Vampire: Bloodlines Designer Diary #6

Leonard Boyarsky, joint CEO of Troika Games, has dished up his sixth Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines designer diary over at GameSpot. This time, he talks about character creation and advancement in the RPG. Check it out:

During the course of the game, players are awarded experience points based on the completion of quests. We decided to distribute points this way so that players who want to sneak or find alternates to killing wherever possible aren’t penalized for their choices. Bloodlines also awards points based on finding secrets in the game, whether it is a hidden passage or hacking into a computer and getting an extra bit of needed information.

Through the accumulation of experience points, players are able to improve the capabilities of their character as the game progresses, and the way they choose to spend their points will shape the game experience they have. Will they be hacking a lot of computers for information? Avoiding combat by taking a stealthy approach? Persuading non-player characters? At any time, players may choose to start improving an ability they had neglected earlier or become even better at the established path they had picked for their character. As you can see, the Vampire character-creation system implemented in Bloodlines allows for a great amount of customization, which allows for multiple gameplay experiences and great replay value.