The rest of the game sees the fallen crusader's relentless pursuit of Aneska and a way to regain his own humanity, becoming a pawn in a great war between clans along the way in a story that twists and turns like an animal in its death throes. A rival clan decides he would make a good addition to their ranks and embraces him (the technical term for turning someone into a vampire). At the same time he pisses off a clan of vampires by slaying one of their number. Christof falls in love with her and brings the wrath ot the church upon himself. The main character is Christof, a 12th century crusader who is injured in the field of battle by infidels and nursed back to health by the beautiful nun Aneska.
You continue because you want to know where the story is going and because you want to see what the next environment and next monster will look like. But at the same time it is much more than all that because you care about what's happening. In many ways it belongs to the Diablo school of role-playing, in that it has a linear, mission-based structure, which involves a lot of hacking and slashing. It isn't an entirely plot-and character-driven game, like Planescape: Torment, although both are absolutely central to the experience. It isn't a claustrophobic game of stealth and fear from a first-person perspective, like System Shock 2, although it can be wonderfully atmospheric at times and you can go into first-person mode to get a better look at the amazing graphics. It isn't a free-roaming exploration game, like Baldur's Gate, although you can wander around without getting into battles if you want to. We should start by saying what Vampire isn't. When I tell you that Vampire is a RPG you immediately place it next to other RPGs and start drawing conclusions. Which is another way of saying that reviewing a game nearly always boils down to telling you what other games it's like and whether it's any better or worse than them. And if the developers are the foot-soldiers of this vampiric empire, then the journalists are the ghouls: parasites who live off the dregs of their more creative prey and who explain away the pallor of their skin with tales of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. But the clans are only pawns in a larger war, which dark publishing princes conduct from their impenetrable castles before descending on the customers who pace up and down games shops like cattle. Clans of bloodsucking developers congregate in dark catacombs, leeching ideas from other clans and releasing their creations upon innocent peasants who carry on with their lives, safe in the knowledge that they've seen something similar before, that it all fits in their tiny frame of reference. Beneath a bright exterior of harmless entertainment, large boxes with overexcited quotes plastered on them and pleasant magazines reaching out with a friendly hand from sunny newsagents, the computer games industry is populated by vampires.
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