Or you can wait for a Humble Bundle sale where this game will be grouped with other games and you can get multiple games for less than $5.

1) "Jack's Jack". As Damsel says. Accurate description. He is Bruja clan, anarch, elder (very old and powerful), former pirate when in life. He had no goal, other than rig the sarcophagus with explosives to deal with that idiot (prince), you/the player (should you "devolve" to become an idiot like the prince) and mostly, he was acting on friendly terms, under being controlled or cooperating freely, with Cain (THE TAXI DRIVER!)... He knows everything because other than him planning and foreseeing all this turn of events and twists of story, he probably watched over you (or simply watched/spied on you). I bet he could never imagine the alliance between the asian demons and the idiot of the town, though, this was the biggest low (move) i have personally ever seen in any fantasy setting...

2) Beckett was a free soul, like Jack. We didn't see them communicating, but it might as well has happened. Free souls always find a way to exchange information. Or the taxi driver emanated that strange aura someone with Auspex can only feel, before poor Beckett, betraying his identity. Or simply that bad premonition people with keener senses than your average person regularly have and invigorates their haunch for something to happen later. Game was abstract in advising us, but ever since the lunatic woman in the beach told me, when i "asked for advice", "DON'T OPEN IT", i pretty much knew that doing something everyone warned me against, would certainly harm me. I wasn't interested in the details of it, just the certainty that i would regret it. Jack also striked me as being fishy, because he was never clear or direct, honest or straightforward, into advising us, he never said "DON'T do this", or "you SHOULD do that", only "you do what you got to do". And Beckett being a nerd, following his advice to the letter was the best i could do, nerds are knowledgeable and intelligent. Especially nerds with keen senses and wildlife affinity. Besides, playing a Malkavian spoils everything and everyone. Malkavian *prophecy* for Jack is: "Jack the Black Demon" and "His Beard is Hypnotic". I don't trust demons and i don't like beards, especially HYPNOTIC ones, so i did the maths and kept my distance...

3) Sabbat are usually mad, besides brutal. Not as mad as a Malk, but pretty messed up. They work like animals, using more of their senses (smell, feel), instead of actual facts. He "felt" the power and the "potential" of the player, perhaps. Besides, people who play the tabletop, in the past, said: "Player in Bloodlines, upon endgame, is almost as powerful as an elder" (if you compare game skills and masteries/stats with the RPG's corresponding ones). Our sire was a weakling and in modern nights, as you saw, the blood is thinning down, even changing the species (like those bastardized thin-bloods). The further away from the old generations, the weaker the "children". Our sire wasn't strong or old enough, old Kindred gain resistance from stake attacks (and other things) because their skin hardens and body slowly changes by age, even if they are not of Tzimisce clan. I still haven't figured out how our player becomes strong. But it can happen, genius children from parents without skill in anything. Or the reverse can happen. Besides, in this fantasy setting, a weakling can surpass in strength even a legendary individual (diablerie), but i missed the part where the player did that (didn't ever happen, i mean). I would like someone who knows for sure to explain to me the ridiculous "power up" of our bloodlines player, compared to our mediocre (at best, if not crappy), sire.

Also, in Redemption, if you use diablerie, you kill something precious that you have been struggling 800 years to get back to you. So even if the sarcophagus still had its resident inside (i believe Messerach was a decoy and our "taxi driver" was originally sleeping there, hence the opening from the inside of it while on ship and feasting on sailors) and sleeping, i would never even think of touching its blood. Besides in setting's lore, some who diablerized another were driven crazy, lost their soul in the battle of consciousnesses and failed to absorb their powerful victim's or became so "spent" that slept away for ages, after their deed. I wouldn't want *this* type of game over, lol.

But do choose them in subsequent playthroughts, it's quite fun. Oh, and Nosferatu!

I don't know, since I played malkavian I can't play any other. :P

Thanks for the answers bradley. I am playing as Malkavian now and I understand what omega64 meant, their dialogue is pretty weird. About the power up, I was wondering if it was possible that the cab driver set up some weaker vampire to take the fall while he was the actual sire. It would explain the first unknown email you get when you make it to first haven which says that pawn has been moved. (Pawn being the player, cabbie being the guy who sent it) Technically you haven't even started doing anything for prince so you can't be the pawn prince moved.

How does redemption compare to bloodlines?

No. Cain had only 3 (was it, or 5, i don't remember now) children, the second generation. They created 13 children, the fathers of the clans, the dreaded 3d generation. Cain has never sired anyone, after antiquity. Besides, clans and unique features/disciplines started AFTER 3d gen, Cain's direct children were extremely powerful and without unique characteristics to be categorized as "members of a clan". Had Cain sired us, we would be something like Caitiff (clanless clan from the previous game, redemption), able to dabble in ANY clan discipline, but that would require the gameplay mechanisms of Redemption with the books on researching disciplines... And besides, most children can communicate with telepathy with the sire, especially if their sire is old/strong. Taxi driver never "whispered" to us, or meddled in any way... Also, the Kuei Jin would FEEL us as a direct threat and not "tolerate" us in their turf, leaving MORTALS to come after us (mandarin's gang), had this been the case. Caitiff though could be the weaklings of modern nights too, those who are still normal vampires but too close to being a thin-blood, due to being late descendants, or not of pure blood. Caitiff = clanless though and it works both ways (either too powerful, or too weak).

Redemption is vastly different. It is 2d/pseudo 3d but still isometric and more of a hack and slash, like a 3d diablo 1/2 or something. You also control an entire coterie (vampire party), which feels awkward at first, but gameplay is really awesome! Its gameplay is totally different and alien to the tabletop rules, bloodlines and its skills, gameplay elements tried to be similar to the tabletop RPG to the best of its ability, still not faithful enough, either. But Redemption is a great game if you are not hardcore fan of tabletop rules. In redemption you have more of a romantic story, a big campaign that spawns in both dark ages and modern nights, you reach powerful status (main characters become Methuselahs, the most powerful vampires in existence other than Cain and his direct descendants) and the disciplines are not so few as in bloodlines, you learn many and you can get even more, by reading looted books. The tremere disciplines are overpowered to the point of breaking the game (prison of ice shuts down ANY foe and you can cast it on multiple targets, theft of vitae once or twice immediately empties the entire blood pool of even a boss making them unable to use disciplines, call lightning paralyzes temporarily and deals huge damage plus damages from afar, etc). You can also use a trick to transfer medieval armor to the modern nights, too. And there are even LEGENDARY WEAPONS, like Ainkurn Sword as well as a plethora of other, unique world of darkness artifacts (such as the monocle of clarity). Bloodlines lacked the item galore of redemption, even though it had quite a handful, but then again redemption was designed to be like diablo or something, a hack and slash item/loot-fest!

A true fan should get both. One completes and compliments the other with gameplay elements unique to each title. And they both have a nice view of Vampire the Masquerade setting; gloom, impending doom, grey world with hard choices and even harder impact, power struggles, survival, schemes, worms, legends, decisions... And both have multiple endings. Redemption has 3, Bloodlines 5.

On the contrary I fully support first playthrough as a malkavian.

Listening to music score.

Plus bump, there should always be a Bloodlines thread active here.

ALWAYS.

But... does this mean that all the votes for PotCO were all in vain?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It wasn't in vain, it proved effective pissing people off.

are you our resident expert on VtM? Cause you seem knowledgeable.


hokay. I might missed it the answer to this so apologies.

the prince is sending us on ever increasing dangerous missions. Missions a talented, low gen vampire would not have been able to complete alone.

Prince wants us dead. At first they are low key missions where death could be attributed to bad luck and not enough of expected talent.

then he sends you against sabbatth which should have been death sentence.

Therefore, you must be getting help.


The theory I heard, as you are able to drop your generation in the tabletop (although apparently it requires a lot of points?)

is that Caine is dropping it for you, to give you fighting chances. Hence why you are able to become so strong so quickly, why you could resist LaCroix powers while you failed the first time.
Cause by the end of the game you are Elder vampire, from very low generation. Just few months old. not one thousand.

why? The end of days are approaching . So he just had fun with Jack before the end of the world.

and of course I want to replay the game again. it has bee at least 5 years since i done it (need to check game finished threads)

Not in the classic world of darkness.

To drop your generation you'd need to commit diablerie. Which is to kill a lower generation vampire by draining his blood.

There was a Tremere ritual to allow multiple people to benefit from this.

Diablerie is strictly forbidden in the Camarilla

Wow! Now you 're talking! Now the years old question has truly been answered! This explains EVERYTHING! If this is a valid tabletop mechanism for the real game, it makes sense! Also, theory about the taxi driver doing that (dropping your gen without you even noticing), also makes sense)!

There was a missing link in the whole story. No greenhorn amateur freshly made noob could ever tackle an elder like Andrei and win, or the Sheriff, or Ming Zhao (the most difficult out of the entire bunch)! I would like that to had been presented in game, though, like some drink offered to us (like in redemption Ecaterina offered elder blood in a goblet to give to the Nosferatu guardian to drink, to allow us passing; imagine how powerful that fugly freak got, by being regularly bribed from elder blood per allowing entry)!

The Sabbat also have this niche little trick, for an entire pack to gain powers by diablerizing one strong individual.

And besides it is officially forbidden, for GOOD reasons too (imagine loosing your soul in the battle of consciousnesses for example, or sleeping nearly forever after the deed, or being exhausted and spent to do anything and suffer diablerie yourself by others...), some stooges like the prince really wanted a go at that practice!

There where also ways to temporarily drop generation. Drinking the blood of an Elder gave you a temporary boost and the are artefacts and rituals too.

In terms of a story, you could always have a character think they are a higher generation than they actually are. Thus with experience find they're more powerful than they thought.

Yeah, i also remembered looting more than a couple of "Elder Blood packs" in Bloodlines (first one i found was in Grout's mansion, inside the medical fridge)! Also, in redemption, elder and antediluvian vitae bottles, would give a large boost to stats, temporarily. In this aspect, the first game was more accurate!