It is of some interest to me that I am excited about Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. If you've played Quest For Glory IV, like I did all those years ago, then you will probably be familiar with the scene with the little girl inside the castle - the little vampire girl, who's friends with the monster Toby. The first glimpse of her in her vampire glory is with the lines "Who is it Toby?", lines surely immortalized in my memory. Anyhow, the experience was quite traumatic, for some unknown reason. At that young, impressionable age, I was completely terrified of that girl (what was her name? Anna? Ah, Google reveals it was Tanya. Good old Google!) and her little friend, and ever since I've been completely terrified of vamps in all forms.

But of course, it's like a horror movie - even if you're really spooked you want to watch it anyway (most of the time). Same thing with vampires - whenever they're involved, I want to avoid them, but at the same time, I don't! So with Bloodlines, it's much the same thing. Depending on how spooky it is, I'll probably be terrified, but at the same time, I'll probably play anyway.

As a game itself, it seems fairly interesting. Being based on Half-Life 2's engine is a positive sign, judging by all the oohs and aahs HL2 is generating nowadays (I haven't had a chance to see the video, perhaps I should do so soon?). The action/RPG component, well, now about that I'm not too sure. I guess it depends on the mechanics of the gameplay, largely - the concept itself sounds like it could work, but execution will be critical. It's also dependent on the balance between action and RPG elements - I am an RPG fan, so more action than RPG would be a turnoff. The primary elements of an enjoyable RPG for me would be character choices and good dialogue - I want to play any role I feel like, darn it! Even the brilliant Baldur's Gate series offered many redundant choices, in that they would end up with the same outcome. This was not ideal, but oh well, at least you were able to mock people and still get information from them!

It seems like they are concerned with the RPG aspects, which is good. If what they say is true, and the clan you choose affects gameplay, then that's great. The different ways of solving a quest would make the game quite replayable, and replayability is quite important to me, since RPGs are one of the only game types that can motivate me enough to play the game a second or third time. Baldur's Gate is a fine example of this, in that not only are there the different character parts, but also there's simply so much stuff in the game that you can't possibly explore all of it a first time. I haven't even begun my epic scourge of the Forgotten realms with an evil character yet (that's reserved for sometime soon)!

The graphics, well, they look good, but not great. Not that graphics should become the definitive milestone for judging a game, but poor graphics can certainly destroy any merits of gamepley in the modern world. We're all spoilt by these screenshots of the latest, greatest FPSs, and as a result anything not up to that standard is automatically disadvantaged. At the end of the day, of course, I think that gameplay should win out. But at the same time, graphics are important, though perhaps not as much. Anyway, Bloodlines has nothing to worry about here, its graphics are no Doom 3, but they're good enough for me.

Interestingly enough, I wonder if the QFG IV saga predates Dracula The Resurrection, a game done in FMV that was pretty gory and featured a sleuth of psychotic vamps that were out to get you. The fact that you had to do everything right in a day to survive provided many scenes when you simply did not know whether you had done the right thing, or whether that innocent looking person was about to bare their fangs. I ended up cheating to win that game, if only because it was too hard otherwise. If I can tolerate the (by today's standards) low quality video, perhaps I ought to give it another try.