Feeding in Vampire
The Masquerade –
Bloodlines
ByJodyMacgregor
There are a lot of
things you can
change about
vampires and still
have them be
vampires. Not liking
garlic?Unnecessary. Being killed
instantly by sunlight? Even Bram
Stoker didn’t have that. Aversion to
holy symbols? Super optional.
But if you get rid of the need for
blood you don’t really have vampires.
There are no scenes in Underworld
where a vampire bites someone, and
so it ends up feeling like a movie
about goths with guns instead.
Fortunately, in Bloodlines drinking
blood is as important as it should be.
There’s a blood meter across from
your health, and it goes down
whenever you use your cool vampire
powers. If it runs out the Beast inside
you is unleashed, meaning you’ll lose
control and go on a rampage that’s
likely to end with cops reducing you
to ash. To avoid that you feed. Sure,
you can suck on a blood pack from
the corrupt guy at the blood bank, or
maybe you can stomach eating a rat.
Most of the time, you find a person.
When you’re first let loose on the
streets of Los Angeles there are a fewwarm bodies around. A homeless
beggar stands near your front door, a
confused yuppie looks lost nearby, a
sex worker walks down the road.
There’s probably a guy pissing in an
alley near the nightclub, and inside
that club someone you might be able
to seduce and leave with a vague
memory and one hell of a hickey.
The moment you bite is never
underplayed. It’s always the most
dramatic it can be. Even if you’re
playing in first-person the camera
leaves your body to frame things
perfectly, the colour drains out of the
world and everything goes dark
except for a spotlight shining down
on you and your victim. You rear
back and chomp. The viewpoint
spins and the blood meter fills as
their health falls.
Maybe you pull back in time, or
maybe you let them die and hear that
fatal chord play as they drop out of
your grasp. Whatever happens, it’s
never trivialised or meaningless. In a
game that exaggerates almost
everything for effect, from the outfits
to the architecture, feeding is no
different. Bloodlines understands that
you can’t have vampires without
blood, and doesn’t let you forget it.7