The Let's Play Archive

Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption

by gatz

Part 1: The Convent

Prologue Video *IMPORTANT*
Cutscene #1
The camera fades in from black and pans down to Christof, asleep in bed. A woman's scream awakes him, and he gets out of bed, holding his wound. Christof takes his sword off of a rack next to his bed.



Go into the room up ahead...



And we find two... fat goblin things in the room. One is just standing around and the other is waving its arms in front of the nun with the torch. Huh.



Wikipedia says that the Szlachta were a legally privileged noble class originating in Poland. Oh White Wolf, you and your societal critiques.



With a few swings of the sword, the Szlachta go down.



They didn't even hit Christof. Maybe this is a shot at how they're not used to combat from living in the lap of luxury? I don't know. Here's what the manual has to say about the Szlachta.

Click here to watch the whole conversation!






Christof falls down with an animation that looks strikingly similar to the “Play Dead” expression from Fable 2. The screen fades to black, and that's the end of Vampire: the Masquerade – Redemption.




Oh. Wishful thinking, sorry.



Wow, what a man, huh?




Here we have the first dialog option of the game. Since there's no humanity to be gained or lost by this choice, we'll go with the more interesting one. Christof doesn't want to suffer through anymore of the game's terrible combat – I mean risk injuring himself further, so he decides to stay in bed.




What are those footsteps I hear in the background while Christof is speaking?



Oh. It's the pope.



Anezka exits the scene...




What a dick. I can't wait to see what snappy one-liner Christof has for this authority figure he's no doubt going to rebel against.



Or not. Good boy, Christof. Way to obey your master. Maybe he'll even give you a treat when you get back from the mines.

The screen fades out to black, then in again.



Ok, so this is the interface. The red bar is health, purple is mana, and the white bar is faith. Mana regenerates over time, but it doesn't matter because we don't have any spells to use, as you can see from the 6 empty circle in the lower right. The big circle shows which spell you currently have selected. The 5 squares above the circles function as your quickbar. You can activate each of the items you put in the squares by pressing F1 through F5, or by right-clicking on them. As you can see, the quest log has been updated, so let's see what it says.



Well, there's no getting out of it now. Above the quest log button is the Character tab.



Strength affects how much damage the character does with melee weapons, and there are minimum strength requirements for some armor and weapons. Dexterity affects both the chance to hit and the chance for a critical hit for melee and ranged weapons. Some ranged weapons have a minimum dexterity requirement. The manual says the stat also influences how fast a character moves, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. Stamina affects the character's ability to soak damage. Perception, Intelligence, and Wits affect what spells you can learn. Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance also affect what spells you can learn, in addition to increasing the effectiveness of certain spells. Having a high manipulation rating can lower the price of items at shops. Acolyte is Christof's rank, and as he gains ranks, his maximum health and mana will increase, That wheel in the lower right shows the selected character's resistance to certain types of damage.

Let's check out the button to the right of the character screen.



This is the inventory, and as you can see, VTMR has the deus ex grid style of inventory management.



Diciplines are catagories of spells. We'll get more into that when we actually have some spells.




That dot on the far right is the mine we have to go to. It turns out that there's no icon for where you are on the map, which is pretty inconvenient, so I assume this is a literal map that Christof carries around with him. Too bad it looks more like a drawing of the city than a guide to help you get around.



You can store your items in the vault, which is actually very useful for lore items you pick up, like this letter in the first slot in the quickbar.

Click here to listen to Sir Cuthbert read the letter!


There's a short story in the manual that focuses Christof's backstory, and introduces Sir Cuthbert at the end. The battle that Sir Cuthbert is writing about in the letter is explained in a cutscene that I entitled "Prologue Video *IMPORTANT*" at the beginning of this post. We'll store that in the chest...




...and go out into the main room of the convent.



Sorry about those screenshots, but you get the idea. Let's talk to Anezka.

Conversation video


Wonderful. Let's leave.



Cutscene Video



Yeah, Christof has got a lot on his mind. He'll certainly have a lot more soon. That's it for update #1. Be sure to voice your opinion regarding how Christof should act.