Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: 2 - I want to believe, but...
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Pentex
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2020
And with that, Bloodlines 2 officially enters development hell.
I knew this game was fucked when Hardsuit started selling DLCs and pre-orders before showing any real gameplay.
This is about the third major misfire by Paradox in licencing out WOD IPs (Chechnya vs. nu-Wolf, W5 scrapped, now Hardsuit officially shitting the bed).
Paradox's Crusader Kings money is not infinite. The Swedes need to have a Come-to-Jesus meeting with whoever is allegedly in charge of WOD.
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2018
Thats not going to happen since the Paradox is even more infested...
well Special editions can be made pretty easy with good value. i miss the days of steelboxes and massive booklets...
Thats not how Paradox works.
no
they would have started selling it months ago if that was the case... they had to do massive reworks on 2 of their more recent games and they did it a year after the launch...
Their European pick ups all worked out pretty well, alot better than their own studios...
they should just Rehire JAKE!
April Ryan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
There is an additional layer of how much they have to have fucked up for this to happen. The games origin was not paradox wanting bloodlines 2 and then finding a studio to make it, it was Hardsuit who came up with the idea, dug Brian Mitsoda out of whatever dumpster he was living in to give them name recognition then pitched to paradox for permission to use the license.
This is straight up Hardsuits game and it was such trash that the publisher has taken it from them and given it to someone else.
This is straight up Hardsuits game and it was such trash that the publisher has taken it from them and given it to someone else.
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2017
The difference is that Troika Games was made up of actual veterans and already had two cult classic games under its belt by the time they got Bloodlines, and were a victim of a bad situation, that saw a game with great potential screwed over by a variety things, many of them outside the company's control, while Hardsuit are random indie shit developers with little to no pedigree that were given a project they clearly weren't prepared to handle, and have made a game that never had a prayer.
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- Sep 8, 2015
The former always produces the later. I've investigated too much vaporware.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2019
I mean lets be honest, this was for the best. This game was never going to be any good..
The only thing that would make this news better: Gearbox is taking over the project..
The only thing that would make this news better: Gearbox is taking over the project..
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2020
I posted this in the general WOD thread. I thought it belonged here as well.
- Joined
- May 22, 2019
It's a technical mess because resources that would have gone into streamlining and technical issues went into commentary and current year bravery. Every announcement brought something worse. If you have people working on how to better depict sex workers without pointing out how sex work is bad, you have less people working on good combat mechanics or creating new sidequests. That actually happened, btw. Some bigwig came out and talked about how excited they were that you could use powers to find out the hookers were only pretending to be excited for their johns. They added Damsel, the most annoying and one dimensional character from the original, and tried to present it as a shocking twist by spoiling it before the game even came out because of Stronk Wahman. Damsel barely did anything in the game and at best could go from total bitch to mostly bitch. Literally any other character would have been cooler. Bring back the nagaraja or the thinblood chick if it has to be a woman.
They rewrote the plot to include current year protests, and derided the good parts of the old one with the Malkavians. The old depictions were actually interesting and tragic; the new ones were going to be inane and differently-abled. Combat was even choppier in the teaser than the original, and the fact that you couldn't store weapons means there was going to be some anti-gun narrative.
why HSL failed, paradox certainly is fucking pissed granted they need to find somewhat competent people to do shit especially knowing that gamers are still very fucking salty over CP2077, hopefully next semester they'll release some note or something.
HSL had a fairly decent shooter in their hands and what was Blacklight Retribution, it had potential because of the customization system simply raping all other games, what did these fuckers do? drop support for the game making it a zombie on PS4 and focus their efforts on Bloodlines 2... GET. FUCKED.
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- Joined
- Feb 7, 2018
So has it been figured out how much they got in pre-orders and how much HSL pissed away financially?
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
I know this is incredibly optimistic but I want to believe that they're going to start over and give us an actually good game this time.
All I'm saying is this has risen the game's chances from zero to... a number higher than zero, even if it isn't a high number.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2019
I just don't see that happening. Whoever decides to take over the project will be utilizing whatever HSL did.
So, it already has a shitty, spotty foundation at best.
I mean could a company make diamonds out of coal? Possibly. Is it likely? Fuck no
I mean whatever company replaces HSL is most likely going to be on board with all the gay dumb bullshit...
I mean the best news would be a complete restart. But, too much money has been invested for that to happen..
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
First of all, let me state that I don't believe BL2 is going to be any good, assuming it ever releases. From now on, I'm mostly playing Devil's Advocate:
There's actually a good amount of value in whatever Hardsuit Labs produced. Most of the art assets should be reusable in some way or another, and the engine itself is standard Unreal 4, one of the staples of game development these days. Anything they coded with regards with navigating the world in first and third person should still be reusable as well. There would be a lot of reworking required for certain things (including getting the new team up to speed with how HSL did things), and their combat systems are probably going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, but that's to be expected.
It's not going to be a seamless transition, and changing studios halfway through development is never a good sign, but this game isn't dead yet. Paradox will want a return on their investment, so it's very likely they'll just dump whatever HSL came up with on the next studio's lap and tell them to work with what they've got. The chance of anything good coming out of it is infinitesimally low, not least of which because RPGs require lengthy development cycles in order to have any depth to their story, but I would bet good money on the game still being released within the next 3-5 years.
And I would also bet good money on it being shit. Or, ironically, reworked into a linear "adventure" game instead, like Redemption.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2019
I mean if they allow the new team, assuming they're less gay, to essentially have carte blanche to jettison the story, redo questlines, redo voice acting, and rework factions.
But, do you think they will do that? I don't..
I think its going to be another team just stapling their half onto HSL's half.
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
I wouldn't expect them to start from scratch nor would I even want them to, I'm sure they can work with whatever Hardsuit has done, but hopefully can rework into something much better.
If it's going to be a good game though it's certainly not coming out anytime soon, but that's fine, I think the big question is whether it will be out before the first game's 20th anniversary or not.
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- Dec 16, 2019
i hope they go whole hog woke and make a bug chasing simulator
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
With the new team we'll be reaching levels of homosexuality we never thought possible.
They don't have the resources to just completely cancel a game this long into development and let it sit, no this shit is going to be like Aliens Colonial Marines.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
might be a clever scheme to get out of severance packages for those dumbfucks. depending on the legalese they weren't fired, the company simply stopped existing.
it's also not uncommon, every big publisher has shuttered it's own studios at some point if they couldn't bring in the numbers, and sometimes even before.
their first mistake was trying to sell overproduced shit as a borderline AAA game. vtmb was never that big, cult classic sure, but never a big earner. and same as cp2077 those same people don't want 4k penis textures, but story and atmosphere.
if they're smart they scale back the scope hard, first of all trim down on the voice acting which is a fucking expensive chunk of the budget and locks you in way too hard, then put the money into assets and writing they can adjust till the very last day and even after. if that sells enough - and that's a big if - that people want more and it warrants making a AAA treatment or simple increase the scope, then they can easily make a bloodlines 3 and can even save on the marketing this way.
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2017
They'd never do that. The original game was fully voice acted, and that good voice acting was partly what made the story work. It would look even more pathetic if they couldn't pull off something the original could. Can't really get away with selling a game like this today without voice acting I'm afraid.