Today marks the twentieth anniversary since the release of VtM - Bloodlines, the beloved first-person roleplaying game set in the World of Darkness. Developed by the short-lived Troika Games, it was designed by some of the minds behind the first two Fallout games and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura: Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson.
The game's development was not at all easy due to milestone delays that eventually brought the project over its intended budget. Publisher Activision ultimately demanded a release candidate to ship the game no matter what, but Troika had only managed to do a few weeks of testing.
Needless to say, this greatly affected the game's polish. VtM - Bloodlines was the quintessential gem in the rough, widely praised for its story, characters, and overall writing, while also being a bug-ridden fest. Despite the overall positive reception (it was rated 80% on Metacritic by critic reviews), sales were heavily disappointing. Following the game's launch, Troika tried to secure funding for its next project which would have marked a return to the creators' post-apocalyptic roots, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The company was forced to lay off its employees in late 2024 and shut down for good on February 24, 2005.
As for VtM - Bloodlines, over time, it became even more of a cult classic, ultimately leading to the development of a sequel (which had even more problems than the original, though). Bloodlines 2 is currently scheduled for the first half of 2025, but in the meantime, you can download the freshly released RTX Remix Alpha 0.0.1 mod to celebrate the 20th anniversary.
NVIDIA's remastering tool brings the visuals into 2024 with the power of remastered assets and path tracing, although of course, there are caveats. Only a small portion of the game has been fully remastered, and there are many bugs, which is in keeping with the game's tradition.
What's in this release:
-The Haven Apartments in Santa Monica. Full texture and model remaster proof of concept!
Every prop and texture in the actual apartment rooms themselves, including the players room and adjacent 2 enterable apartments! Though at the 11th hour a few of them stopped displaying correctly...
99% of models are replaced with from scratch built models and retextured built to the proportions of the original assets.
99% of Textures inside the pawnshop apartment areas have been retextured using hi poly meshes for initial bakes for shape and normal info, then retextured using Substance Designer and Toolbag 4/5's texturing suite.
-A rough emissive and lighting pass on the rest of the game
VtM: Bloodlines uses the alpha channel as an emissive mask for many textures in the game. I did a rough pass of converting these to emissive maps and applying them to their corresponding textures. So now the things that should light up, should light up. (And some that shouldn't!) These emissive maps will get replaced when I remaster the individual textures fully.
Below, you'll find a few comparison screens.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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