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

[agentorange]

I'm not going to buy it if it's full of homosexual and queer stuff. Who do they think their target audience is?

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[Fedora Master]

I'm not going to buy it if it's full of homosexual and queer stuff. Who do they think their target audience is?

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Which is why they said they intend to make the game more "accessible", i.e. a walking sim.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Bloodlines was great not because of its writing, but because it allowed you to use multiple paths and skills to solve quests (at least in first half of game)

I think you're alone on this one, most people say the characters and atmosphere make the game, not the quest design.
Me personally, it was never fun running into one of those "pick this lock or fuck off idiot" side quests

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, Bloodlines' setting + being peppered with fun characters are what made the game. Maybe also the inclusion of vampire powers. There are better games in the style of Bloodlines in terms of gameplay out there.

 

[Prime Junta]

This may be a /slightly/ unpopular opinion, but IMO VtM:B had remarkably good character-building mechanics also, at least in the context of other action-RPGs. There's genuine choice there, with very tangible gameplay impact. The disciplines are a huge part of it of course, but where you put your pips is pretty important too.

Gameplay-wise the thing wrong with it was the moment-to-moment stuff: motion is super floaty, brawling is just bad, and shooting only reaches the edge of acceptable when you've jacked up the skill a fair bit.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, the play was highly enjoyable.

 

[Prime Junta]

So I can vote Trump

It's set in Seattle fam. Dead people only get to vote in Chicago.

 

[agentorange]

Game looks like gay shit, btw. Can't wait for the quest where we have to collect blackmail evidence on corrupt politician Ronald Grump who is trying to ban gay vampire marriage! Or an epic VTMB callback quest where we have to collect estrogen for a male ghoul who wants to transition! Very eager to see all the dialogue filled with endless Joss Whedon-esque quips and incredibly transgressive humor like female characters saying "dick" or "fuck." Oh it's a young female character and she said FUCK and DICKS and FART haha XDD Bet you didn't expect that huh white dude?? Are you scared of how liberated our characters are? Or how about this character who is an outrageous faggot that constantly hits on your male main character and talks about getting shit shoved up his ass? Too sexy for you, bigot?

 

[Lacrymas]

Character building and clan choice helped tremendously with replayability, but I've never played the game as something other than a stealth character with the intent to pump up melee for the end-game, with only different disciplines, everything else seems clunky and counter to the atmosphere.

 

[Prime Junta]

Character building and clan choice helped tremendously with replayability, but I've never played the game as something other than a stealth character with the intent to pump up melee for the end-game, everything else seems clunky and counter to the atmosphere.

I'll grant you counter to the atmosphere, but I guarantee that playing as a gunslinger (as soon as you hit Hollywood Downtown) is much less clunky.

edit: corrected brainfart

edit edit: actually downtown is kind of borderline, but from Hollywood down, shooting is def less of a drag than brawling

 

[Yosharian]

It isn't, I was deliberately blowing something out of proportion to show what it looks like, glad you caught it

The game was banned in Australia because of an implied rape scene. Of course that's not Ellison's fault, she didn't ask for a ban (afaik). I agree with you there. But I just skimmed through her HM2 article and she did drone on about her safe space in a game where everybody gets horribly murdered (where one of the muderers is female, but she might not have been aware of that). What is even weirder is that she recognizes that the rape scene was part of a movie shoot and that framing made it apparently semi-alright, even though she wished the game could've provided that framing earlier.
So fictional rape, regardless of the artistic intent, is only okay if it's two virtual layers deep? Is only fake rape allowed and actual rape is tabu? What? I'm not automatically counting her out as a writer for video games since this is apparently her first major contribution, but this type of arbitrariness for the sake of being gender woke is just yikes to me and doesn't exactly instill confidence when Bloodlines is full of horrible shit that happens to both genders.

You're pretty much asking the same questions that Ellison herself was asking in her article. In order for a characterization of her as "arbitrary" to be valid, she would have had to make a conclusive judgement (e.g. "This game should be banned.") She never said anything like that. She certainly didn't paint the devs in a positive light, but is she required to? All she did was tell the truth, describe the scene, and observe that she found it disturbing. She even recognized the irony in being OK with overblown mass murder but finding sexual violence unsettling anyway. She liked the shooting but didn't like the rape. How is this substantially different from saying she liked the graphics but hated the music? She talked about it too long? Is that really the worst you can say about it?

Honestly, what would you rather she wrote?

Not a sequel to Bloodlines

 

[gerey]

Game looks like gay shit, btw. Can't wait for the quest where we have to collect blackmail evidence on corrupt politician Ronald Grump who is trying to ban gay vampire marriage! Or an epic VTMB callback quest where we have to collect estrogen for a male ghoul who wants to transition! Very eager to see all the dialogue filled with endless Joss Whedon-esque quips and incredibly transgressive humor like female characters saying "dick" or "fuck." Oh it's a young female character and she said FUCK and DICKS and FART haha XDD Bet you didn't expect that huh white dude?? Are you scared of how liberated our characters are? Or how about this character who is an outrageous faggot that constantly hits on your male main character and talks about getting shit shoved up his ass? Too sexy for you, bigot?

Don't forget the obligatory cuck quest where you have to prep the were-bull and watch him fuck your love interest. So progressive!

 

[mondblut]

Game looks like gay shit, btw. Can't wait for the quest where we have to collect blackmail evidence on corrupt politician Ronald Grump who is trying to ban gay vampire marriage! Or an epic VTMB callback quest where we have to collect estrogen for a male ghoul who wants to transition! Very eager to see all the dialogue filled with endless Joss Whedon-esque quips and incredibly transgressive humor like female characters saying "dick" or "fuck." Oh it's a young female character and she said FUCK and DICKS and FART haha XDD Bet you didn't expect that huh white dude?? Are you scared of how liberated our characters are? Or how about this character who is an outrageous faggot that constantly hits on your male main character and talks about getting shit shoved up his ass? Too sexy for you, bigot?

I bet they are trawling this thread for quest ideas right now. You just contributed an entire chapter's worth.

 

[Prime Junta]

Game looks like gay shit, btw. Can't wait for the quest where we have to collect blackmail evidence on corrupt politician Ronald Grump who is trying to ban gay vampire marriage! Or an epic VTMB callback quest where we have to collect estrogen for a male ghoul who wants to transition! Very eager to see all the dialogue filled with endless Joss Whedon-esque quips and incredibly transgressive humor like female characters saying "dick" or "fuck." Oh it's a young female character and she said FUCK and DICKS and FART haha XDD Bet you didn't expect that huh white dude?? Are you scared of how liberated our characters are? Or how about this character who is an outrageous faggot that constantly hits on your male main character and talks about getting shit shoved up his ass? Too sexy for you, bigot?

I bet they are trawling this thread for quest ideas right now. You just contributed an entire chapter's worth.

https://vtmb.fandom.com/wiki/Pill_Bottle

 

[moon knight]

Bad analogy. VR and Google glass etc require a new kind of peripheral. Raytracing just requires a more powerful GPU and better algorithms. Seriously: once the hardware is up to the task, raytracing is a no-brainer. It's simpler and the results look better.

No, because it's limited to Nvidia. It just another of those gameworks tech that add flavour but will never really take off in the industry. Like the volumetric fog in Assassin's Creed IV

 

[gongal]

In what point of his career did Mitsoda go full autism?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Bad analogy. VR and Google glass etc require a new kind of peripheral. Raytracing just requires a more powerful GPU and better algorithms. Seriously: once the hardware is up to the task, raytracing is a no-brainer. It's simpler and the results look better.

No, because it's limited to Nvidia. It just another of those gameworks tech that add flavour but will never really take off in the industry. Like the volumetric fog in Assassin's Creed IV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics)

 

[fantadomat]

This sexy vampire game seems to have triggered a lot of the nosferatu members of the forum

Most nosferatos here were collecting sweat sexy vampire posters using printers back in the day. Nobody have problem with sexy in a vampire game. But do you want to play a vampire game with a focus on Political Correctness,where Malkavians are seen as problematic?

 

[Riddler]

Seriously bros. Contra. Points.

She's a millennial Marxist trans feminist, formerly genderqueer, formerly of 4chan, who makes a mint with baroque videos on YouTube, portraying such diverse characters as Tabby the Antifa Catgirl, Abigail Cockbane the TERF, Freya the Fascist, Leonora LaVey, Dark Mother, and Lady Foppington. Her productions include such gems as, "Are traps gay," "Pronouns," "Incels," "The West," "Jordan Peterson," and "What's Wrong with Capitalism."

If there's somebody else who embodies the Zeitgeist of 2019 more perfectly, I want to know who xe is. Seriously.

ContraPoints, the only hope that VtM:B2 won't be anodyne pap. They need to hire her, stat.

I might not particularly like ContraPoints due to her frequent use of statistical sleight of hand/sloppy analysis but hiring her might actually accomplish the studio's stated goals. We can't have that! Better hire another video game journalist of highly questionable merit and correct politics!

 

[Reinhardt]

First you must define "sexy". In current year it's harder than you may think.
Maybe i'm old, but i don't find fat and ugly man in a wig with rotting wound where his dick was before "sexy".

 

[fantadomat]

I'm not going to buy it if it's full of homosexual and queer stuff. Who do they think their target audience is?

tumblr

Does it still exist? I thought that all the kids just use instagram or what ever its name is.

Game looks like gay shit, btw. Can't wait for the quest where we have to collect blackmail evidence on corrupt politician Ronald Grump who is trying to ban gay vampire marriage! Or an epic VTMB callback quest where we have to collect estrogen for a male ghoul who wants to transition! Very eager to see all the dialogue filled with endless Joss Whedon-esque quips and incredibly transgressive humor like female characters saying "dick" or "fuck." Oh it's a young female character and she said FUCK and DICKS and FART haha XDD Bet you didn't expect that huh white dude?? Are you scared of how liberated our characters are? Or how about this character who is an outrageous faggot that constantly hits on your male main character and talks about getting shit shoved up his ass? Too sexy for you, bigot?

LoL they are right,the internet is right wing converting machine. Two years ago you were a radical progressive that was frequently going on rating rampage at anything remotely center or right . Did you found yourself a decent man or what?

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, I gotta say agentorange, I could have sworn that just a few weeks ago you were saying that posts like that were tiresome clickbait that was killing the Codex.

*literally every new game*

LOL I BET IT WILL HAVE TRANNIES

*post gets a bunch of funny ratings*

Hard to resist the dopamine rush.

 

[vonAchdorf]

IMake VtM:B2 a blood-drenched trans-feminist revenge fantasy and I might take notice.

I'd play that, but it's more likely, that the game will end up as lecturing and edgy as a progressive Netflix show.

 

[vota DC]

In original game I can't wipe out anarchs. I can't wipe out Camarilla too, just decapitate their leadership. I can wipe out just Kuei and Sabbath. Maybe I can wipe out all factions this time:
1) Seattle is Seattle. Ten times less people than Los Angeles. Even Homer laughed about it.
2)Being a Paradox game they will put new stuff everytime because DLC so high chances more content than Bloodlines 1 after some years and high chances very bad vanilla
3)One leader of anarchs seems to be a muslim that also hate misogynist people. If I am muslim leader I will wipe out him and his anarchs because he doesn't want to put women in their place, if I am a feminist I do the same because Islam is against women.

 

[LESS T_T]

PlayStation blog by Brian Mitsoda: https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...squerade-bloodlines-2-revealed-out-next-year/

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Revealed, Out Next Year

It took an unlikely sequence of events to make this cult-hit sequel happen... but it's happening.


It started with a text: “Would you be interested in working on a Bloodlines 2?” The text was from my good friend, Ka’ai Cluney, and my first thought was, “Would I?” But as we texted back and forth, something happened — an idea started to emerge, the embryonic formation of what we are announcing today: Bloodlines 2. It’s still overwhelming to think about how many stars had to align to make this happen.

It’s not every day that a property gets resurrected after so many years, and there are multiple trials that need to be faced in order to even make it to the production stage. Ka’ai and I started fleshing out the world of Bloodlines 2 over a series of drinks in late 2015 — the iteration was rapid. Ka’ai had already talked Andy Kipling and Russ Nelson (the founders of Hardsuit) into setting up a pitch with Paradox after hearing that they had just acquired the World of Darkness IP. Paradox was eager to meet, and we ended up pitching the game in February 2016 at DICE.

We walked out of the room confident that all parties were energized about the idea – but it was a longshot for such a small, unknown company to snag a project like this. This is one of those rare times as a dev where you’re pretty sure it’s going to take a million coin flips to come up heads for all the paperwork to be signed, but shortly after the pitch Paradox and Hardsuit Labs were making a sequel to one of the biggest cult RPGs of all time.

Who is Hardsuit Labs, you might be asking? When I first started working with Hardsuit, it reminded me a lot of another small studio full of ambitious veterans and juniors: Troika Games, the developers of Bloodlines 1. Andy, Russ and Ka`ai put together a group that can only be described as a super-team of developers. Today, there are over 60 people working on Bloodlines 2 at Hardsuit Labs. And we’ve set our first major title right here in our home city of Seattle.

Why bring the World of Darkness to Seattle? Seattle has always attracted pioneers, artists, and opportunists — some dreamers, some criminals, sometimes both. In the 21st century, it’s a city whose identity is constantly struggling to retain its legacy and define its future. It’s a city of artists and craftsman, but also home to some of the biggest corporations in the world. It’s a conflict between the old and new, the weird and the wealthy, and an ideal setting for Vampire: The Masquerade. Bloodlines 2 is a reflection of modern Seattle and within it we’ve built a rich mythology based on the city’s history and present, filtered through the lens of the World of Darkness. You will stalk these streets, you will meet its power players, and you will claw and charm your way into the inner circle of Kindred society.

It’s been an amazing experience to return to the World of Darkness and make the true sequel to Bloodlines that you’ve all been waiting for. We could not be more excited to revive this universe after 15 years and — for the first time ever — bring Bloodlines to a PlayStation platform! Expect to hear more about the factions, clans, story and RPG systems in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 in the months to come. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will release on PlayStation 4 in 2020!

I wonder if this will get weekly dev diary like other Paradox games, or are a year of dev diaries are too much for an RPG like this.

 

[agentorange]

Yeah, I gotta say agentorange, I could have sworn that just a few weeks ago you were saying that posts like that were tiresome clickbait that was killing the Codex.

*literally every new game*

LOL I BET IT WILL HAVE TRANNIES

*post gets a bunch of funny ratings*

Hard to resist the dopamine rush.

Don't act like it's some all or nothing deal. I still dislike it when a quality thread is derailed with irrelevant bullshit, or when people make unfounded accusations of a game or movie being infested with SJWism where there is none or little. However this is a speculative garbage bin thread that already exceeds 100 pages and will be 800 pages by the time the game is out so I could not give less of a shit.

And yeah, tell me more about dopamine rushes when you go around doing nothing but reposting clickbait twitter feeds and news posts, you fucking sentient buzzfeed article.