People News Brian Mitsoda fired from Bloodlines 2

[ga♥]

Btw the lesson here is: never never never preorder (or fund a kickstarter/indiegogo/whatever). NEVER.
If I had preordered first thing I would do is finding a way for a refund right now.

 

[luj1]

Alexandre has been in the industry for more than 20 years and has worked on iconic franchises such as Assassin’s Creed

 

[toro]

Something is rotten in the state of Seattle.

People don't just get fired without a reason. The company would have had to give him a reason. He must he hiding something.

Spoiler

his gloves!?

Spoiler

seriously, gloves don't talk

 

[luj1]

in his case it's probably more likely that he'd be removed because Paradox want to cut woke content.

Cool story, shill

 

[luj1]

His work on the game was pretty much done and THEN he gets fired? Did they just want to save some money near the end or what?

The bad rep from this is worse than a few checks

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

But why?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Jesus Christ.

I don't get it. I'm not happy about the news, obviously, but teaching rats hide & seek is awesome and cute.

I like rats too. However the problem is that reward&tapping psychology is used to create gameplay that manipulate players into spending money on microtranslations. It's knowledge used only for evil.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I like Bloodlines 1 as much as the next guy, but after Alpha Protocol and Dead State -edit: and let us not forget TToN!- (both of which I also actually like!) I'm pretty confused as to how the prevailing theory here is basically "BRIAN MITSODA DID NOTHING WRONG! IT'S A DEEP STATE CONSPIRACY!". Dude is a dumpsterfire fire, albeit a talented one.

 

[yes plz]

I like Bloodlines 1 as much as the next guy, but after Alpha Protocol and Dead State (both of which I also actually like!) I'm pretty confused as to how the prevailing theory here is basically "BRIAN MITSODA DID NOTHING WRONG! IT'S A DEEP STATE CONSPIRACY!". Dude is a dumpsterfire fire, albeit a talented one.

iirc, very little survived from Mitsoda's draft of Alpha Protocol.

I agree about Dead State, however. After that mediocre disappointment much of my enthusiasm for his work vanished.

 

[luj1]

bunch of dangerhair marketing/writing/art holes picked out another dangerhair marketing hole to play favourites with

letting any of them go would trigger collective resistance

This is actually the more likely scenario. It was Brian vs snowflakes > less painful just to let him go than argue (they sucked him dry anyway)

 

[Zer0wing]

Has any game ever released after massive internal changes during production (not pre-production/planning) and turned out remotely decent?

Doom 2016

 

[Nano]

iirc, very little survived from Mitsoda's draft of Alpha Protocol.

All the characters are Mitsoda-created, just rewritten (mandated by Sega when the game was being rewritten, probably to save time and art assets). Steven Heck in particular was kept very close to Mitsoda's vision.

 

[Thonius]

Hmm so they looked over staff and picked one who is not going to tell "rape I was raped #metoo"?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I like Bloodlines 1 as much as the next guy, but after Alpha Protocol and Dead State (both of which I also actually like!) I'm pretty confused as to how the prevailing theory here is basically "BRIAN MITSODA DID NOTHING WRONG! IT'S A DEEP STATE CONSPIRACY!". Dude is a dumpsterfire fire, albeit a talented one.

iirc, very little survived from Mitsoda's draft of Alpha Protocol.

I agree about Dead State, however. After that mediocre disappointment much of my enthusiasm for his work vanished.

Dead State was ...ok, it was just very clear that the majority of dev time was not spent on the writing.

Mitsoda strikes me as something close to Tim Schaefer: a very talented writer with aspirations towards management positions that they are supremely ill-suited towards. They need to be kept on a very tight leash.

 

[Bara]

remember that time paradox got in international trouble for accusing Chechnya of genociding gays

Wasn't that more Whitewolfs fault then Paradoxes?

 

[curry]

Has any game ever released after massive internal changes during production (not pre-production/planning) and turned out remotely decent?

Sleeping Dogs

 

[The_Mask]

Maybe working on a game for 5 years, and then forcing the publisher to extend everything by another year, may have something to do with him getting the boot.

 

[deuxhero]

Has any game ever released after massive internal changes during production (not pre-production/planning) and turned out remotely decent?

Sleeping Dogs

It was OK, but there's some serious flaws (countering being easy and the answer to everything, game becoming a shooter with wildly differing tone after the wedding) that likely could have been fixed with a less clusterfuck development.

 

[RK47]

It's been 5 years? Wow. Time flies.

 

[Tweed]

I guess I'm double not buying this game now.

 

[RapineDel]

People underestimate how much "attitude" and "culture" are prioritised within offices like this.

It seems the most likely scenario here is the game was well over budget with no release in site for what Brian wanted for the game along with the original design blueprint. During the last meeting where the delay was decided, Paradox told Hardsuit Labs that this game needed to be out by Q1/2 2021 and they were bringing in someone to ensure that was the case. Brian and his co worker who were aligned pushed back against this, probably made their dis-taste for the decision quite well known around the office and Paradox removed them to ensure the attitude and direction of the team wasn't affected.

The Ubisoft guy just seems like a business person, he's like a poor man's Rod Ferguson who will come in, ensure that the game is cobbled together to resemble a game with a beginning, middle and end and he'll likely be gone after the game ships. He won't give a toss about the game's vision, just about getting something out they can call "finished" and be damned with the cuts.

I feel for Brian, I didn't think much of his involvement originally but it seems like he did want to give the fans something great and was probably let down both by being too ambitious himself and the fact Hardsuit Labs are likely a hack development team with no real talent or experience. Paradox expected way too much and they should been realistic and ensured the scope of the game was much smaller right from the start.

 

[Santander02]

Mitsoda was the sole remaining shield fantards of this upcoming abortion of a game had to defend the sjw, popamole devs working on this mess.

We can now give it a certified "It will be shit" skyway seal of disapproval.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Wow, didn't know he and Annie divorced. So DoubleBear is dead? Too bad.

Also, surprised but not surprised about this.

 

[Goral]

It's more like if content has to be cut, the crazy woke stuff might be the first thing to go. Cara Ellison's trigger warning menu idea? Yeah, that's likely not happening now.

Right, and that's why they've fired Brian and that other guy and not Cara whose wokeness is over 9000 lvl? Same goes for Outstar. Don't know how much they're paying you but they should have fired you too.

I strongly doubt this was the result of political stances or personal drama. It sounds like a troubled game development and the publisher (who is also a 30% owner of the studio) was putting strong pressure on the developer to right the ship before it sank. So they had to provide their publisher a drastic plan of action for how they were going to do that. These layoffs were probably the result of the personnel shuffling part of that plan.

This doesn't make any sense. They've fired the most important person of this project and shot themselves in the knee (and lost many customers BTW) just to save a few bucks? lol

If that was the case they would have fired other people (like Cara, why the fuck is she still working there but not Brian, or "Outstar" for that matter). Also, firing someone isn't the only way to cut costs, they could have always reduced salaries. And from what Mitsoda said/implied (and there's no reason to not believe him) most of the story is done and at no point has Paradox signaled any dissatisfaction with his work so your theory seem implausible. The problem with delays has most likely little to do with writing but much with programming and the rest. Why have we seen only one short (and boring and bland) gameplay from Paradox even though at the time they've been saying they're only a year away from release? Not to mention that they've hired another guy to replace Mitsoda.

 

[Wunderbar]

In what way is Brian Mitsoda the most important person on the project? Purely from a name recognition perspective from the more dedicated fans? Making games is about a lot more than that, and he was just the narrative lead if I read the article correctly.

narrative lead is a pretty important position if the game is a storyfag action rpg.