Young adult coming-of-age novel. That was my first impression after launching the game. Not perfect, considering I didn’t enjoy this kind of prose even when I was in the target age group. And that was a long time ago.
The female protagonist got on my nerves the moment she had her first thoughts, but it wasn’t entirely her fault. Her mix of naivete and bravado could have been cute, if it was well written. But here’s where we get to the main problem. I read the dialogues and monologues and internally screamed. Nobody speaks like that. Stiff, on the nose, and chock-full of exposition that could very well have been hidden in the built-in dictionary.
The whole story struggles with unearned plot twists and character inconsistencies that make absolutely no sense, but are there to push it to the resolution envisioned by the author. The Camarilla bickers like a kindergarten class, with all the political finesse gone to hell. And the Sheriff… This kind of immersion-breaking change is criminal.
The male protagonist’s storyline is a bit better, probably because I enjoy his character much more. The Voices are an interesting addition, though they could influence the game more. But who am I kidding? In the Reckoning, player choices are so obviously inconsequential that it hurts. And if you had any doubts in the first part of the game, you are made certain in the second, when, from the new perspective, everything still goes according to the author’s plan, even if it has no reason or rhyme. To rub the writer’s lack of ideas in your face, we’re getting out-of-context scenes, supposedly showing us different parts of the story, but for me they serve only to break the illusion of playing my character.
But underneath all those vices, there’s a good story choked by bad writing. Now, when I can process it at my leisure, not forced to look at the unnecessarily modernized character portraits, I remember the lines as they should be, not as they were. And what emerges is an interesting tale of the vampires struggling to understand their unlife and politics going awry in the worst possible way.