Game News Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 RPG & Narrative Stream

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Two middle aged dude in a room talking for 17 minutes to show 1 minute of some wannabe twink in a dialogue scene. Ugh. It also appears they toned down the likeness of not-Christina Hendrix. I wonder if they got a nasty letter from a lawyer.

 

[King Crispy]

Your name is Phyre

As long as I can have a cohort named Iyce then I'll be happy.

 

[KVVRR]

Did they use AI for the PC's character? I get that it's a vampire that has just come out of a centuries-old slumber but even so, it sounds robotic, not estoic, creepy or even tired.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Wait a minute. Did they choose an androgynous character so they can just have the player select male/female and just swap out the voice actors? Are they really that cheap?

No, they clearly mark it as a female model. The male model isn't ready yet, it's just there in concept art.

The fact that they're out of alpha and don't even have a male model makes me question whether or not that was the intent regardless.

 

[Ismaul]

Your name is Phyre

As long as I can have a cohort named Iyce then I'll be happy.

Brymstöne would at least be more appropriate

 

[Ismaul]

Seriously this looks like ass. Therefore the masses will lap it up.

Clearly the theory about Mitsoda and co. being "too woke" is out of the window lol.

I also don't see any skills in dialogues.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Looks like Shyte.

 

[Star Citizen]

Saw like 5 seconds of that shit and closed it immediately when I heard the inner monologue dialogue or whatever - where do they even find these writers lmao

 

[deuxhero]

Didn't expect this as the answer to "How can the player be several hundreds of years old in the US and have a flexible backstory". Frankly I'm surprised they said "female"

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Which incarnation attempt at VTMB is this? I rather got lost when the original dudes ghosted/were ghosted from the project. Fucking lost is just the beginning when I look at this.

I’m guessing nearly no tight bouncy titties in this game.

 

[Ismaul]

I’m guessing nearly no tight bouncy titties in this game.

Closest you'll get is manboobs, probably. Phymales look like this:

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I'm a bit confused. Is this the sequel to Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines? I thought they cancelled the sequel after years of development hell. Is this going to be a first-person rpg like the old game or something else? The gameplay that I'm aware of was from the cancelled project, although I could be wrong about that. Can someone give a short time line of what's going on and what the current game is going to be?

 

[Shin]

I'm a bit confused. Is this the sequel to Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines? I thought they cancelled the sequel after years of development hell. Is this going to be a first-person rpg like the old game or something else? The gameplay that I'm aware of was from the cancelled project, although I could be wrong about that. Can someone give a short time line of what's going on and what the current game is going to be?

• March 2019: The game is announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) with a release window set for Q1 2020.
• October 2019: The release window is pushed back to later in 2020, supposedly to avoid repeating the same rushed launch issues the original game had.
• August 2020: The game is delayed again, this time to 2021. Around this period, Brian Mitsoda (lead writer) and Ka'ai Cluney (creative director) depart from the project.
• February 2021: Paradox Interactive, the game's publisher, announces that developer Hardsuit Labs will no longer be leading the project. A new developer is not immediately named.
• Late 2021: Paradox decides not to set a new release date for the game until they feel more confident about its quality and development status.
• September 2023: Paradox brings in developer the Chinese Room to give their own incompetent spin on VtMB2 and plans to release it in the fall of 2024. It'll still be first person and retain some of the assets that Hardsuit Labs brewed up, although the Chinese Room is using a "a new code base with different gameplay mechanics and RPG systems."

trailer from the Chinese's iteration from about a month ago:

 

[thesheeep]

I can get over the edgy teenage character name.
I can get over the dialogue being as bad as you'd expect nowadays from "modern" writers.
(Both assuming the gameplay would be good, which is obviously quite unlikely)

What really gets me is those ridiculous head tilts and facial animations. What the hell is going on there?

 

[Maxie]

oh how i loathe discussions about the narrative especially in the case of a sequel to a game which had a very simple whodunit narrative backed by snappy gonzo journalism-style dialogue

 

[Kamaz]

Every time there is news about Bloodlines 2, someone reinstalls the real Bloodlines.

Good job, Chinese Room, keep 'em coming, I say!

 

[whydoibother]

PC: "Do you know anything about it?"
NPC: "No no no I just needed to keep my head down a few nights!"
PC [Intelligence 99, Wisdom 99, Perception 3000]: "HE'S HIDING SOMETHING!"

To be fair it's the retarded voice in your head telling you something you already know.

If you are supposed to be malkavian or smthn, make it like Disco Elysium. Give the character a whole crowd of voices who disagree with each other.

oh how i loathe discussions about the narrative especially in the case of a sequel to a game which had a very simple whodunit narrative backed by snappy gonzo journalism-style dialogue

But the original game had novelty, was visually impressive (facial animations especially), and had decent action combat and character development.
What we've seen so far is just a bit of dialogue, so we are criticizing just the bit of dialogue. Its what we know. And given Chinese Room's previous output, we can't expect them to give us good action combat to compensate.

 

[whydoibother]

• March 2019: The game is announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) with a release window set for Q1 2020.
• October 2019: The release window is pushed back to later in 2020, supposedly to avoid repeating the same rushed launch issues the original game had.
• August 2020: The game is delayed again, this time to 2021. Around this period, Brian Mitsoda (lead writer) and Ka'ai Cluney (creative director) depart from the project.
• February 2021: Paradox Interactive, the game's publisher, announces that developer Hardsuit Labs will no longer be leading the project. A new developer is not immediately named.
• Late 2021: Paradox decides not to set a new release date for the game until they feel more confident about its quality and development status.
• September 2023: Paradox brings in developer the Chinese Room to give their own incompetent spin on VtMB2 and plans to release it in the fall of 2024. It'll still be first person and retain some of the assets that Hardsuit Labs brewed up, although the Chinese Room is using a "a new code base with different gameplay mechanics and RPG systems."

You forgot to mention Paradox posted the game on Steam and allowed preorders BEFORE cancelling and rebooting it.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I'm a bit confused. Is this the sequel to Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines? I thought they cancelled the sequel after years of development hell. Is this going to be a first-person rpg like the old game or something else? The gameplay that I'm aware of was from the cancelled project, although I could be wrong about that. Can someone give a short time line of what's going on and what the current game is going to be?

• March 2019: The game is announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) with a release window set for Q1 2020.
• October 2019: The release window is pushed back to later in 2020, supposedly to avoid repeating the same rushed launch issues the original game had.
• August 2020: The game is delayed again, this time to 2021. Around this period, Brian Mitsoda (lead writer) and Ka'ai Cluney (creative director) depart from the project.
• February 2021: Paradox Interactive, the game's publisher, announces that developer Hardsuit Labs will no longer be leading the project. A new developer is not immediately named.
• Late 2021: Paradox decides not to set a new release date for the game until they feel more confident about its quality and development status.
• September 2023: Paradox brings in developer the Chinese Room to give their own incompetent spin on VtMB2 and plans to release it in the fall of 2024. It'll still be first person and retain some of the assets that Hardsuit Labs brewed up, although the Chinese Room is using a "a new code base with different gameplay mechanics and RPG systems."

trailer from the Chinese's iteration from about a month ago:

Thank you. Sounds like its going to be a shit show.

 

[thesheeep]

Thinking about it, this is such a bizarre PR move, too.

A 17 minute fireside chat rambling video (NOBODY likes these, but somehow producers love 'em).
No accompanying blog post to just give us the revealed facts.
No sectioned video, either, so you could just skip to the part you care about.
I'm honestly interested in the RPG mechanics, but I'm not gonna listen to 17 minutes of rambling.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I wasn't expecting it would be this bad, but I'm surprised. I predict that Chinese Room has created a largely linear story where you don't have meaningful choices. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense for the PC to have a fixed name, appearance, and background. I mean, BL1 didn't keep track of many of your choices either, but I expect that BL2 will be even more linear than that and piss fans of the original off. We waited two decades for this? It's gonna fail spectacularly and kill this franchise.

Oh well. On the bright side, maybe the definitive death of this IP will finally force indie devs who like the idea of playing vampires to get off their asses and make their own vampire games with blackjack and hookers. But I don't hold my breath.

Jesus H. Christ. At least I can now rest easy knowing that none of my spit balling was ever this bad.

 

[Roguey]

No accompanying blog post to just give us the revealed facts.

They did actually https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...de-bloodlines-2/news/rpg-and-narrative-stream

 

[whydoibother]

I predict that Chinese Room has created a largely linear story where you don't have meaningful choices.

I predict they created 2 largely linear stories, that start the same and end as opposite resolution of some big problem, and you can get on one or the other track somewhere in the middle of the game.

Otherwise, it doesn't make sense for the PC to have a fixed name, appearance, and background.

Witcher 2 had two very different Act IIs, on a character with a fixed name, appearance and background.
That said, the protagonist is customizable, they said so themselves. The name is set, so they can have it voice acted, I expect most games will start doing this. Or give the player some title, like Vault Dweller, that NPCs can speak regardless of what came out of the character creator.

 

[Die Healing]

The original incarnation of this sequel looked kind of rough but at least it was better than this

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Oh well. On the bright side, maybe the definitive death of this IP will finally force indie devs who like the idea of playing vampires to get off their asses and make their own vampire games with blackjack and hookers. But I don't hold my breath.

Well…… there was a Kickstarter called Vampire Syndicate - Gangs of Moonfall but alas there was not enough KS funding so it is on hold.