them that either a) [[The Lost Boys|killing the head vampire will turn him human again]] or b) that a [[Near Dark|full blood transfusion]] will do the trick.}}

** A very subtle one in the Nosferatu warrens. One of the old ledgers makes reference to three missing workers named [[The Running Man|Whitman, Price, and Haddad]].

* [[Serial Killer]]: Throughout a large portion of the game, there's a destructive serial killer covered by the news. The player eventually has the opportunity to deal with him.

** Not quite, the Cathayan is still dangerous with that sword. The Blood Guardian is slightly more dangerous (has aggravated damage). Bishop Vick can be easly dealt with if you manage to corner him with a melee weapon.

* [[We Do the Impossible]]: The reason LaCroix uses the [[Player Character]].

* [[What Could Have Been]]: The developers wanted to have much more diversity in dialog, both player-lines and NPC responses, for players of every clan, if not quite to the same level as the Malkavian. They had nowhere near enough time to actually make it happen, sadly.

* [[White Dwarf Starlet]]: Gary Golden is an arguable example of a male version of this. His career was abruptly ended by his transformation into a hideous Nosferatu and now he lives in the sewers, dressed in a tuxedo and surrounded by decaying relics of his [[Glory Days]], including two corpses stuffed into costumes.