... downtown with a horror ambiance

I'm a big fan of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. I was having a look at the forum on Planet Vampire when one of the posts caught my eye. In particular, it was the following sentence that caught my eye.

While playing the demo, all I could think was that this is what Troika was striving for; a completely immersive downtown with a slight horror ambiance, but with plenty of living people to interact with (and indeed feed upon) and a modern atmosphere that can't be beat.

I'm always impressed by how sometimes it only takes a few simple words seem to capture a certain concept that I've been thinking about but which I have been unable to explain.

The following is the full post.

The Look of Vampire Bloodlines and the Left 4 Dead connection

The Left 4 Dead demo came out today, and as soon as I got back from work I got to playing it. The initial level within the No Marcy campaign, "The Apartments," has an outdoor area in a modern downtown environment. The Source engine has come a long way, but I couldn't help but to think, haven't I seen this before?

The parallels between the Santa Monica/Downtown LA hubs and the Left 4 Dead level are astonishing, and it's pretty easy to imagine the L4D levels being cleaned of their wrecked cars and zombies to be traded for Knox the ghoul and the occasional thinblood. While playing the demo, all I could think was that this is what Troika was striving for; a completely immersive downtown with a slight horror ambiance, but with plenty of living people to interact with (and indeed feed upon) and a modern atmosphere that can't be beat.

While the gameplay of the two games is vastly different, the fact that I instantly thought of Bloodlines while playing Left 4 Dead is remarkable, and Troika was way ahead of the curve (as most of us Bloodlines fans already know!) The thought of playing through Bloodlines again with Left 4 Dead's graphical prowess makes me nothing short of giddy — it's technically the same engine; perhaps we'll see this some day.

So if you can, play the Left 4 Dead demo and see if anybody else came to the same conclusion. In fact, time will tell when the full version goes live if, thematically at least, Valve is touching on more ground that Troika staked out four years ago.

JnkSpace
11/6/08 6:18pm