VtM-Bloodlines - Retrospective @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Jim Rossignol offers up a retrospective of the long defunct Troika's classic cRPG, Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines entitled Forever Young;The Tragedy of Bloodlines, which basically asks why games like this are so hard to come by:

There’s a bittersweet flavour to playing Bloodlines. It’s not because of the vampiric moodiness and the twilight tales that it tells, nor the real-world tragedy of its costly development finally undoing brave development studio, Troika. No, the sense of sorrow comes from the realisation that there’s nothing like this on the horizon. The idea is begged: why should there be so few games like this? Oh right, because it’s so very hard to do.

Bloodlines - a clever, multi-faceted RPG - is a rare animal. Even under the blazing light of Fallout 3’s recent release, there’s a sense that we’ve not yet reached our promised land of games that do more, games that do worlds, games that do people. Bloodlines points the way to those games. Indeed, there’s a sense that these games might just be becoming a myth. Like the plight of an animal species on the verge of extinction, the lack of games comparable to Bloodlines is one of the great tragedies of our time.