Vampire: Bloodlines Designer Diary #3

Leonard Boyarsky, joint CEO of Troika Games, has written another designer diary entry on GameSpot in which he talks about the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. A snippet to follow:
The use of physically modeled objects in the world also means that our NPCs can use parts of the environment, such as the aforementioned monster that hurls corpses at you. Believe me, there's nothing like facing off against some hideous monstrosity that all of a sudden flings the bloody corpse of a security guard at you. In this instance, we were also able to have the creature interact with the environment further by having it knock over barrels, I beams, and other objects to enable players to get into places where they are safely out of reach. This monster interaction also brought to the forefront the power of the engine to portray detailed, realistic characters. The amount of detail we are able to bring to our characters and the environments because of the power of Valve's Source engine is truly remarkable. When players are walking down the streets of the major cities in our game, it actually feels like a city block with signs and telephone poles, rather than just another level in a computer game.