Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption
Description official descriptions
It is the Middle Ages in Europe, and people live in constant fear of demons and God's punishment. Christof is a warrior who fights the creatures of darkness. After being badly injured in a battle, he is nursed back to health by the nun Anezka in a Prague convent. Love strikes Christof when he least expects it. He realizes that it is impossible for him and Anezka to be together, but he swears to protect her and the town of Prague from demons. What he does not know is that Prague has become a battlefield for the struggle between different vampire clans. The Brujah clan sees a duty in protecting their wisdom and the unsuspecting mortals from the more vicious clans. They turn Christof into a vampire, hoping to use his skills and his passion for their cause.
Christof has lost his soul, his faith, everything he had ever had, becoming one of those he had always fought and hated. But his love to Anezka has not died. And so Christof agrees to help the Brujah, getting involved in a complex net of intrigues and struggle between vampire clans, a struggle that will eventually take him to modern times, to London and New York, where his fate will finally be decided.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is based on the pen-and-paper role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. Much of the game is dedicated to exploring hostile locations, fighting enemies (mostly other vampires) to complete missions and advance the storyline. Gaining experience points, the player develops Christof and other characters by increasing their statistics (such as Strength, Intelligence, Manipulation etc.) or learning and improving various disciplines, the magic spells of the game. Disciplines require blood, which can be restored with items or by feeding on enemies.
Combat is action-oriented. The player can directly control only one member of the party ("coterie"); the rest are controlled by AI. It is possible to switch between different characters at any time. Following the ethical code of the RPG, there is a Humanity bar for Christof, which can be reduces if the player decides to kill innocents or make evil decisions in the game. The game has several different endings that depend on the protagonist's Humanity level. There is also a multiplayer option.
Spellings
- Vampire: בעל המסכה - Hebrew spelling
- 吸血鬼: 假面舞会 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
Groups +
- Gameplay feature: Character development - Skill distribution
- Gameplay feature: Karma meter
- Gameplay feature: Multiple endings
- Green Pepper releases
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Protagonist: Vampire
- Setting: City - London
- Setting: City - New York
- Setting: City - Prague
- Setting: City - Vienna
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
- Theme: Vampires
- Vampire: The Masquerade licensees
- World of Darkness
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Credits (Windows version)
269 People (195 developers, 74 thanks) · View all
Producer | |
Press Relations | |
Executive Producer | |
External Test Coordinator | |
Global Brand Manager | |
Associate Brand Manager | |
Marketing Director Germany | |
Brand Manager Germany | |
PR Director Germany | |
VP of CS/QA | |
Staff Planning Lead | |
QA Senior Project Lead | |
QA Project Lead | |
Production Testers | |
QA Testers | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 76% (based on 52 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 88 ratings with 7 reviews)
The Good
Vampire is damned addictive. The story keeps going from one exciting locale to another and spans 800 years (sort of). For the most part, Vampire is an excellent action game. I would compare it to Diablo with the camera zoomed in. There is a mixture of sword and sorcery and guns and ammo. Vampires are much like humans, except their undeath gives them access to powerful spells called Disciplines. Disciplines work like Jedi Knight's force powers or Undying's spells in that you can upgrade spells to make them more powerful. Unlike most games, it pays off to master a few Disciplines rather than knowing a little bit about all of them.
The game is largely combat based with a surprising amount of linearity. There are some quests that involve acquiring items, but most of the game entails raiding enemy vampire camps. Still, combat is varied with a large number of enemies and a variety of weapons and spells to choose from.
The mythos of Vampire is very well developed and is excellently presented here. I have not played the pen and paper game, yet was able to follow the story which involves 13 rival clans vying for supremacy. The actual story of the game is entertaining if not original and various conversation options and your Humanity level (an indicator that shows whether you are following a human moral code or are succumbing to the Beast) determines the game's ending.
The Bad
I expected the Masquerade to be more masquerady. The World of Darkness assumes that vampires are among us (and always have been) yet they remain unknown due to the Masquerade. That is, they hide from our view and operate out of our knowledge. In this game the Masquerade involves running past London bobbies with swords, guns, knives, fangs dripping blood, etc. Imagine what a stealth element would have added to this game.
Vampire is billed as being an RPG and has been hyped as being a first-rate RPG, I find both claims doubtful. If you accept Diablo as an RPG, a pure hack and slash game with one way to completion than so be it. Granted there are three possible endings and you can customize your character, but many games have multiple endings and various character/weapon/spell choices.
This game does use the character stat/discipline sheet that is part of the pen and paper game. Within this game I felt those stats were poorly realized. Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina all seemed to take an active role, but others such as Intelligence and Charisma served only as prerequisites for higher Disciplines. In true CRPGs these stats come into play throughout the game. In Fallout, a great RPG, Intelligence determines conversation options, Charisma (or the equivalent) determines character interactions.
Another problem I had with the game is the Discipline choices. The manual (which is pretty but bloody useless) offered iffy descriptions and failed to explain why I would want to upgrade certain Disciplines. One Discipline identified magical objects, would level two really identify them? Would level three identify the hell out of them? Or how about another useless Discipline that allowed you to determine if a person was good or evil? This would be very useful in the pen and paper game, but in the computer game you could usually tell your adversaries by the way they swung their swords at you.
Graphically this game was incredible except for poor clipping, sprite based shadows, and combat. Combat, the majority of the game, was incredibly frustrating. There was no difference in animation if a sword/arrow/bullet connected as opposed to a miss. In a game with as great of graphics as Vampire had, it's the little details that stand out.
Finally, the AI. AI is bad on both parts and sometimes coterie (party) members behaved so poorly I wished the game was turn-based. There are three settings for coterie members: do nothing, kill everything, tag along. I unfortunately had the party set for kill everything and after sitting through a long cutscene explaining how we weren't supposed to harm humans, my party went berserk in town. Party members also fire ammo into walls, refuse to move to get a better shot, cast powerful spells on weak creatures, etc. Enemies stand still until you come within striking range before swinging into combat. Ack- and pathfinding- Pedestrians routinely walk into lamps, sides of buildings and get stuck, your own party isn't much better. You fortunately have the option of releasing party members and controlling them one by one, this isn't a great feature it's a poor fix to a design flaw.
THE PATCH IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST!!!
The Bottom Line
Not quite an RPG but a fun action/adventure game that is novel in having the player assume the role of a vampire. Graphics are quirky at times, but are largely the best to be found and the music is remarkable. The patch is necessary in that it refines a save system and provides a balance for the early game. Highly worth its now bargain price.
Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2002
The Good
This game was great. It had tons of weapons as well as many armour items and spells. It was a great game on so many levels that whenever I first play an RPG I say how it wasn't as good as vampire in a certain aspect. The game was very fun to play and extremely addicting.
The Bad
The only thing I didn't like about the game was the part in modern times. It was still good but not as good as the medieval times. Other than that it is in my mind the best RPG I have played.
The Bottom Line
This game is great.
Windows · by m n (1) · 2002
Great story, great atmosphere, repetitive gameplay.
The Good
The game starts with great story-telling and quickly builds up the atmosphere. In the beginning, gameplay is simple enough and very addictive. But the difficulty quickly rises and requires you to use disciplines (spells) properly.
Story is divided into two parts, both are good alone, but together they create nice "twist" in the atmosphere and game itself.
Every game "dungeons" looks differently than another, they are very specific, with great looking graphics, but in single dungeon you will most probably have trouble telling different levels one from another.
Inventory and whole interface is nicely done and works almost perfectly, although it is not exactly suited for quick-enough combat control.
Vampire the Masquerade rules are nicely implemented, though it is necessary to read the manual to understand some disciplines. Manual is also nicely written and helps in understanding the world of darkness for those not familiar with it.
The Bad
While the story is deep enough for RPG, the actual gameplay gets repetitive. You talk to someone, they will send you to nearby dungeon, you battle through four levels of dungeon, kill boss creature, listen to new facts, go back to the quest-giver, talk, clean four level in another dungeon and so on and so on. It is always a small progress in story and then four levels dungeon. Exactly something for those who loved repetitive gameplay of Diablo.
AI of the enemies is nothing special (enemies usually stand at one place until they see you and then approach/shoot/use discipline). Nothing special, but their sheer number makes up for it. What troubles me is the AI of your characters. When you will watch your character walking in circles for three minutes trying to get through the doors or going down the stairs, you will know what I mean. Also character become stuck behind one another far too often, and try to shoot through walls.
Since you play with up to four characters, some sort of quick commands should be implemented, but no, only thing to help you manage your team are selection shortcuts and attitude setting. Everything else is up to your reflexes and clicking skills. Also rearranging your inventory in combat is almost impossible (since you cannot pause the fight).
Due to this, some boss fights are really hard and the final one is almost impossible.
The Bottom Line
It may look like I found more bad thing than the good ones, but it is not the case. I really enjoyed playing through the game. I recommend reading the manual, as it will tell you which disciplines are useful and how you should develop your character.
If you can get over occasional stupidity of AI, repetitive gameplay (surprisingly mostly in the middle of the game), you will receive good story telling and solid RPG.
A must for any RPG or Vampire fan.
Windows · by Dan Mokosh (56) · 2011
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Game Resources for New Players | phantom goat | Nov 10, 2016 |
How do I run this on modern OS? (and getting a way to run in a window) | BlaringCoder (169) | Jun 30, 2016 |
Trivia
Credits
The post-game credits end with the following statement: "No szlachtas were harmed in the making of this game", followed by "Okay, well, maybe just one or two". The szlachtas are a common species of monsters you encounter in several dungeons of the game.
Endings
The game has several endings, depending on Christof's humanity level at the end of the game. All the endings have completely different flavours and should be tried out.
German version
In the German version, all blood and gore effects were removed.
Reflections
Some early ads showed that the vampire characters were unable to cast reflections (as per standard vampiric lore). This was changed for the final release, as in White Wolf's World of Darkness being reflection-less is a unique trait of the Lasombra clan (this is also used as a plot device in the game).
Information also contributed by Unicorn Lynx and Zovni
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Related Sites +
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E-Mods Game Mods (archived version)
A walkthrough of the games as well as other downloads are available in this older archived version of the site. -
E-Mods Game Mods Site
Contains tutorials on editing the game using the NOD SDK. Mods, maps, and saved game downloads. -
Lair of the Vampire
German and English Fansite -
Planet Vampire
Fansite -
Vampire Tales
Fansite -
Vampire: The Masquerade
Fansite -
Vampire: The Masquerage - Redemption
Activision Homepage
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Matthew Bailey.
Macintosh added by Corn Popper.
Additional contributors: Kic'N, Unicorn Lynx, Jony Shahar, Naglfar, Hitman23, Xoleras, Havoc Crow, Crawly, Patrick Bregger.
Game added July 11, 2000. Last modified March 31, 2024.