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Animations, especially during dialogue are laughable, combat is barely better than the first, and who had the brilliant idea of having a voice inside your head repeating everything happening back to you? This is just for the zoom-zoomers not to have a stroke while trying to solve puzzles, isn't it? And worst of all, likely impossible to turn off.
I just knew these fart huffing chinese room talentless idiots were going to ruin the game, after all fans wouldn't tolerate just a zero effort walking simulator and they can't do any better than that.
Just sad.
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
Checked the video a bit, stopped after what I heard and saw at 14.45.
Looks as generic and uninspired as I thought, with it's delightful coat of jank and stank.
An easy and obvious one, but a let-down nonetheless.
Deus Ex then this. Feels like there is a Masquerade of corporate tools out there bound to destroy everything (un)holy.
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." ~Berthold Auerbach
Thankfully the reception is universally negative from what i can see. Every single comment in that video urges them to cancel the game, remake it or are saying the devs either havent played the Troika game or the franchise in general. I hope that paradox, the worst publisher in gaming imo throws this shit out and just sells the rights. Paradox owns the rights since 2015 and this is what they did with them.
he World of Darkness is the larger umbrella for the Vampire The Masquerade IP and the related games. It handles the supernatural in a mature and grounded way, basing it on the premise that vampires, werewolves, and ghosts are actually real, but are hidden from our contemporary human society. Video games offer a unique perspective on this world that other mediums don't, being able to walk around it and explore it. Our goal with this pillar was to create a version of Seattle that is authentic to The World of Darkness IP and makes you believe that this hidden side of Seattle, where vampires are in control, could be real and that in contrast the human world feels more alien to you and potentially unreal. To that end, we didn't set about making an exact replica of Seattle, as our priority wasn't to represent the human world, but the vampire one. The Seattle you experience in Bloodlines 2 is a kind of "best-of" Seattle where we've taken key landmarks and brought them in closer together. For example, Pioneer Square is a key location, and it speaks to us of the old city and its founders (some of which were vampires that you will meet), but we also have volunteer park, which in reality is on the outskirts of the city but we loved the idea of doing a creepy mission there that reveals something sinister beneath this iconic conservatory.
We want you to feel like you are seeing Seattle through the eyes of a vampire, so we have also made buildings taller, lights brighter, and alleyways darker to give an overall heightened feeling to what you are seeing as if you are looking through the eyes of an apex predator. For a better explanation of this, I suggest you read Ben Matthews dev diary on our neo-noir art style.
In Bloodlines 1 you were a new vampire in a city with a large Anarch presence where the Camarilla don’t have complete dominance. For Bloodlines 2 we have flipped this on its head. You play Phyre, an Elder vampire (~400 years old) in a city where Camarilla has been dominant for decades, and any hint of Anarch sympathy is squashed. Phyre's number 1 loyalty is to herself, but she is wise enough to respect the power of the Camarilla and, more importantly, the Masquerade. Within the story Phyre earns a seat at the top-table of the Camarilla as the court's Sheriff, giving her the court's protection but also a powerful authority within Seattle's vampire society. This is an RPG, of course, so you can roleplay Sheriff in multiple ways, maybe you are a loyal Sheriff of the Camarilla, or an Anarch sympathiser working from within to undermine the court, or maybe you're a self-centred Elder vampire playing the different factions off each other to your advantage.
Phyre's motivation in the story is driven (at least initially) by regaining her power - she has awoken after 100 years in torpor (vampire hibernation) 6000 miles from home with markings all over her body which are limiting her powers. This sets up the narrative context of the ability tree (which we will show in due course) which instead of being about adding new powers to Phyre, like levelling up in the pen-and-paper RPG, you are unlocking her existing powers. Over her 300 years roaming the old world, Phyre had gained many powers, not only those from the disciplines of her clan.
An important part of the Masquerade is that vampires are hidden in plain sight in our society. There are several vampire hangouts in the city which, to a passerby appear innocent, but to those in the know, are important places in vampire society. For example, the little old lady who runs the all-night coffee shop may not be as sweet and defenceless as she seems at first glance. A key location the player often returns to, is Weaver Tower, a Seattle corporate HQ that is actually the front for the Camarilla, inspired by the downtown skyscrapers in Seattle and giving the city's Prince a skyline view over their domain.
Lastly, there can be no World of Darkness without light - the world of humans. The city is populated with "civilians," unaware that you are a vampire walking among them. Whilst this may seem great to a vampire - free-ranged food on every street - it also comes with risk, as using your vampiric powers or feeding in front of witnesses can trigger a Masquerade breach, and while you are Sheriff, even you are not above the law and could have the court's Scourge sent to deal with you if you are reckless on the streets of the emerald city. So make sure to hunt like a vampire: stalking from rooftops, hunting in alleyways, isolating your prey and if you are observed, deal with witnesses swiftly.
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
Unless they come up with something vastly improved very very soon, I don't believe they will actually launch the game this year. That footage, even if old, looks even older.
Had high hopes for this one. Now there is nothing.
What a bunch of pointless PR vomit. And that background - are they in a game studio or a fucking brothel?
There's no way this will be anything but disappointing - it's been butchered and resurrected too much at this point. The whole IP deserves so much more than what it's been given over the years.
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
We'll see sometime in 2025 (or later if/when it gets delayed again in an attempt to fix all the bullcrap).
Meanwhile:
Quote:
'Bloodlines 3 [Will be] Done by Someone Else:'
Paradox Responds to Future of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines After Sequel Debacle [Update]
The Chinese Room will try and get Bloodlines 2 to the finish line in the first half of 2025.
Nothing says confidence in your work like "getting it to the finish line" (as a broken, beaten, pustule of a mess!) May not have come from the developer itself, but that probably perfectly encompasses the state that it's in.
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
Bloodlines 2 is more "spiritual successor" than sequel to "a competently good game by 2004 standards", say Paradox
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 won't be an "open sim" like the 2004 original game, according to Paradox Interactive. Now in development at The Chinese Room, it'll be an action-RPG with a relatively linear story set in the World Of Darkness universe. This obviously plays to The Chinese Room's strengths - they're better known for melancholy or horrifying strolls through broken spaces than the Dishonorable massaging of intricate systems. But it also reflects Paradox's view that the original Bloodlines has been "mythologised" a bit: people love the memory of it more than the reality, and there are aspects of the 2004 game, according to Paradox's deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja, that simply "wouldn't fly today".
All this comes from my interview with Lilja at Paradox's Media Day - unofficial working title, Please Stop Poking Us - last week. To recap my previous article about Life By You, Paradox have spent much of the past two years pushing back release dates, cancelling things, publishing other things in a less-than-satisfactory state, and closing or parting ways with developers - a regular conga line of mishaps that have contributed to a 90% drop in operating profit for the second quarter of 2024.
Bloodlines 2 in particular has long travelled under a cloud of bats. It was announced in 2019 with Hardsuit Labs at the wheel and the original game's lead writer Brian Mitsoda as narrative director. "This is the sequel you have been waiting for," he said at the time. "It is going to be Bloodlines, as you remember it. But better." Alice B (RPS in peace) thought the preview build she saw in 2019 looked ace, offering a familiar morass of factions and approaches but slathered in high-end visuals, with spruced-up combat. I liked what I saw of it myself at the company's PDXCON expo. But then came delays, Mitsoda's abrupt firing, a change of studio in 2021 that led to layoffs, and more delays. So how confident are Paradox that Bloodlines 2 will stick the landing, at this point? The answer, more or less, is "quietly", but it won't be the "same but better" sequel elder Nosferatus are hankering for.
"With Hardsuit Labs, we agreed on a vision of what they were gonna make, [and] they had a problem delivering on that," Lilja told me. "We were in agreement, we moved [development] to The Chinese Room and we said, this is the vision and this is what Hardsuit Labs have made. And of course, we gave them quite a lot of freedom to interpret the vision, based on what Hardsuit Labs had made, or change or remove whatever they didn't like.
"We have a high trust in The Chinese Room, given what they've done," he went on. "We've announced again a delay, into the first half of next year. I would stand by that. I'm pretty confident that that's going to work. I've seen the game now. The Chinese Room is really invested in it. They're taking a lot of initiatives. They like some things that Hardsuit did, they're changing some other things, and they're making their own game, that's still the vision that we had.
"So it's going to be an action-RPG in the World Of Darkness. If you've seen Still Wakes The Deep, they know how to do story-driven action games with good voice-acting, all of that, which is basically what we're looking for in this game. I hope and feel that we will be able to deliver a game that puts you in the World Of Darkness."
Those gifted with preternatural vision may detect a careful qualification there. Not "a sequel to Bloodlines" but "a game that puts you in the World Of Darkness". And indeed, Lilja downplayed associations with the original game when I asked whether Bloodlines 2 would still be some kind of immersive sim (piggybacking on a comment made to TheGamer in 2023). He also suggested that Bloodlines hasn't aged all that well, and that taking inspiration from it too zealously could be counter-productive.
"It's about setting the right expectations," he said. "The first Bloodlines game - it is what it is, and people who've played it recently will see that it's a game from 2004, that is now patched so that it works. But there's also a lot of ideas about what that game was, that are more, not to offend anyone, mythical.
"I like the first game as well a lot, but we want to clarify what this game is, so people have a clear understanding of what they're buying, so they don't come in with weird expectations - because we don't want that, we want them to understand that this is an action RPG with a storyline that is more fixed. It's not the open sim it maybe shouldn't be compared to. Again, we want people to understand what they're getting into."
I'm sympathetic to the idea that older games tend to disappear beneath a cloud of nostalgic make-believe - we're seeing it right now, with certain chunderhead reactions to Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake. So which aspects of the original Bloodlines does Lilja think people are mythologising? Sadly, he didn't go into much detail.
"I actually played Bloodlines 1 quite recently, and it is a good game, but it is also an old game, and there are many things that would not fly today," Lilja said. "But I understand why people were super psyched by it in 2004, because it had a lot of cool [elements], and the feeling of being a vampire is really strong, regardless of other features. But I think people, they remember their feelings about it. And if they replayed it, I think they would see that it's a competently good game by 2004 standards, now that it's patched.
"But mainly we want to clarify that we're making a spiritual successor, not an actual same blueprint type of game, so people don't get disappointed and feel cheated," Lilja went on. "We really don't want that."
If Paradox have learned anything from the past few years of delays and cancellations, it's that making or publishing games outside their traditional grand strategy dominions is a risky business. During our chat, Lilja spoke at length about the need to refocus and make smaller bets on projects in future. With regard to Bloodlines 2, we shouldn't expect another action-RPG from Paradox in the near future, though Paradox do expect the game to at least break even.
"We do expect it to recover its investment," Lilja said, somewhat to my surprise. "But also saying that, it has changed studios, been in production a long time. My expectation is we will release a good game." He added, however, that "the continuation of this type of games for Paradox should probably be done in a different setup - again, going back to taking risks, how to invest when we're not sure that we exactly know what we're doing."
Fingers crossed that Bloodlines 2's most recent delay is the final delay, and that it doesn't immediately turn to dust on arrival. I'm disappointed that it won't be the frothing cauldron of vampire variables we were promised in 2019, but The Chinese Room do fine work - if nothing else, Bloodlines 2 should have atmosphere and sense-of-place in spades.
Does this retard want the game to sell anything? He really thinks the majority of people expecting this is not due to the original, and more because it's a Chinese Room game? Oh lawd
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
What he's saying is "We're making a game in the vampire the masquarade universe, and we're calling it Vampire the Masquarade : Bloodlines 2, despite the fact it will be nothing like it, and it's not a sequel, but we figure that shit has a cult following so it might boost sales."
That interview is just sad and perfectly encapsulates why gaming's trajectory in terms of quality has been so steadily declining. Not only does it show incompetence from all the sides involved, but extreme arrogance too..a disruptive combo.
2004 (when standards were lower according to the Paraguy): immersive sim with hubs to visit and different quests to tackle in multiple ways and with various solutions involved, a memorable and instantly recognizable raw suburban atmosphere, impeccable music and quality writing that didn't go through any draconian sensitivity reviewing
2024: action game set in an iris-looking world starring emotional support vampires
Well, yes, but you have to realize that, by and large, Youtubers are like those hippie vegan artists/writers/filmmakers - they all inherently and vehemently KNOW that their take on a certain subject is going to be the groundbreaking one, and it's their duty to share it with the world!
Still miss those times though - gaming was worth getting excited about back then.
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
Oh my... this is so bad... so sad...
Wow... I didn't have high hopes, but this is a new low.
What I've just seen?!
I think I will wait for RTX Remix of original Bloodlines..
harballaz wrote:
Hey dont be so hard the little console eunuchs, they need time to aim their lil vibratin thumbstick.
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