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

[compvet24]

Wasn't the game almost finished? Why stop suddenly at the finish line?

Do we know that? Because if the game is almost finished, Paradox's idea of hiring a former Ubisoft guy as project lead to wrap things up should have worked. There would be no need to drop Hardsuit Labs and bring in a whole new studio. Oh, and they already said the game is not coming up this year. None of it points to the game being almost done.

Honestly I think they were just lying and pretending to everyone that it was nearly finished. Cyberpunk basically did the same so yah.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm basing this off of the release dates before they cancelled it entirely. It was originally supposed to come out like a year ago

 

[Latelistener]

Mitsoda and Kai were sacked and the ubisoft hatchet man joined shortly after. Paradox most likely lost faith in Mitsoda's and Kai's ability to manage the project.

Wasn't Mitsoda the lead narrative designer? If that's the case, hard to see how any mismanagement would be his fault.

If it wasn't then Paradox would have no reason to fire him so abruptly. They would've just fired Cluney and found a way to deal with Mitsoda, i.e. by offering him a place in the new team or at least as a consultant for the narrative and characters. Seems like they cut all the ties with him.

It's clear to me that since they were buddies Mitsoda had more role in this than it may seem.

 

[Roguey]

I remain somewhat confident that Brian was fired because he was Ka'ai's partner/accomplice in crime in the grift they pulled off. "We have Brian Mitsoda" is the only reason they gave this particular project by this particular team the greenlight.

I'm basing this off of the release dates before they cancelled it entirely. It was originally supposed to come out like a year ago

Delusional optimism on behalf of all parties. e.g. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...adox-interactive.126124/page-400#post-6868140

I went digging around various forums to see if any ~insiders~ were talking post-cancellation and didn't find anything. Did see this Sawyer post from last December though

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3882000&userid=17931

Again, I have no direct insight into anything on this game, but I'd guess even 2021 is optimistic given that they booted two leads and installed a new director. I've worked on one game that had a 6 month turnaround following the removal of two creative leads (Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows). It only shipped because the game's features and content were gutted and Midway death marched the team (then shut the studio down immediately after).

If I had to bet, I'd go with the first half of '22 (or it gets canceled).

The Hatchet Man likely told Paradox that even the first half of 22 was an impossibility with this studio.

 

[Maculo]

SS2 also had the excuse that the game constantly talks about how everything on the ship is falling apart due to being built by the lowest bidder. Still way too fast, but at least there's a believable story reason.

This was just a bad excuse, because you know what? The stupid wrench held the whole game. No, together with all the backtracking the reason behind this was to make a short game appear much longer!

Interesting, I never thought of it as intentional padding in SS2, although that does make sense. I thought it was more so to stress new players out with resource management (hypos, ammo, etc.) by throwing respawning enemies at them.

How many legacy/throwback games have imploded as of late? VTMB2, SS3?

 

[Grunker]

It's funny how in the 00s and 10s the paradigm was evil-publisher-poor-developer and the 20s are starting off with double trouble incompetent-developer-poor-publisher: Chaos Chronicles Forever (Realms Beyond) and Bloodlines 2

Roguey must be having a field day watching all these Codex heroes fall

 

[jungl]

how hard is it to make a early 2000 hub based wrpg. They really basic design wise obsidian cooked up outer worlds in what a year? Maybe paradox has too high expectations.

 

[Dycedarg]

It's funny how in the 00s and 10s the paradigm was evil-publisher-poor-developer and the 20s are starting off with double trouble incompetent-developer-poor-publisher: Chaos Chronicles Forever (Realms Beyond) and Bloodlines 2

People actually believed this was how things worked:


After the Kickstarter era, many developers had the chance to actually prove themselves. Some made amazing games, while others didn't do so well.

 

[Grunker]

It's funny how in the 00s and 10s the paradigm was evil-publisher-poor-developer and the 20s are starting off with double trouble incompetent-developer-poor-publisher: Chaos Chronicles Forever (Realms Beyond) and Bloodlines 2

People actually believed this was how things worked:


After the Kickstarter era, many developers had the chance to actually prove themselves. Some made amazing games, while others didn't do so well.

Pretty much my point, yep.

 

[DeepOcean]

To be fair, before, we only had the account of the developers as they were the only ones willing to talk and, as expected, they were the angels of ths story, now with everyone and his mother with social media accounts, we can watch dysfunctionality and incompetence from all parties involved in real time including nasty breakups and social media drama like real time reality TV.

 

[Fenix]

All these stories about greedy pablishers were true - the lie was that devs are pigeons, cause every dev want to become big publisher.
Simple knowledge of rules of capitalism enough to understand that.
Yesterday they were pigeons, but they got the chance and used it to become big publisher.
Read Marks.

 

[Ninjerk]

Wasn't Wasteland 3 pretty warmly received here?

 

[Roguey]

Wasn't Wasteland 3 pretty warmly received here?

It's an improvement over everything else inXile has done but not a modern classic which is what everyone was hoping for back in 2012.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Publishers did nothing wrong.

 

[copebot]

In the past, so few games were released that it seemed that when publishers cancelled games, they were preventing artists from releasing amazing work into the world. Nowadays, more games are released in a month than were once released in a year, and most of them are garbage. There are few filters because up-front distribution costs have been replaced with the 30% app store / Steam cut, and even that is not a limiter because games can be distributed without app stores as well. Instead of developers scheming for advantage in corporate politics, many of them just run hustles on the public directly and run away with the money. We know that when publishers cancel games, it's probably because the game was shit, because otherwise they would have been able to make money selling it.

Considering how much work had to have been done already on this game, it's surprising that it's more or less getting canned. It had to have been really terrible for them to forgo selling several hundred thousand copies and getting Mixed reviews on Steam. Paradox purchased White Wolf in 2015, and since then, they have released nothing from that IP. They could have put out multiple simple games from the IP in that time with any number of developers. Paradox isn't allergic to publishing mediocre midlist games. The IP's last owner just procrastinated with it for ages also, releasing nothing while pretending to work (AKA boss' friends getting paid salaries to jerk off) on an "MMO" for something like 30 years. I think part of the issue is probably just that the White Wolf license and the World of Darkness in general is just not that unique. It has some good ideas, but ultimately it is nearly the same as just inventing your own story about bloodsuckers. The lore of WoD is more of a constraint than something that resonates with millions and millions of people. There are some nerds who know what a Malkavian is and what a Tzimisce does, but there aren't that many of them and most of those people will be picky and have high standards based on the previous game in the series.

The other issue for a woke story-based game is that vampire fiction is fundamentally about suave mind-controlling rapists. Feminist authors are going to want to fuck up a winning commercial formula by subverting it.

 

[Nutria]

he other issue for a woke story-based game is that vampire fiction is fundamentally about suave mind-controlling rapists.

I'd go as far as to say that you're overthinking this. Vampire fiction involves human sexuality, and that is already enough to make it dangerous in today's culture. The holy grail for game journos is to call out a game for being problematic, so if you get anywhere near a topic like that you're going to have 50 of them jumping on you. I wish I lived in an era that was more open to talking about these things, like maybe the goddamn 1890s.

 

[KateMicucci]

The holy grail for game journos is to call out a game for being problematic, so if you get anywhere near a topic like that you're going to have 50 of them jumping on you.

Scary.

 

[gerey]

over everything else inXile has done

So marginally less shit but still shit?

and since then, they have released nothing from that IP

Considering Paradox had to fire pretty much every PnP White Wolf writer to save themselves from getting charlie hebdod by angry Chechens is it any surprise? The stench of leftist incompetence permeates everything related to the World of Darkness IP (and pretty much everything else White Wolf shits out nowadays).

Granted, the people that originally conceived WoD were also left-leaning, but they created and developed the IP during a very different time, where actual talent was both required and sought after - and it shows.

I suspect the game wasn't merely abhorrent, but in such a broken/unfinished state that it would have cost them more to invest more funds to push it through the door than to just cancel it outright and triage the bleeding.

so if you get anywhere near a topic like that you're going to have 50 of them jumping on you

The sad thing is that nobody but the publishers/developers themselves give a flying fuck what game journalists think (because they are leftists themselves). These vermin only have as much power as publishers/developers are willing to give them. If EA or Ubisoft were to come over to IGN or Kotaku and tell them to stop with the retarded hitpieces and attention-whoring or they're gonna get backlisted does anyone here think the gaming press would push the issue?

Western entertainment nowadays is one big, gay, Marxist circlejerk of leftists sucking each other off - making something the masses might actually want to read/watch/play is of tertiary importance.

 

[DeepOcean]

he other issue for a woke story-based game is that vampire fiction is fundamentally about suave mind-controlling rapists.

I'd go as far as to say that you're overthinking this. Vampire fiction involves human sexuality, and that is already enough to make it dangerous in today's culture. The holy grail for game journos is to call out a game for being problematic, so if you get anywhere near a topic like that you're going to have 50 of them jumping on you. I wish I lived in an era that was more open to talking about these things, like maybe the goddamn 1890s.

They will gladly ruin your career to fuel all those 500 useless click bait articles about how rape is a problem on the gaming industry, nowdays, the criteria for hiring on some retarded companies is if your twitter is popular enough and what best route you have than to pretend being relevant by running another human being on the ground for some pats in the back?

If you are invited on an UN panel for woman bravery against harassment, now you are set for life on the grift of pretending to be an worthy human being.

 

[Semiurge]

The sad thing is that nobody but the publishers/developers themselves give a flying fuck what game journalists think (because they are leftists themselves). These vermin only have as much power as publishers/developers are willing to give them. If EA or Ubisoft were to come over to IGN or Kotaku and tell them to stop with the retarded hitpieces and attention-whoring or they're gonna get backlisted does anyone here think the gaming press would push the issue?

Western entertainment nowadays is one big, gay, Marxist circlejerk of leftists sucking each other off - making something the masses might actually want to read/watch/play is of tertiary importance.

he other issue for a woke story-based game is that vampire fiction is fundamentally about suave mind-controlling rapists.

I'd go as far as to say that you're overthinking this. Vampire fiction involves human sexuality, and that is already enough to make it dangerous in today's culture. The holy grail for game journos is to call out a game for being problematic, so if you get anywhere near a topic like that you're going to have 50 of them jumping on you. I wish I lived in an era that was more open to talking about these things, like maybe the goddamn 1890s.

They will gladly ruin your career to fuel all those 500 useless click bait articles about how rape is a problem on the gaming industry, nowdays, the criteria for hiring on some retarded companies is if your twitter is popular enough and what best route you have than to pretend being relevant by running another human being on the ground for some pats in the back?

If you are invited on an UN panel for woman bravery against harassment, now you are set for life on the grift of pretending to be an worthy human being.

You have earned yourselves brofists for those posts, coming early april.

 

[DeepOcean]

Wasn't Wasteland 3 pretty warmly received here?

If it had two to three times the content and a functional combat system, would be a pretty damn good RPG, how it is, it is a decent RPG to waste some time in, more or less on the same category of the shadowrun RPGs, however, those have the advantage of having a much better setting and stories.

Its biggest weakness is the lack of originality through and through and it is also damn short, what thinking about, it is a pretty good compliment, NumaNuma was also short but felt like endless torture so it is an improvement over Inxile previous games.

 

[Helios]

Western entertainment nowadays is one big, gay, Marxist circlejerk of leftists sucking each other off - making something the masses might actually want to read/watch/play is of tertiary importance.

So you're saying western private businesses operating solely with (private) profit in mind are marxist and leftist? You nerds need to learn a thing or two about the world you live in... They are undoubtedly gay though, no questions about that.

Anyway, happy this POS got (effectively) cancelled. Tired of seeing clueless business shills reviving old, well-respected brands just because they can't come up with anything new. As someone has already mentioned it here, PDX should hand it over to some euro-based company as the american plague of SJW-ism as a basis for gaining publicity and access to quick buck is an antithesis to creating anything of quality.

Also, I think the 'game' was nowhere near to being finished - they probably got some half baked locations, lots of cuckified and manginated dialogue by glove-man and his new dominatrix and some random shooter mechanics. If it was playable from beginning to end, in any form, pretty sure PDX would have decided to release it soon, they're greedy fucks after all. But let's think about other options - if it truly WAS playable and simply didn't meet PDX stadards (whatever these might be) then they have to be retarded to think they can get anyone to create a decent RPG in WoD nowadays, especially without paying serious buck and hiring some actuallly experienced studio such as Obsidian. But even that is out of the question now. They don't have access to competent and experienced studios for this kind of game, so it will always end up being mediocre at best. Better for them to spend some extra millions on mindless PR and go the CPDR route - release well-marketed steaming pile of pos, so at least hyped kids will buy it.

Can't wait to see how it all unfolds, hopefully the project will die the final death soon and drag PDX to oblivion where all these greedy and clueless fucks belong.

 

[gaussgunner]

It's funny how in the 00s and 10s the paradigm was evil-publisher-poor-developer and the 20s are starting off with double trouble incompetent-developer-poor-publisher: Chaos Chronicles Forever (Realms Beyond) and Bloodlines 2

Roguey must be having a field day watching all these Codex heroes fall

I never worked on a big game but I never resented having a publisher/manager worrying about money and schedule and riding my ass when I'm on a big software project. You need the pressure to maintain focus and get it done. Devs in charge = vaporware.

 

[gaussgunner]

I hated the fact that the weapons disintegrated

I hear that a lot, but breakable weapons are a huge part of emergent gameplay. It forces to improvise in combat and creates unique situations.

And that differs from running out of ammo... how exactly?

You can count your ammo.

 

[Azdul]

I never worked on a big game but I never resented having a publisher/manager worrying about money and schedule and riding my ass when I'm on a big software project. You need the pressure to maintain focus and get it done. Devs in charge = vaporware.

Games are not fundamentally different than any other software. You can either hire expendable retards and play a slave driver, or hire competent engineers and let them do their job.

From engineering perspective Bloodlines 2 is paint-by-numbers project. The problem for Hard Suit Labs is that they are located in Seattle - so there is no good reason for competent people to work for them when there are plenty of more stable and better paying jobs around.