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

[fantadomat]

Games FPS combat is the worst FPS combat I seen to date. I have a strong feeling this game going to be remembered as THE blunder of 2020. The next TORtanic.

I don't believe that it is the combat per se but the idiots that play it,tho i do agree that i will be a blunder.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh hey, official version of gameplay footage:

We sat down with Hardsuit Labs Creative Director Ka'ai Cluney and asked him to provide insight and commentary on this pre-alpha gameplay demo build from May 2019, first shown at E3 and more recently at Gamescom.

 

[Orma]

https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-pioneers

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/faction-the-pioneers.1237877/

Hello everyone!

Today we bring to you the first reveal of the five Factions in Seattle, let us know what you think, I'll try my best to answer any questions you may have (well within reason of course ).

The Pioneers

We made this city and we will never let anyone forget that.
- Lou Grand

PAST GLORIES

While Seattle is a young city, the vampires of The Pioneers were among the first to settle here and rule. Led by Lou Grand, the longest-reigning Prince of the area, they have seen control slip away over the years and are increasingly unhappy with the amount of outsiders that have come in and carved out territory.


OLD MONEY

There’s a lot of wealth in ruling a city for more than a century. The money of the Pioneers would earn a lot of influence almost anywhere in the world. In the modern boomtown of Seattle, though, all it seems to afford is a more comfortable slide into irrelevance.


While they have dreams of once more ruling the city, they have since been forced to accept the rules of another. In exchange, they have been allowed to "save face" by keeping control over some minor parts of the city.


THE INSIDER’S CLUB

A collection of individuals from different clans, unified by their idealistic and romantic notion of Seattle as the last frontier - The Pioneers held Seattle for the biggest part of the city’s existence. Having lost so much in the last twenty years, they have become quite skeptical of the changing world, including any fledgling looking to join.

The vampires in Lou’s group include loggers, fishermen, bootleggers, old money families, musicians and artists, and many other long-time Puget Sound inhabitants - and they fight tooth and nail to preserve whatever remains of their old world - and of one another.

 

[Infinitron]

Cara Ellison answers questions on the official forums, some ~woker~ than others: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...v-diary-4-writing-bloodlines-2.1236078/page-2

Spoiler

Hi @Cara Ellison

I realise that creating a new vampire would be difficult to do well from a writing point of view, but is this something that you and the writing team considered or would like to explore in future titles? Alternatively can we hope to explore the morality pitfalls surrounding Ghouls in BL2 in greater detail?

Hi there, thank you for your question. We adhere strictly to core Vampire The Masquerade mechanics, where creating a progeny of vampires must be sanctioned by the upper echelons of vampire society. It is difficult to get a dispensation to do this, and if you do it without that dispensation you are hunted down and killed. On top of this, our narrative relies heavily on your creation being 'illegal', and also when you begin the game you are a Thinblood, so creation of other vampires is not only almost impossible for you personally, your character wouldn't even know how to do it. So though we wouldn't rule out that your character would eventually be able to create vampires, the current shape of our narrative and mechanics in Bloodlines 2 have not been built around those ideas.

Yes, the rest of the paragraph complemented the game, but that first part hit it dead in the centre. I enjoyed the game very much but it did seem ill-adapted to a female gamer. Is this being looked into equally, or will the dialogue be the same regardless of gender?

Hi there! Thank you for reading my work. I really appreciate it.

I am extremely aware of my responsibilities in this area, and though I joined the writing team about three years late, I have done everything I can to serve everyone who might come to the game. Primarily, we are trying to deconstruct how gender and sexuality works a little bit more in this game so that it is much more complex, however 'attraction' still works on a he/she structure currently because of the way the system has been built. So if you choose a she pronoun, for example, vampires who are usually attracted to someone who is a 'she' will have dialogue specifically written to convey that, regardless of what your body has been customized to look like. If you are a 'he', you might get completely different dialogue. Or, if the vampire you are talking to is attracted to he and she vampires, a high enough stat to flirt with them would open up positive results. So, we write dialogue for every eventuality of character, as all our NPCs make judgements on you based on the way you customize play and how you choose to speak to them. We try to write for the plurality of the modern world - if we know people who are NB, gay, straight, bi, asexual, or if we know interesting weirdos, nerds, introverts, etc we write in vampires who reflect this reality. I personally also feel this reflects the history of the people who have kept the IP alive over the years - there are a great deal of people for whom the tabletop and original game was important and they should feel like they live in a World Of Darkness that recognizes them. But honestly, this is not so vastly different from the way Brian wrote Bloodlines 1, except it has got a lot gayer because that reflects our increased awareness of LGBT players.

With regard to the Voermanns, we know they are fan favourites, but culturally we all have a better grasp of how mental health issues affect people now and we wouldn't use such a trope again. However, though Malkavians do exhibit some aspects of what look like human mental health difficulties, they are also supernatural, and the 'voices' that Malkavians hear are other Malkavians talking to them, or flashes of the future, for example. We also know that many people with mental health difficulties appreciate Malkavians and like to play as them. So what we'd like to do is put more depth to these portrayals, and instead of the player just meeting 'wacky' Malkavian NPCs, we'd like to expand what it might feel like to be limited by your perception of the world as frightening or threatening (often with good reason), or how you might interpret things differently than other people. I think this would go a long way to respecting how mental health issues reconfigure your life, often in ways that are unpleasant or provide an obstacle. But we are still writing the Malkavian layer as it always comes last in the script, so it's all just plans right now. I hope that you will be happy with the result. Brian Mitsoda and Rachel Leiker have been instrumental in supporting and designing these better ways to accommodate the player and look at making a more immersive experience and they have always listened to my design input.

You make it sound as if the player charcter won't be left behind by his sire? I'm surely misreading that as you're most likely talking about that (proposedly) friendly dude from the trailers are taking us under their wing, right?

The player character is left behind by their sire, but acquires a weirdo next door neighbor to show you the ropes.

She mentionend Spacemarines and explosions as average RPG - going into how Bloodlines is different in that their characters not being heroes and are pawns.

No, I was saying that the 'settler model', i.e. gaining territory and upgrading a base are par for the course in an RPG. But Bloodlines 2 is not really very interested in gaining physical 'territory' or 'upgrading your base', though you can gain allies and upgrade skills and abilities. Generally speaking the central conflict in Bloodlines games is a mystery about how you got the role you inhabit, whether your existence matters, and whether you will survive to find out. This is a central noir trope. It's about how much information you have.

What Cara's saying (and this, btw, is a pretty common approach in a lot of newer games) is that you AREN'T the most important person in the world, you're not the messiah, you're just some (un)lucky person who woke up as a vampire one day.

Ah! Yes! Also this. You don't really inhabit the 'most powerful person in the world' role here. You might feel capital C cool sometimes, but World Of Darkness always supplies something bigger and more scary than yourself to knock you down a peg or two.

Thanks for this interessing insight.

I also have two question.

How much are you limited in your creative freedom? Can write whatever you seems fit for Vampire the Masquerade (Bloodlines 2) or were some ideas that you couldn´t use?

And we know that some Bloodlines 1 characters will return. My question isn´t who returns but did you or Chris Avellone take over to write some
or is only Brian allowed to contuine Bloodlines 1 characters like the already shown TV Anchor (Just out of curiosity has he have a name?) and you have to wrote new ones?

Hi friend! Thank you for your questions.

Generally speaking the team lets me do whatever I like as long as it sits well within World Of Darkness rules. My natural way is to try to think of the most messed up thing that can happen in the world and then make characters experience it. Generally that's what I've designed to, but also in gave dev it's important to look at your resources - how many characters are you creating with this mission? How long will that take? Can we do voiceover for them? How long will that take? How much time will they take from the animation team? Can we create props for this mission? Does level design think it is possible to stage this mission? What environments do we have available for the mission? These are all things I have to take into account when designing a mission. And that's before even writing all the branches of the narrative. It's quite a lot more involved than most other forms of writing and requires quite a bit more development experience than I ever considered I'd gain.

Only Brian Mitsoda writes the legacy characters. He feels very strongly about character ownership because it keeps the voices consistent. So for example, if he ever wanted to write one of my characters I would be entitled to say no and Ka'ai wouldn't be able to fire me for it

Thanks for the quick response.


Its a bit sad because in Bioware particularly in Dragon Age Series have liked that switched the Authors of certain characters.

But can we hear like Brain in Bloodlines 2? Also do you work with Margaret Tang or is this more Brian thing?

By the way speaking of representation. I like that consider that much nowadays by comparison to Bloodlines 2.
But do you work on better representation for nationalities? Some like Grünfeld Bach (Grünfeld isn´t a first name in the german language)
or Ji Wen Ja (Sorry Brian) weren´t that good retrospect to put it politely.

Also i have a small request to honor the Unoffical Patch Author Dr. Werner Spahl for his continuous devotion in patching Bloodlines 1.
Can you immortalized him in Bloodlines 2 as a minor character?

I can see that you are a huge fan! That is pretty cool I love to talk to people who really know their stuff. The questions are so much more detailed!

I can see how switching writers might be interesting! But also Brian is very territorial about this sort of thing, possibly because I have threatened to make more men shirtless than he is comfortable with. I can understand his concerns.

We will talk about the specific actors in the game soon! But both Brian and I have worked with Margaret Tang again to bring you one of the best voice casts in any game, I promise. A secret for only the Paradox fans here: when we were recording the largest chunk of voiceover in the studio in LA, Margaret heard that I was a huge fan of Steve Blum and she knows him well. She got him to call me from Disneyland (he was visiting with his wife). I almost lost my entire mind when Spike Spiegel called me?! It was so cool. I love him. I am trying to find an excuse to write a character for him in our upcoming plans at HSL, but that's obviously TBC/possibly subject to Bloodlines 2 being successful. So obviously your support means a lot to me so we can hire Steve...

Re: the representation for nationalities, that is a very interesting question, as I often hear very poor Scottish accents in games myself. I often talk with Rami Ismail about this, as he deals with the international game dev community on a large scale every day for Game Dev World, and about how there is a huge lack of language and international diversity in games.

In short, yes we recognize that international rep wasn't very good in Bloodlines 1. However, this is a very complex issue in game dev still, mainly because we choose to use union voice actors, and once you do that, you very much limit your international roster. Also, generally speaking, California-centric talent is not usually very strong on accents, so if you require a good accent you often have to spend a very long time looking for someone and auditioning. We have been lucky in that we have quite a diverse cast this time around (Margaret Tang is very good at finding great actors). Sometimes it is so difficult to find a person with the appropriate accent for your character that you have to do it yourself, just like I did for Void Bastards (I wrote some Scottish pirates into that game, and ended up voicing them too!). So this time around we have been careful to write characters we know we can get authentic voices for. So don't worry. We are doing that work too.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Cara, much appreciated.

P.S.: Although I'm pretty sure you've got your hands full with BL2, I (and plenty others, for sure, if my impression of the comments on your last one is accurate) would really enjoy reading some more articles of yours in RPS, if you're ever in the mood and availability again to share your opinion. :D

P.P.S.: I agree with Andrei's request, wesp's continuous contribution to the first game is worth a reference (like an Easter Egg, for example). :thumbs-up emoji:

I love RPS and the RPS payroll kept me alive for many years while I languished in poverty and wondered whether becoming a writer would ever pay off. However, writing on the internet brings a particular type of exposure and hostility that I don't know if I'm very well equipped to deal with any more? I have retired to a quiet life in the dark, constructing elaborate World Of Darkness shenanigans with my friends and colleagues. But I will be doing a Redux S.EXE at the upcoming PAX West, if you are interested. Just when I thought I was out, etc etc.

We love Wesp. We love Wesp unashamedly. I will convey your wishes to the team.

I unterstand this but won´t you a better choice for returning female characters?
Maybe you can give NPCs like Damsel or VV a newer female view?

Generally speaking I feel like Brian wrote those characters very well! I'm not sure I would choose to write them differently. As far as I'm aware Damsel was written specifically for Courtney Taylor, because Damsel is basically Courtney - and Brian knows her well. I write a lot of characters who are not the same gender as me too, and it isn't much of a problem.

I think it's good to keep in mind that us two have to write a huge swathe of characters who fulfil all sorts of roles that we may not have experienced first hand. Like, neither of us know any gangsters, but we sure write a lot about them. But it just requires a little research.

When you write characters that are not like you, you 1) do research on what that person would experience, read first person accounts of those issues, and make yourself aware of the stereotypes so that you can avoid them or complicate them 2) ask the people in the studio who might have a closer perspective on these characters to review if it is satisfactory (for example, if you are looking to write a Vietnamese granny, you might know someone in the studio who has one!) 3) ask your friends who have also first hand experienced these issues/cultural backgrounds for advice on more complicated topics. You may also need a step 4) which is to pay a consultant who is an expert on the issue, e.g. if you are writing Duwamish roles and you don't know a Duwamish person (we are considering a number of things in this manner for DLC). We are lucky to be surrounded by professionals that reflect the diverse population of Seattle in the studio, but I think that if you are a skilled writer, you will know enough to be able to write other people responsibly and to a standard that is not offensive. But obviously, you the players will be the ultimate judge of whether we land that or not, and I am happy to be asked to step up my game. Being a writer is constantly being at school, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So out of interest - did Brian / the team immediately arrive at the idea of a thinblood or were idea like starting out like a human or eeven a classical vampire approach ever put forth?

We conceived of encountering the other Unsanctioned Vampires as being your guide as to what crossing over is like. They are going through vampire puberty when you encounter them. Generally speaking, Bloodlines is urban horror noir, so we try to stay fairly far away from gothic literature type or classical fantasy because other games tread that territory better. We try to give you a sense of what becoming a vampire would be like if you had to do it right now, where you live. Before being Embraced, people are completely blissfully unaware of any vampires at all, hence The Masquerade.

@Cara Ellison I am curious about a couple of things in particular. The first is, roughly, what percent of the NPC's in the game are romance-able? (If Slugg is non romance-able I might be very put out )

On a more serious note. Given how much Bloodlines 2 draws on the v5 rule book, how big a threat is The New Inquisition going to be?

'Romanceable' characters in Bloodlines games is a complicated thing because vampires think drinking blood is better than sex. They wouldn't really have a reason to bother trying to sleep with or romance someone unless they were a human being, and you had to convince the human that they should stick around. You are a Thinblood vampire in the beginning, and most of the characters you encounter are Full Blood vampires - so the power differential is off there. So the vampire population in general is not really interested in sex unless it's a special case vampire. The few humans you will encounter you will probably have a chance to sleep with, depending on your stats, as it will make them like you more.

With romance, vampires can be open to companionship, as it makes hunting easier, but again, you start out as an outcast, a weakling and an abomination, so those choices will be limited too. However, we have written some romance storylines and we obviously let you flirt your way into and out of a great many situations.

I don't think I can answer your second question!

I have one question : is triggering people one of your concerns ?

100% yes, we are absolutely concerned that some content in the game could be difficult for players living with trauma or a mental health issue. For the Malkavians we will make sure to describe to the player what they may experience when playing. But what may be difficult for us is making some of the systemic or scripted events turn on or off selectively. We are moving away from the 'fishmalk' portrayal for this iteration of Bloodlines, so we expect the Malkavians to be a much more unsettling or scary experience this time around.

Rachel and I have discussed some ways to be kinder to players who might have PTSD issues in particular, and one of the things we are considering pitching to the team is a part of the accessibility menu where we outline the thematic content of each mission so that you can prepare yourself ahead of time for a particular mission, choose not to play a side mission that might involve some issues you feel uncomfortable about, or grab a friend or partner to play through certain content with you. What we may do is give players a run down in that menu of what to expect from Malkavian playthroughs so that you can make a more informed choice about whether you feel comfortable playing that way. That way, we are not changing the experience, but we are giving you space and time to consider when you'd like to continue.

Does that sound like a good idea to you? This is all still being worked out of course, but we really care about it, and I hope that our game can be considerate in a way that works for you. I'd also love to talk to you over email about what you personally experience as difficult in games, it would be wonderful to know more about how to design a game from scratch for these issues, so we begin from the start to make the system work for you.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Damn. I am being triggered by all this wokeness right now. Why didn't Cara put in trigger warnings for that Q&A? REE

 

[ChildInTime]

Fucks sake. I thought I made peace with pronouns. Now its trigger warnings. This deal keeps getting worse with every new thing this Cara bitch says.

 

[santino27]

I hate 2019.

 

[Saerain]

Can I just die yet? I'll accept anything delivered by a non-ContraPoints fan.

 

[Alienman]

Re: the representation for nationalities, that is a very interesting question, as I often hear very poor Scottish accents in games myself. I often talk with Rami Ismail about this, as he deals with the international game dev community on a large scale every day for Game Dev World, and about how there is a huge lack of language and international diversity in games.

Devs loves to de-hype their games. Not that I had any, but still...

 

[jungl]

female fan asks if this bloodlines going be a more female oriented game rather then a dude bro game like the first one. Immediately start talking about fag rights and mental illness. She just wants to know if there vlad darkness cocks in the game to make her vagina tingle! Not your pc bullshit lol.

They scared to portray trauma? Didn't know world of darkness about my little pony. I guess we not going have any dark characters like vamps that got raped as a kid in the game succumb to the beast or retards that turned nosferatu that now have to deal with being scorned for being butt ugly and dumb as fuck.

 

[santino27]

female fan asks if this bloodlines going be a more female oriented game rather then a dude bro game like the first one. Immediately start talking about fag rights and mental illness. She just wants to know if there vlad darkness cocks in the game to make her vagina tingle! Not your pc bullshit lol.

They scared to portray trauma? Didn't know world of darkness about my little pony. I guess we not going have any dark characters like vamps that got raped as a kid in the game succumb to the beast or retards that turned nosferatu that now have to deal with being scorned for being butt ugly and dumb as fuck.

Everyone in the game is perfect and complete as they are. And some are 'evil' monsters... but just not in a way that might make anyone nervous, unhappy, or feel bad about themselves.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Teletubbies the game. The game is going to be so woke that it will tear a hole through the fabric of time and space.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

This:

We are moving away from the 'fishmalk' portrayal for this iteration of Bloodlines, so we expect the Malkavians to be a much more unsettling or scary experience this time around.

is really good. Everyone remembers the crazy dialogue, but the best thing about playing as a Malkavian in the first one was the creepy auditory hallucinations. That shit was unsettling. Maybe the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in a game. I want that turned up to eleven.

Edit: new story about the factions, don’t think I’ve seen this before— https://www.pcgamer.com/bloodline-2s-first-faction-is-the-old-money-pioneers/

 

[ShadowSpectre]

I'm still confused as to why the player character will start as a thinblood according to that latest interview and the other ones. There are clans, so I guess we don't get to be part of one? Thinbloods are so weak-blooded (was it 13th gen and higher?) that they have no defining clan characteristics, whereas caitiff are often just clan orphans (but can certainly belong to a clan blood-wise, not necessarily thinbloods). Do we diablerize a full-blooded clan vamp early on? Did they screw with the PnP rules? At least every time a new character design or artwork comes out the characters don't all look like pre-pubescent boys like in the Outer Worlds. The entire premise is just strange. Diablerie is also supposed to be extremely rare. So we get more powerful by what, diablerize a second time to get more powerful after the first clan rank up? How does this make for the low status character we are supposed to be playing? It just seems like an extreme Mary Sue. At least Bloodlines 1 we never knew which generation we were and we could happily assume our sire was such a badass he could have killed everyone in the room but wanted to die the final death anyways and therefore just let it happen. You then got to play the low-numbered generation prodigy that got to prance around town discovering just how powerful you really are and give everyone the finger when you got fed-up playing errand-vamp.

 

[karoliner]

I'm at a loss for words.

 

[Delterius]

Lacrymas what is your opinion on the gayification of bloodlines? Do you believe that it is an impediment to creativity?

 

[fantadomat]

Lacrymas what is your opinion on the gayification of bloodlines? Do you believe that it is an impediment to creativity?

If we keep on going like this,his thread will overtake this one in a few weeks .

 

[Roguey]

one of the things we are considering pitching to the team is a part of the accessibility menu where we outline the thematic content of each mission so that you can prepare yourself ahead of time for a particular mission, choose not to play a side mission that might involve some issues you feel uncomfortable about, or grab a friend or partner to play through certain content with you.

The M-rating should be the trigger warning.

 

[Neanderthal]

one of the things we are considering pitching to the team is a part of the accessibility menu where we outline the thematic content of each mission so that you can prepare yourself ahead of time for a particular mission, choose not to play a side mission that might involve some issues you feel uncomfortable about, or grab a friend or partner to play through certain content with you.

The M-rating should be the trigger warning.

But my trigger is the letter between L and N!

 

[Ismaul]

FFS this is supposed to be a game about bloodsuckers and we get trigger warnings in side quests? Guess it means nothing triggering in the main path, a stroll through lala land.

Fucking hell why do they do this to a game that is supposed to be the complete opposite? The whole WoD basic concept is that your are a monster. Being triggering and triggered is the point.

Also I don't mind gay characters but fuck that shove-it-in-you-face "representation" agenda:

it has got a lot gayer because that reflects our increased awareness of LGBT players

 

[Alienman]

Trigger rated products... probably a thing we will see soon.

 

[Neanderthal]

Will you need a trigger warning in a gunshop?

 

[Prime Junta]

is really good. Everyone remembers the crazy dialogue, but the best thing about playing as a Malkavian in the first one was the creepy auditory hallucinations. That shit was unsettling. Maybe the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in a game. I want that turned up to eleven.

Yeah it's one of the few things that occasionally gets me a bit hyped before the cynicism kicks in again. You could do a seriously unsettling representation of psychosis in a computer game. Not just voices in your head, but visual hallucinations, the TV telling you personally secrets, characters you talk to speaking lines that aren't real, the walls in a room suddenly closing in on you or the room sinking into the earth and so on... and this being the WoD and you being a Malk, some or all of this could be very real, but you'd have no way to know for sure what. If done properly it could be terrific.

Trouble is that would take a lot of budget to do properly and I doubt they'll have it.

 

[HansDampf]

It could also make someone uncomfortable. We don't want that.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Trigger warnings before a quest will basically spoil the quest. Every time you try to suck blood from passersbys there will be trigger WARNING SEXUAL ASSAULT.