Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: 2 - I want to believe, but...

[blablabla]

Maybe next time try to write a good story first instead of sjw woketard crap that tanked your entire studio?
Good fucking riddance

 

[Corn Flakes]

Maybe next time try to write a good story first instead of sjw woketard crap that tanked your entire studio?
Good fucking riddance

Hold the phone.

The entire narrative department, for a RPG, based on a very lore-heavy setting, was all of four fucking people?!

Good God, this is worse than we expected.

 

[blablabla]

i dont think so those are the morons who for some reason are twitter boosting the fact that they got shit canned

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

Interesting. Was this their chance to fire them without saying it's about how bad they are at this and pissing off their clique? Or perhaps they'll go cheaper and the next iteration will be written by two non-union fanfic writers they nabbed off tumblr.

 

[EnemyStand]

i dont think so those are the morons who for some reason are twitter boosting the fact that they got shit canned

I can't help but wonder if those were the four people who screeched the loudest for getting stuff put into the game. Of course, the first clue we had that the writing was going to be a rehash at best was when they named the Prince of Seattle Cross. Good lord people, out of all the lore, all the clans, all the Princes the Camrilla had (including Malks and Nos) you make an EXPY OF THE FIRST GAME'S VILLAIN?

 

[SiccDicc]

Maybe next time try to write a good story first instead of sjw woketard crap that tanked your entire studio?
Good fucking riddance

Was the guy who worked on AC: Odyssey and Tsushima actually involved at all in any decision making? Because I can believe the former, it's the latter I have doubts about.

 

[Honest Coyote]

Interesting. Was this their chance to fire them without saying it's about how bad they are at this and pissing off their clique? Or perhaps they'll go cheaper and the next iteration will be written by two non-union fanfic writers they nabbed off tumblr.

Fan fic could be good feedback if you are able to properly look at what the author wrote. Honestly, they should have a pretty good idea of what fans want, just look at mods that are popular for the first. If the top choices are enhanced powers, new clans, and a new supernatural faction, add some more monster mash. If it's more combat, more weapons, and bloodier animation, add more moster smash. If it's a romance, enhanced boob mechanics, and sexier player characters, add more moster gash. The maxim "the customer is always right" doesn't mean they're always correct, it means that they know what they want and you should pay attention instead of trying to outwit them and get them to take what you want to give them. No reason for a game developer to ever take feedback from Twitter users who won't buy your game but appreciate the statement, when you could just use actual future customers.

 

[Rakdos92]

Hold the phone.

The entire narrative department, for a RPG, based on a very lore-heavy setting, was all of four fucking people?!

Good God, this is worse than we expected.

How many would you place in that department? Feels like research can be handled by two or three people, and actual narrative writing by three or five people who each has a problem with at least two of the others.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Exactly. Troubled darling developer, misallocation of resources and multiple delays included.

CP77 was at least playable though (at least on PC) and made sense. Yeah, it suffered from the hubris of CDPR thinking they could develop for top end PCs and downgrade onto console like they did with Witcher 3, and I suspect that the reason certain bits are unfinished was because they couldn't insert everything they wanted to and still have it work on console and would get into legal hot water if the PC version had all the features and the console versions were "stripped" somehow, but it was actually a good game fundamentally. Just needed another year or so in the oven.

Unlike Daikatana, which was stupidly designed in the first place and had every level be an escort mission.

EDIT: I said as much in the CP77 thread when I wrote my review of it, but CP77 is very similar to the original VTMB on many levels, both from a design perspective and a kicked out the door before properly ready perspective.

 

[Corn Flakes]

How many would you place in that department? Feels like research can be handled by two or three people, and actual narrative writing by three or five people who each has a problem with at least two of the others.

Well, if a pile of story cliches like Battlefield V needed five writers, and the Mass Effect games seem to bounce between six and twelve, I would expect more than four writers for a full-sized computer RPG worth its salt.

It's not so much an issue of the story needing many writers to be good (after all, single authors write entire books just fine) but you do need more people to take care of branching paths, enforce consistency, flesh out the world, write the dialogue, and come up with sidequests unrelated to the main plot. From what little we saw of the story ("Cross", really?), it looked like even these four people weren't doing their job correctly. For one, it didn't look like any of them were even old enough to have played the TTRPG, or even just the original Bloodlines.

CP77 was at least playable though (at least on PC) and made sense. [...]

Unlike Daikatana, which was stupidly designed in the first place and had every level be an escort mission.

It's not a perfect one-to-one comparison, no. But in terms of general story beats (again, darling developer with wildly successful game bites off more than they can chew, mismanages their time and resources, delay hard, and releases incomplete product) and reaction by both the media and the general public they're similar.

It's just in Current Year we have a lot more people with a voice everything is a lot more intense. Back when Daikatana came out most of us were just waiting for the reviews on PC Gamer (or whatever your mag of choice was), watching the fireworks on gaming forums, and hearing from unfortunate friends who bought that broken piece of crap.

 

[Dom Cruise]

CP77 was at least playable though (at least on PC) and made sense. Yeah, it suffered from the hubris of CDPR thinking they could develop for top end PCs and downgrade onto console like they did with Witcher 3, and I suspect that the reason certain bits are unfinished was because they couldn't insert everything they wanted to and still have it work on console and would get into legal hot water if the PC version had all the features and the console versions were "stripped" somehow, but it was actually a good game fundamentally. Just needed another year or so in the oven.

Unlike Daikatana, which was stupidly designed in the first place and had every level be an escort mission.

EDIT: I said as much in the CP77 thread when I wrote my review of it, but CP77 is very similar to the original VTMB on many levels, both from a design perspective and a kicked out the door before properly ready perspective.

I think the reason history repeated itself with CP77 and VTMB is simply because they were both based on pen and paper games and that gives you a CRAZY amount of material to work with, so it's not hard to see why biting off more than you can chew happens easily.

I think CP77 is what gave Hardsuit Labs the idea to make Bloodlines 2 in the first place, as there's an obviously very large amount of potential to doing another Vampire The Masquerade game.

My biggest disappointment with VTMB on a side note, besides the terrible combat, is all the maps in the game feeling pretty cramped, it's a sizably lengthed game but the setting really calls for the sprawling maps which in my memory a lot of beta footage hinted at, I want to say there's a screen of you fighting dudes under the Santa Monica boardwalk with a flamethrower for example, which of course never happens.

 

[Corn Flakes]

My biggest disappointment with VTMB on a side note, besides the terrible combat, is all the maps in the game feeling pretty cramped, it's a sizably lengthed game but the setting really calls for the sprawling maps which in my memory a lot of beta footage hinted at, I want to say there's a screen of you fighting dudes on the Santa Monica boardwalk with a flamethrower for example, which of course never happens.

You can blame the engine for that one. The first iteration of Source was not all that good at large, heavily-populated and sprawling maps. Troika knew that and since they were already pushing the engine pretty hard they decided to not risk it. It took Valve a couple more years to upgrade Source to handle large environments better, and by then it was way too late.

 

[Dom Cruise]

You can blame the engine for that one. The first iteration of Source was not all that good at large, heavily-populated and sprawling maps. Troika knew that and since they were already pushing the engine pretty hard they decided to not risk it. It took Valve a couple more years to upgrade Source to handle large environments better, and by then it was way too late.

It's too bad, but at least Source made for evergreen graphics that still look pretty pleasing to the eye.

 

[TVStactic]

Hold the phone.

The entire narrative department, for a RPG, based on a very lore-heavy setting, was all of four fucking people?!

Good God, this is worse than we expected.

these people got rid of everything avellone wrote... they ensured he was booted to steal his work, DUDE IS ONE OF THE MAIN WRITERS AND THEY OUST HIM.

i'm laughing really hard, GET FUCKED.

also i think it was more but the retards bragging about it are about 4 at the moment. we'll see the rest soon i think.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I think CP77 is what gave Hardsuit Labs the idea to make Bloodlines 2 in the first, as there's an obviously very large amount of potential to doing another Vampire The Masquerade game.

Yes there is. But please don't call it Bloodlines. VTMB didn't need a sequel because it was narratively a single unit. They should set another VTM game somewhere totally different and only have a few references to the events of VTMB at best and possibly a few cameos from characters who aren't Damsel.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Yes there is. But please don't call it Bloodlines. VTMB didn't need a sequel because it was narratively a single unit. They should set another VTM game somewhere totally different and only have a few references to the events of VTMB at best and possibly a few cameos from characters who aren't Damsel.

I remember thinking because of CP77 I'd like to see a new Vampire The Masquerade game and I wasn't too surprised someone else had the same idea, but I was very surprised that it was a direct sequel to Bloodlines given that, ya know, the world was supposed to have ended soon after the game.

However I think they had the right idea to make it a Bloodlines 2 to be honest instead of simply a new Vampire The Masquerade game, it makes it even more interesting, Damsel was one of the characters I would want to see return as well, provided you don't, you know, present her unironically (but well... she's hot, so I'm not too sad to see her return because well, you know)

I think games based on other World of Darkness properties like Mage and Wraith would be cool too, I'd even like to see a new Hunter: The Reckoning game in the vein of the Xbox games, as a matter of fact didn't a Werewolf game come out recently? How did that turn out?

On a side note, it seems like games based on tabletop games are a bit of a trend at the moment, I think a game based on Warren Spector's Toon would be interesting and I'd love a new Crimson Skies game.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I think games based on other World of Darkness properties like Mage and Wraith would be cool too, I'd even like to see a new Hunter: The Reckoning game in the vein of the Xbox games, as a matter of fact didn't a Werewolf game come out recently? How did that turn out?

Kind of crap and missing the point of Werewolf. You don't do a stealth game when your main character can turn into a 10'-tall furry blender.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Kind of crap and missing the point of Werewolf. You don't do a stealth game when your main character can turn into a 10'-tall furry blender.

A stealth game? For reals? Because yeah, when you think a werewolf you think sneaking around and not ripping everyone to fucking shreds and going absolutely apeshit, bummer.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

A stealth game? For reals? Because yeah, when you think a werewolf you think sneaking around and not ripping everyone to fucking shreds and going absolutely apeshit, bummer.

Yeah, the stealth is real shit as well. But you eventually just give up turning into a 9 foot tall walking blender because towards the end of the game the rooms (you move from room to room with no continuity between them) start filling with like four mechs at a time and it's just actively un fun to play. Game was terrible, felt like a PS2 movie tie in game.

 

[Michael Wade]

They have a lot of visual novels these days, are those any good? And by good I mean, can I choose not to be an asshole?