To Tim Cain and Remnants of Troika

[Gyges]

First of all i would, as i am sure all others here would concede to doing, thank the Team at Obsidian for going on this fruitful journey of resurrecting the crpg genre, spearheading it along with inXile, and more than likely even more projects inspired by your success.

But in this thread i would like to point out a particular individual and by extent the remnants of a once great developer.

Tim Cain and Troika.

 

I am a Norwegian, and unsurprisingly we play games. A lot of them. There arent a lot of us though, i think we just hit 5 million a year or so ago. Because of this, our gaming communities are small and densely populated, spread over a few sites. The biggest of them, having won the national gaming-medium award every time since it was thought up, namely Gamer.no, put up through January 2010 polls that would determine the 100 greatest games released over the last decade.

"Why are you telling me about this" some of you might ask. Well, Vampire: Bloodlines has been one of my definite favorites. I rarely replay games but found myself just recently having gone through it for the sixth time. The first two times i got hit by the Dr. Johansen boat bug (i appreciate the attention and the irony of this) so that's how far i got until the third run-through, spurred by finding a fix through google.

Bugs aside, the game was mind-blowingly good. For a long time, i thought i shared this knowledge with only a few enlightened individuals. So Bloodlines, landing on 8'th place, beating not only AAA titles like TES: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Battlefield 2 but also Deus Ex, was a pleasant surprise.

Hearing this and knowing that some developers were essentially working for free the last few weeks i felt i wanted to share our appreciation with the team behind this classic. But with Troika gone, i found no way of contacting any former employees. But Project Eternity has along with its many other fruits, given me an opportunity to do this. So to Tim Cain and Troika, from the land of the midnight sun and brown cheese, Thank you.

 

 

http://www.gamer.no/...ste-spill-10-1/

Edited October 11, 2012 by Gyges

[Hagen]

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines will always have a place in my "all time awesome" list.

 

It managed what only very, very few games ever did during my gaming "career" - making me stay awake and play until 4 AM during the week, wandering to work like a frigging zombie, not regretting a thing about it and doing it again the next night.

 

Here's one to Troika!

[DRevan]

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

[Merlkir]

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

 

Probably not being a top-down-view turn based RPG, unlike the other two, they felt it wasn't a good candidate.

[Merin]

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

 

Probably not being a top-down-view turn based RPG, unlike the other two, they felt it wasn't a good candidate.

 

Yeah, best not to confuse matters like Shaker by listing prominently games like Commander Keen and Doom while trying to sell yourself as an old school RPG maker.

[DRevan]

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

 

Probably not being a top-down-view turn based RPG, unlike the other two, they felt it wasn't a good candidate.

 

I would believe that if KOTOR 2 and New Vegas weren't listed there as well.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

 

A lot of the main talent who made VtM:B aren't at Obsidian. For example, Brian Mitsoda, who did work for Obsidian for a time (but his work was cancelled or cut), and is a fan of the Troika founders and Black Isle/Obsidian. Tim Cain worked on VtM:B but I don't think he was a lead, but his games like Arcanum and Fallout inspired it a lot, I think it's not a stretch to say that the people who didn't work on Fallout that developed VtM:B all loved Fallout to bits.

[Gyges]

The writing and voice acting was out of this world. Bloodlines is the game i recommend to friends. I remember with great fondness finding passwords and hacking dos-run computers and then blackmailing a doctor into giving me money because he was cheating on his wife.

I also think ive seen on some big site that the beach hotel part was ranked in the top ten scariest game chapters.

 

 

Speaking of that, VTMB isn't listed in the pitch video(while Arcanum and TOEE do). Why is that?

 

A lot of the main talent who made VtM:B aren't at Obsidian. For example, Brian Mitsoda, who did work for Obsidian for a time (but his work was cancelled or cut), and is a fan of the Troika founders and Black Isle/Obsidian. Tim Cain worked on VtM:B but I don't think he was a lead, but his games like Arcanum and Fallout inspired it a lot, I think it's not a stretch to say that the people who didn't work on Fallout that developed VtM:B all loved Fallout to bits.

 

That might well be the case, regardless i'm just reaching out to the whole team through Cain, assuming he still associates with them. This is really just an unofficial reach-out from the Norwegian community.

Edited October 11, 2012 by Gyges

[Tale]

Brian Mitsoda, who did work for Obsidian for a time (but his work was cancelled or cut)

He created the Alpha Protocol stance system, if I recall correctly.

[Lysen]

Tim Cain was listed in Bloodlines' credits, but he later said that he wasn't really involved with the project.

[Jaesun]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was Leonard Boyarsky project IIRC. Temple of Elemental Evil was Tim's.

[AwesomeOcelot]

You can definitely tell Leonard Boyarsky was directing the art with Fallout and VtM:Bloodlines. I think Tim Cain mentioned he did some programming on VtM:Bloodlines in that long youtube interview, but it's understandable that he doesn't want to claim it as "his game". I haven't got around to Alpha Protocol yet, I didn't know Brian Mitsoda created the stance system, I only saw him say that he disowned the game after they cut his writing work on it.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Tim Cain was listed in Bloodlines' credits, but he later said that he wasn't really involved with the project.

 

If I recall correctly he just helped with some programming work, but didn't feel there was much of himself in the project. It's also the reason why he usually doesn't answer to Bloodlines questions in interviews.

 

Bloodlines *is* an amazing game, though, yeah, definitely agreeing with the OP there.

[Metzger]

So VtMB beats Deus Ex, but not Mass Effect? What a shame.

[NWN_babaYaga]

Troika... what can i say. I always wondered what these guys could have unleashed....

[svartelric]

I miss Troika, and VtM:B is probably my favourite game, along with Arcanum and Fallout; I don't know why, but Baldur's Gate always was a second choice for me compared to those other games...

[Freddo]

Bloodlines is probably my favorite game of the past decade

 

I really wish there were more first person RPGs with the same depth as Bloodlines, maybe something for Obsidian to develop after Project Eternity?

Edited October 17, 2012 by Freddo

[syn2083]

Bloodlines is in my top 3 favorite games of all time. I recently (past 3 months) had a play through actually.

 

The writing was amazing, the mechanics were solid (for period games). The art direction and animation was phenominal and pitch percect.

 

The story was.. a masterpiece. I truly loved every second of that game.

 

Some of my favorite moments in any game were playing as my Malkavian. The dialogue was inspired, comical, and so oddly touching.

[Coaxmetal]

Vampire. I think I played that game since its release over 10 times full run throughs over the years. Even though its actually pretty linear compared to other rpgs, something about it just made me want to try it with all the races. I love playing as the Tremere the most I think. And the community mod that added the deleted racial trait bonus and new dialog was also worth it. I wait for a sequel but now I am hyped up for Project E.

[Roxane]

Brian Mitsoda is now working on Dead State with his own studio (Double Bear production). You can check it as it had been successfully funded on Kickstarter.

 

Also, I highly recommend that you download Wesp5 patches at http://www.patches-scrolls.de as they bring the game to it's full glory without the bugs.