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

Wesp5

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
1,754
I'm half-way through the podcaste that Roguey linked (https://www.rebind.io/the-rebind-po...on-vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-ii-4799/) and there is some interesting info to be found. Once BL2 comes out it might give us some insight on whether Brian and Carla were too woke or not woke enough ;). I don't know what Re:Bind is about, but the interviewer really was pushing it. Asking about presentation of mental issues, transgender people and even disabled NPCs. While agreeing overall, they pretty much evaded most of these issues as not being critical for the game. Malkavians will be darker, but players will still recognize them. Transgender people will not be central especially as older vampires don't care about genders, which is spot on :). There might be some trans NPCs, but pronouns or similar won't make it because they can't be translated into other languages. Disabled NPCs won't play a role as well because of model animations, but there might be a deaf NPC later. So if pronouns and trans people and disabled play a big role in BL2, we know when the shift happened...
 

RaggleFraggle

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Mar 23, 2022
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990
Honestly, the best outcome is that the game is quietly canceled. If it releases then it will almost certainly bomb and that will kill the urban fantasy genre in video games for the foreseeable future. Publishers will no longer want to fund urban fantasy games when the biggest one so far bombs spectacularly due to incompetence. (Yes, I know that’s stupid but that’s just how the market works.)
 
Joined
Jul 28, 2020
Messages
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I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)
Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!
J9rZZot.jpg
 

Reever

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
534
I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)
Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!
J9rZZot.jpg
How you gonna LARP as a mentally challenged weeb and not put this in your spoiler
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
They be better off making this a turn based sequel like divinity or diablo like redepemtion. Scaling walls jumping around being a bullet sponge. Its impossible for them to make the AI not look janky when you give them as many variables as the player has access to.
 

GhostCow

Balanced Gamer
Patron
Joined
Jan 2, 2020
Messages
3,994
I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)
Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!
J9rZZot.jpg
Leave my oshi out of this!
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
Latest Chinese Room newsletter saying they still can't announce what they're working on but confirm both their projects use Unreal Engine 5 (Hardsuit's was UE4) and their studio has grown to 100 people.
We know we've been incredibly tight-lipped about the projects we're working on, but we have two games in development using the brand new Unreal Engine 5. So albeit that is all that we can reveal at this stage, we're just so thankful for all the support along the way. Our team is larger than ever, nearing 100 people in the core team, as well as our partners, all working towards the same goal of bringing the compelling worlds and stories to you.
 

Herumor

Scholar
Joined
May 1, 2018
Messages
553
Brian Mitsoda was fired from Obsidian once (by Chris Avellone, no less!).

What was the given reason and has there been actual confirmation from someone at Obsidian for the real reason?

Why is nobody else making urban fantasy rpgs with original IPs?

Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?
 

gerey

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
3,472
Chinese Room
Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.

Who the fuck thought they were a good fit to develop a new Bloodlines? They have the same retarded political views as the previous band of retards, but even less of an understanding on how to make a game.

Is Bloodlines 2 some elaborate tax evasion or money laundering scam Paradox is running?
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.

Who the fuck thought they were a good fit to develop a new Bloodlines? They have the same retarded political views as the previous band of retards, but even less of an understanding on how to make a game.

Is Bloodlines 2 some elaborate tax evasion or money laundering scam Paradox is running?

All the people who worked on those walking sims were laid off with the exception of the company founder. Claims were made that it was all Sumo Digital's idea and Wester made the claim that if it wasn't for that pitch they would have cancelled the whole thing outright.
 

RaggleFraggle

Ask me about VTM
Joined
Mar 23, 2022
Messages
990
Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?
Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others. The thing is, there’s basically no overlap between the demographics. Almost all urban fantasy fiction is romance novels/shows. Seeking brand recognition is pointless.

What brand recognition does an obscure tabletop game have anyway? Bloodlines was a commercial failure with a cult following that Paradox has consistently failed to appeal to. Their licensed games they’ve flooded the market with so far suck and the IP is of questionable value at best, especially after Paradox has driven it into the ground by polluting the market with shovelware and alienating the tabletop fandom. I’m surprised devs kept asking to tack it on these unrelated games they had in the oven.

That doesn’t explain the lack of indie titles though. There’s loads of indie cyberpunk/horror/pixel/whatever games that aren’t tied to an existing brand. Yet urban fantasy is non-existent unless Paradox throws a game jam and then gets an astonishing 80 entries that the devs are somehow too lazy to make unless they can use this one shitty 30 years old pretentious emo goth IP. (Although I suppose the cash prize is pretty compelling.) They’re probably all crap anyway but it’s still astonishing.

So far the most we got was the dungeon crawler Bloodlust: Shadowhunter, which was apparently profitable enough that it got two sequels. I thought the engine would be great for a story rich crpg and I’m surprised the dev never did anything like that.
 

GhostCow

Balanced Gamer
Patron
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Messages
3,994
Anita Blake
Literal pornography. I quit once I got to the book with the hermaphrodite and I only lasted that long because I was an edgy teenager at the time. Please don't give anyone any ideas about making a game out of this series. Gaming is degenerate enough. I would have suggested something from the Mercedes Thompson series.
 

RaggleFraggle

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Mar 23, 2022
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990
Anita Blake
Literal pornography. I quit once I got to the book with the hermaphrodite and I only lasted that long because I was an edgy teenager at the time. Please don't give anyone any ideas about making a game out of this series. Gaming is degenerate enough. I would have suggested something from the Mercedes Thompson series.
I knew the books were bad but I didn’t know they got that bad.

Anyway, I have ideas and outlines for an urban fantasy game myself. I’d really like to write a full script but without all the other stuff you’d need to make a decent game I can’t motivate myself. Unfortunately I didn’t learn drawing, instruments, or programming so script writing is all I can do at present.
 

Herumor

Scholar
Joined
May 1, 2018
Messages
553
Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others.

You've just proved my point. None of those have brand recognition and Anne Rice is just gay romance and BDMS that happens to involve vampires.
 
Unwanted

Don Salieri

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 5, 2022
Messages
78
Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.
Look at this pleb who didn't get Machine for Pigs, it was a better game than the original Amnesia and if you think otherwise you should go back and replay both. Turns out the first game don't holds up while Pigs is as relevant as ever.
 

RaggleFraggle

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Joined
Mar 23, 2022
Messages
990
Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others.

You've just proved my point. None of those have brand recognition and Anne Rice is just gay romance and BDMS that happens to involve vampires.
Brand recognition is overrated anyway. Unless it's a huge brand like a movie franchise or something (although those are getting less and less valuable as studios ruin them), it's not going to be big enough to make much of a difference in profit unless you're making a cheap shovelware game in an uber niche genre where a couple thousand purchases by the tiny dedicated fandom of an obscure IP are considered amazing success beyond your wildest dreams. If you're making a free to play in an oversaturated genre, then brand recognition is completely irrelevant because you're guaranteed to turn huge profits unless your game is so sucky that it drives players away. Elden Ring and Apex Legends are completely original and they're huge. I'd think advertising would be a more important thing to focus on.

Also, the IP may restrict your game more than it helps. When Troika made BL they weren't fans of the IP and wanted to do their own stuff (Activision forced them to use the license), but due to contract stipulations they had to contact WW whenever they wanted to make changes and that proved to be extremely laborious and may have negatively affected development.

In any case, that doesn't explain the dearth of indie games.
 

Delterius

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Dec 12, 2012
Messages
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Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?
the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?
the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.
codex will look at deadfire and go "waow I wish more games were like this!!!"
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.
I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.
 

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.
I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.
The key operating words here are mainstream success. KCD and Disco are not jockeying for the forgotten realms audience. They transcend the pure rpg audience by default. A better case study would be Shadowrun. As far as combat rpgs go the Shadowrun trilogy is rather garbage. As far as settings go it is non standard in both ways: not only futuristic, but having elves in the middle of cyberpunk should be enough to weird out more than one buyer. And yet it was all successful anyways. So it's not impossible to succeed outside of realmesque, you just gotta appeal to the wider normiedom than the normies who mostly play rpgs.
 

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