Vampire: Bloodlines Weekly Update #15

Activision’s Shane DeFreest has sent us another weekly update for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines via email. This time, producer David Mullich sits in the hot seat and answers the following:

Q: Will you ever see a group of NPCs walking down the street together? Every time I play a game where there are NPCs filling the sidewalks they’re always by themselves. Don’t these characters ever have friends or spouses they talk to while they walk?

A: That’s a slice of reality that we haven’t focused on. However, the game does have street characters who gather together and interact with each other — sometimes in very interesting ways. You’ll have to check out the game to find out 🙂

Q: I’d really like to know as much as possible about how the weaknesses are going to play in to things. Speaking of which, I heard that Ventrue get less nourishment from “non-Blue Bloods” and can even throw it up again. So if you play a Ventrue, you can only feed off of Nobles? Can you go into some detail as to how Nosferatu are able to walk around and not immediately break the masquerade?

A: Right now we are still tuning the strengths and weaknesses for the different clans. In regard to the Ventrue clan, we originally had the requirement for them to feed only on Blue Bloods, but that proved too limiting, so currently we allow them to feed on other characters but receive less blood when doing so.

Nosferatu’s have a definite liability with the risk of sending normal humans into a panic when meeting them face-to-face, but, if players explore around enough they might come across a path for making their way to a location without immediately breaking the Masquerade.

Both are good questions, and are part of that whole “taking the rules from the P&P game, and then balancing them to be fun in a computer game” thing.