Source Engine Vampire Title Explored

Thanks to Eurogamer.net for their preview of Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines, with new info and screenshots on the FPS/RPG hybrid from Troika, the creators of Fallout and Arcanum, and the first announced title apart from Half-Life 2 to use Valve's Source Engine. According to a Troika representative, "Bloodlines is the first game to combine the classic RPG feel with a first person shooter engine", and Eurogamer also single out the return of the classic RPG 'conversation tree' as providing fresh gameplay ideas: "For example, your character may have excellent seduction skills, or be part of a specific clan that allows you to ask questions or offer responses otherwise unavailable to you, and these 'special' branches of the conversation will be shown in a different font to indicate this."

Comments

The original Vampire: The Masquerade PC game

[mmdurrant]

I played the first Vampire game and really enjoyed it. It was based on Quake3 technology somehow or at least it used Q3Radiant as the level editor.
The coolest thing was that all the game logic was implemented in Java, making mods for it pretty darn easy. My friends and I had a good time creating quests and attributes/disciplines. I hope the new one is just as extensible.

Level and Mod creation

[sirmikester]

I wonder if the creators of Vampire will be as open to mod and level creation as Valve is. With the use of the source engine, I think that there will be many tools available to the community but developer support is crucial too. I guess time will tell.