See some lost alpha footage of the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Wesp, who you may know as the heroic modder behind the unofficial patch for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, has been on an uploading spree, providing us with a bunch of lost Bloodlines footage via his YouTube channel. 

The most interesting of the bunch is a low-quality recording of a live playthrough with one of the developers, presumably from a convention. Familiar scenes play out differently, with Cal the bartender and Jeanette Voerman being met at the strip club Vesuvius rather than at The Asylum. A later scene shows the arrival of the fleshcrafted sewer monster, only she has actual facial animation missing from the released game. It's a slightly less impactful scene when she screams at you without even opening her mouth.

Subsequent videos include more alpha footage the depict disciplines looking slightly different from those in the release version, complete with hand gestures for casting them. Wesp's also uploaded a bunch of old trailers for Bloodlines, including one from E3 2003 and one a year later from E3 2004.

It's a real trip to see how Bloodlines was being shown back during its hype cycle, with plenty of emphasis on the use of Valve's Source engine, "the same game engine technology used to power Half-Life 2" as one trailer breathlessly puts it, as well as plenty of emphasis on the jiggle physics and "seductive" characters. Meanwhile, Bloodlines 2 is continuing to spin up its own hype cycle, with an expected release in fall of 2024.