“But I can change him/her!” Surely that’s always ended well in real life, hasn’t it?
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See, I dislike the fact that’s the party line for every RO that falls out of the usual romance stuff. I often don’t want to fix them and often my MC are just as bad as them or just as unusual and weird, so they really don’t have enough of a room to speak about such thing.
In fact, often my MCs like their lovers for their traits and features and would not like them to change. The only dynamic I accept with “I can fix it!” angle is the one where the pair serves as both a dampener and concentrator to each other’s traits. Warrior eggs fellow warrior on, but loves him enough to drag him back to his side, two ambitious workaholics make a very stable pair when they’re working in separate firms and step on the heads of different people, two bearers of a forbidden technique find unity in their shared knowledge, yet keep each other from falling victim to it. That’s the only variation I usually accept.
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I can fix her
I’m not gonna lie, when I heard that for people who hold out with sex with M in Wayhaven are going to have a payoff that is really sweet, I was very conflicted. On one hand, I have no doubt it will indeed be very sweet and make me go “awwwww!” because that is Wayhaven’s specialty. On the other hand, that’s not really why I like M’s route. I expected more of a: (Spoilers for a very and light description of how I imagine it going I suppose?)
M: gets inches away from the MC “I… want you.”
MC: “That all depends… is it finally going to mean something?”
M: Very long pause then just nods
MC: Also long pause “Yes.”
Then immediately que a descriptor along the lines of Fire Up the Night by New Medicine and still show that insanely high sex drive they have. After all, falling in love with someone doesn’t mean you lose that sex drive, it just means it’s a more focused sex drive.
I think character development should happen with characters, but I also agree that a character is only as good as their quirks and flaws, and the only way those should go away is if they are:
A) Actually harmful to themselves or others (M’s smoking that they start easing back on because they don’t want to risk it around the MC)
or
B) Naturally worked through/progressed from the natural progression of the narrative. For example: A character who is carefree with long hair becoming a bit more stoic and cutting said hair, because the bad guy grabbed it during a fight and it nearly lost them their life.
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Note that while this is a reason, and even probably the primary reason, a romanced M also feels less need to smoke, because the reason M smokes is that it numbs their senses, and the Detective focuses their senses on them, which is, in practice, the same thing.
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That is very true, and while I consider myself to be a bit of a romantic, I also can’t help my brain logically going, “Nicotine helps numb pain. Morgan smokes to help numb the pain from… things we were told in the newest book. A good relationship does not numb physical pain. It helps make life more bearable! But not numb pain. Therefore they do it for MC.” But, we enjoy Wayhaven because it is sappy and has moments that make our hearts feel good, so I’m pretty positive your reason is the most correct one LMAO
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I mean, you’re not wrong concerning what Wayhaven is about, but “numb pain” isn’t why a romanced M doesn’t feel the need to smoke when the Detective is around. M’s constant discomfort isn’t due to the B3 revealed stuff, it’s because their hypersenses are constantly assaulted by everything. But when the Detective is around, a large part of those hypersenses… let’s call it processing power is busy with the Detective, who doesn’t trigger M’s discomfort.
It’s… kind of like covering a bad smell with a good one. The bad smell (i.e., all the stuff that grates M’s senses) is still there, they just don’t notice it as much because there’s all that sweet lavender in the air. This is sort-of explained in B2’s roof scene.
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Im increeedibly late to the party, but as the person who instigated the Julien hatred, I kinda want to build on this.
Night Road is one of those games I keep coming back to because I enjoy the story, and for a game about “picking a side” its refreshingly nonjudgemental about either one, and taking the third option doesnt feel out of left field either. It has that New Vegas feel of your character being able to be an independent operator, you can decide how you feel about the sides, being a vampire, etc, and let those guide your actions.
That said, ye olde supervillain “You’ll have to do what we say or we’ll never take out the mind-[screw] nanobots” was a very squicky plot point Ive never much cared for. What makes it worse is it seems like the Camarilla leader and Julien were supposed to be windows into the Camarilla and not!Anarch factions, and there are multiple points where it feels like the two should have been on the opposite faction.
Anyway, grousing aside, I think the Camarilla leader had a solid connection with the MC, but I think “Used to be classmates/acquainted neonates” is a bit too poor of a connection for a supposed faction lead. It also doesnt help that theres precious little in the way of other underlings of Sim’s or other vampires to build out his side.
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What annoyed me about this is that Julian is very explicitly only anarch because he’s not Camarilla. It feels like we have the Camarilla and… an independent and that they’re just called an Anarch because “its VtM, its always Camarilla and Anarchs”
Yeah especially since he claims to be your friend and even if you guys both bust out together, he just kinda ditches you to go make it big.
I think the one scenario where it really does work to play on previous relationship is if you’re Banu Haqim because in that origin, he’s your sire. And relationships with sires in VtM are usually… complicated.
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Night Road was a very good read, if you take Julien out of it… Plus, you can play as a Lasombra. That’s always nice.
Unrelated but, there was going to be bloodlines 2 wasn’t it? What happened to it? Final death?
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Hardsuit Labs got axed by Paradox, development moved to another team and Paradox has refused to name them. Scuttlebutt for that reasoning is Hardsuit Labs and some Paradox folks were on the receiving end of harassment and death threats for delaying it.
Official word is its still in development, set for release on the tail end of 2023 or perhaps into 2024. Personally, I think it’s in development hell and the sudden VtM games (The CoG ones and the Battle Royale) were supposed to help fill in the gaps while things were worked out.
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Yeah, while there’s nothing saying that every Prince has to be the biggest politicking scum in the setting, it’s kinda shocking how infrequently I felt that I had to walk on eggshells around the Prince of Tucson.
Meanwhile, my brain instantly said, “Julien is absolutely gonna try to use you for some sick objective if you follow him, and will stake you in the middle of the Grand Canyon when he’s done,” which is normally what I should be thinking for the Prince, not the Anarch(-adjacent) leader.
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Actually you’re supposed to think that about both, the only difference is the Anarch will pretend you never existed and ‘edit’ you out of the story to take all the credit while the Prince will fill out the paperwork to mark you as a traitorous failure that forced him to save the day in a way that ‘stopped’ him from being able to share any of the benefit he acquired with the rest of the Camarilla.
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And Swansong
Ugh, don’t remind me of Swansong, please. I loved The Council, and I was looking forward to checking out Swansong, and then the devs went EGS exclusive. 
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So I pretty much chose the objective right answer by siding with the Inquisition, even if they (probably) would’ve turned on me, too, is what I’m seeing.
Ah well, me getting beheaded by Julien made it all moot in the end anyhow. XD
I remember loving the council, and also last episode not being very good.
I somehow deleted the swansong out of my brain. I don’t even remember the release lol.
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Not really, they would also kill you and take all the credit all the same. In that universe, trusting ANY organization is a one way ticket to death.
IMO there’s a lot of things to consider with the way that the Night Road Prince treats the MC.
Lettow is already pretty weird for a vampire. They’re a Gangrel Prince in the Camarilla after the vast majority of the clan has left the sect, and they’re already on the very cusp of throwing everything away to chase after the Beckoning. Not surprising they do things differently than other Princes. And on top of that, you’re potentially the childe of one of their allies/acquaintances/contacts, and so offing you might cause more problems than it’s worth.
Above all else, though, the nature of the job means that the Prince has to treat the MC with a surprising amount of respect compared to other vampires. Travel is dangerous in the Modern Nights, and the Camarilla no longer trusts electronic communcations. This makes the Courier into a sort of de-facto diplomat and troubleshooter. If you’re sending somebody like that on long-ranging independent missions with zero oversight you’d be an idiot to treat them badly. The Prince wants you to think well enough of him that you will go there and do the job properly despite the fact that nobody is going to be looking over your shoulder. He doesn’t want you tempted to join plots against him, botch the job intentionally just to screw him over, or to bail entirely on the job and leave him hanging while you head off across the country.
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The thing is that the usual Vampire response to that is to blood bond their asses so they literally have no choice in the matter.