World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[Roguey]

Tzimisce: What kind of body do you want?
Fledgling: Just fuck my shit up, vam

 

[Sykar]

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...em_in_Vampire_The_Masquerade_Bloodlines_2.php

Oh no, not the hands. I'm getting some bad vibes here.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, the Outstar thing is live: https://www.twitch.tv/outstar

 

[Infinitron]

Here's where the devs came in:

 

[Wunderbar]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-bloodlines-2-alpha-and-the-holidays.1298103/

Dev Diary #8: Celebrating Bloodlines 2 Alpha and the Holidays!

2019 is nearing its end, and with it comes our last dev diary for the year. It’s been a wild time for us, from the announcement at GDC in March, to meeting you at PDXCON. All throughout, we’ve been blown away by your enthusiasm. It’s now more than three years since Andy, Brian and Ka’ai pitched the idea of making Bloodlines 2 to Paradox. You and your support have made this real in a way that’s difficult to describe.

As Andy mentioned in the November dev diary, we’ve turned our attention inward for a bit. Right now, our number one priority is development, with the goal to make Bloodlines 2 the best game it can be. That’s starting to bear fruit. For example, we recently passed our Alpha!

This is one of the big milestones in game development, although in different places, Alpha can mean slightly different things. For us, it means that we are “systems-complete”; we’re done adding gameplay mechanics and features to the game. By contrast: Beta, which’ll happen next year, is “content-complete”. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the core game is done and ready to put in a box (“systems-final”). There are still quite a few people busy tweaking, balancing, and art-ing up the gameplay. It’s actually quite possible that our final game will ship with a few less mechanics than we had in the game at Alpha. In the end, we want to offer you really compelling, smooth gameplay. If over the coming months we find that something sticks out, we’d much rather put one less bullet point on the back of the box than shoehorn things in.

As you may imagine, work changes after Alpha. For some of us, it becomes much more about keeping the details consistent. For example: Earlier this year, some of our engineers and the UX team had come up with a better, more natural-feeling way of using elevators and choosing floors in the game. What this means is that we’re now going through all of our virtual Seattle and make sure all elevators fit this new logic. Not a big thing - but still, it involved diligent work by our technical designers supported by lighting, environment and UI artists.

In other places, systems-complete means that we get to add that extra in art that we didn’t want to risk spending time on before. Finally, we had time to invite everyone to the 'dismemberment meeting' - just another day in game dev. At the same time, the audio team are having a blast recording weapon foley, to make everything from picking up, to loading, stashing away and y’know, firing each individual weapon feel another bit more real.

Audio is also involved in completing the lines in the NPC Bark system - they work closely with engineering and narrative on that one. Barks are all those words and short sentences you hear AI utter in a video game. Often, that’s connected to AI states, like for example “aggressive”, “searching”, or “hurt”. Sometimes, it’s also tied to the NPC’s role in the world - a policeman will have different barks than a drunk barfly. Good barks are useful without drawing too much attention from the player, and it is not a piece of cake to find 15 different ways to say “I think I’ve seen something odd in that back alley”.

Of course, not all of us are chasing gameplay details towards that elusive “Final”. A big chunk of our team, our level and narrative designers, animators, environment, VFX and lighting artists are hard at work on the quests you will experience that gameplay. We’re looking forward to talking more about that race to Beta in the coming months. For now, to conclude this blog post, we’d like to share the work of our VFX team on blood effects. These are research prototypes created by Wesley Eldridge and Tracey Landau.

Time to put down the quill and wish you all great Winter Holidays! See you in 2020!

The Team at Hardsuit Labs

This ridiculous, no wonder it was delayed.
2020 now seems like a very optimistic date, maybe 2021?

 

[Nano]

I'm waiting patiently. Give them all the time they need to make a good game.

 

[Delterius]

I fucking love using elevators in bloodlines and hopefully its gonna be awesome again!

 

[Infinitron]

Reedited with images.

Also hey, the BloodForTrade website has some ARG minigames on it now: https://www.bloodfortrade.com/

By participating in this ARG event you are awarded with 50 blood points to your Bloodlines 2 account. Blood points allow you to unlock a selection of in-game items, redeemable in Bloodlines 2 once launched. If you manage to finish the event you will be rewarded with an additional 200 blood points.

In addition to these in-game awards you will also be able to win physical Bloodlines 2 collectibles. In the spirit of sharing, the more friends you help in this ARG event, the more rewards will be added to the pool.

To participate in the event you will need a Paradox / Bloodlines 2 account.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

By participating in this ARG event you are awarded with 50 blood points to your Bloodlines 2 account. Blood points allow you to unlock a selection of in-game items, redeemable in Bloodlines 2 once launched. If you manage to finish the event you will be rewarded with an additional 200 blood points.

"Blood points?"

"Redeemable items?"

SPIDER SENSE, TINGLING.

 

[Infinitron]

By participating in this ARG event you are awarded with 50 blood points to your Bloodlines 2 account. Blood points allow you to unlock a selection of in-game items, redeemable in Bloodlines 2 once launched. If you manage to finish the event you will be rewarded with an additional 200 blood points.

"Blood points?"

"Redeemable items?"

SPIDER SENSE, TINGLING.

That's been around since the game was announced (actually, even before it was announced I think). You could earn points by finding hidden blood pack icons on the website and stuff like that. So this new ARG is another way to earn those points. It's not microtransactions for cash.

 

[Nano]

As always, p*rates will make these prerelease-exclusive items available to everyone.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

As always, p*rates will make these prerelease-exclusive items available to everyone.

Prerelease exclusivity for game content is retarded anyway.

Spoiler

Still remember you, Logic Artists; making Esteban a kickstarter backer exclusive companion for Expeditions: Conquistador.

 

[Zombra]

All this talk of Blood Points reminds me that the system used to be broken and I was robbed of my rightful BP. Does it work now? Here's the link; help me test it and get me the sweet bonus items I so richly deserve.

 

[Delterius]

I fucking love using elevators in bloodlines and hopefully its gonna be awesome again!

Zombra has never been a child pressing buttons, confirmed

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

It's not microtransactions for cash.

I hope not, I also hope if it eventually does become microtransactions for cash it only affects COSMETICS THAT DON'T MATTER IN GAMEPLAY. That makes it way better when I get fucked in the ass.

 

[Nano]

It's not microtransactions for cash.

I hope not, I also hope if it eventually does become microtransactions for cash it only affects COSMETICS THAT DON'T MATTER IN GAMEPLAY. That makes it way better when I get fucked in the ass.

The desensitization in effect here is fascinating. The gaming community went from mocking the horse armor 13 years ago to thinking "cosmetic MTXs aren't that bad actually".

 

[Lacrymas]

Pretty sure the outrage was because it was like 4 bucks, not because it was cosmetic. It might also be in combination with the mainstream slowly realizing/accepting men/they themselves like playing dress-up too.

 

[Roguey]

Horse armor doubled your horse's health so it wasn't entirely cosmetic either. However, Bethesda charging any amount of money for piecemeal benefits is/was absurd.

 

[Terenty]

This will be shit on par with TOW. Maybe slightly better. Writing's gonna be especially shit boring. Mark my words. I'll copy paste it when it comes out

 

[Delterius]

This will be shit on par with TOW. Maybe slightly better. Writing's gonna be especially shit boring. Mark my words. I'll copy paste it when it comes out

did you just call a game shit on the codex

 

[Terenty]

This will be shit on par with TOW. Maybe slightly better. Writing's gonna be especially shit boring. Mark my words. I'll copy paste it when it comes out

did you just call a game shit on the codex

I predicted shittiness of TOW when ppl were still delusional and believed in it. When i say smth's gonna be shit it means its gonna be shit for real

 

[Delterius]

This will be shit on par with TOW. Maybe slightly better. Writing's gonna be especially shit boring. Mark my words. I'll copy paste it when it comes out

did you just call a game shit on the codex

I predicted shittiness of TOW when ppl were still delusional and believed in it. When i say smth's gonna be shit it means its gonna be shit for real

damn you're a true visionary

 

[fantadomat]

You had to be blind to not see that both nu vampire and tow would ended up shit. Tho for BG3 we still can't say it because there is nothing shown about it.

 

[Harthwain]

This will be shit on par with TOW. Maybe slightly better. Writing's gonna be especially shit boring. Mark my words. I'll copy paste it when it comes out

"On par with TOW"? "Maybe slightly better"? Really? I was thinking more around 6-7/10 material, review-wise. Vampire and Bloodline fans will most likely thumb it up anyway, but that won't be a surprise. They don't get too many games to be picky about them. Agreed on the shit part though.

I never saw Bloodlines as something exceptional, but that's probably because I played it very, very long time after it was released on Steam and decided to give it go based on the legend it became. As such there was neither nostalgia nor I had any idea what kind of an impression the game made back when it was released. The end result was that I wasn't too impressed by it. I thought it was an average game if anything and am still surprised it got such a cult following. Maybe it doesn't strike the same chord for me as it does for others. I liked Redemption much more, but that's purely because the voice actors did amazing job at selling the story and developers managed to do a pretty good mix of modern and ancient language to pull you into the Middle Ages era, only to make it clash when they pushed you out into the modern times halfway into the game. But the gameplay as such was very meh. Story was the only reason for me to finish it.

Regardless of my personal opinion on Bloodlines 1, I think them making Bloodlines 2 by trying to ape Bloodlines 1 won't end very well, objectively speaking. So far the gameplay video don't convince me to think otherwise.

You had to be blind to not see that both nu vampire and tow would ended up shit. Tho for BG3 we still can't say it because there is nothing shown about it.

Larian did good job on D:OS series, so I am trusting they know what they're doing. They managed to create good games, mechanically speaking, so at least on that front it should be fine. The story aspect I am less optimistic about. Unless they make some changes in that department I'd recommend praying for a miracle. However, the effects aren't guaranteed.

 

[Nano]

I see you joined a week ago. The Codex is worse for having you here, Harthwain.