Vampire: Bloodlines Preview

UGO has put together a preview of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Troika's upcoming gothic RPG that runs on Valve's Half Life 2 engine. An excerpt to follow:
Along the way, the character will gain mission experience, which can be applied to skills and other vampiric powers, called Disciplines in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. Disciplines are both common and specific to certain clans, so everybody can Feed, but only the Tremere clan can use Disciplines based in the blood magic of Thaumaturgy. Players gain mission experience by accomplishing tasks, not all of which are necessarily tied to combat. So when you need to get inside a house to retrieve a lost artifact and you encounter a guard, you can fight him, sneak past him, wait for him or, if you're one of the lunatic Malkavians, infect his mind with your insanity and see where that takes you.