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

[Delterius]

The only question I could image here is how he manages to put being a vampire under a hood with being a Muslim

Isn't the penitent religious vampire an ancient trope at this point.

 

[vota DC]

Why wouldn't it be real? A gay muslim vampire is supposed to be bad, because... ?
The only question I could image here is how he manages to put being a vampire under a hood with being a Muslim (being as ignorant about Islam as I am), but the thread you pointed out explains that pretty well to me.
Seriously, it's not like there are no homosexual Muslims, so depicting them in a game is not an issue.

Or is it that he's backing "progressive" norms? He's a gay Muslim, what do you expect him to do? Establish Sharia law?

He's a gay black Muslim feminist (who probably vapes and was vegan when he was human). It comes off as a parody of the clamor for diversity. Such people probably exist irl, but as with all cognitive dissonance-inducing states, it comes with either "creative interpretations" (to the point of hyperinterprations) or a lot of mental anguish. But that's besides the point, the context of his introduction is not the best one and it should've been obvious that people would either cringe or riot. Also, gay, black, Muslim and feminist aren't character traits, yet writers use these things as if they are.

It would epic a Jehovah Witness vampire.

 

[Wesp5]

1 - Vanilla Bloodlines didn't have histories, patches added them and mods restored them.

Technically it did have it, it was just set to 0, Wesp's patch just unblocked it. These histories were created by Troika devs not modders.

Wrong in all accounts. Histories were just as absent from Vanilla Bloodlines as the hidden maps restored by Wesp, or the entire ending section that was added latter. Some early mods did restore the Troika made histories. Wesp didn't do just that, he rebalanced them around --- as the histories weren't a finished feature at all.

Wesp5
Care to comment on this?

Goral is right. Most of the actual histories were made by Troika, they were just disabled in the original game! Probably because some were not finished, some were outright broken, some didn't work with other bonuses and most were distributed all over the place regarding to the clans. So I fixed all of this and made it that each clan got 7 histories in the end...

 

[Delterius]

Probably because some were not finished, some were outright broken, some didn't work with other bonuses and most were distributed all over the place regarding to the clans.

That is what I said. Did we even figure out what Malkavian history with luck was supposed to give?

 

[Technomancer]

1 - Vanilla Bloodlines didn't have histories, patches added them and mods restored them.

Technically it did have it, it was just set to 0, Wesp's patch just unblocked it. These histories were created by Troika devs not modders.

Pretty sure wesp5 modified them a bid because not all of them were working properly and fully complete. Like there was a tremere history that supposed to buff your blood magic but there was also an artifact that did the same and they did not stack making it pointless so he changed it. So not all of them 100% vanilla or even finished originally.

 

[Storyfag]

No Camarilla or neutral clan will associate with a thin-blood diablerist, let alone make them their agent.

Of course the neutrals would. Setites? They'd love your corruption obviously. Assamites? Diablerists themselves. Giovanni? They just want more souls. Ravnos? The few remaining are also diablerists. Of the Camarilla, I can easily see Nosferatu, Tremere and Ventrue entering into shady deals of all kinds, if it suits them.

 

[Delterius]

No Camarilla or neutral clan will associate with a thin-blood diablerist, let alone make them their agent.

Of course the neutrals would. Setites? They'd love your corruption obviously. Assamites? Diablerists themselves. Giovanni? They just want more souls. Ravnos? The few remaining are also diablerists. Of the Camarilla, I can easily see Nosferatu, Tremere and Ventrue entering into shady deals of all kinds, if it suits them.

And like I said, Autarki is another option.

 

[Ismaul]

Gay black Muslim feminist is the ultimate checklist of character traits for any progressive.

You're missing the gender: woman / trans.

 

[Ismaul]

He's a gay black Muslim feminist (who probably vapes and was vegan when he was human). It comes off as a parody of the clamor for diversity.

Now that I think of it, Rudi makes perfect sense. I mean sure he comes off as a parody but don't all SJWs?

 

[Herald of Durance]

Gay black Muslim feminist is the ultimate checklist of character traits for any progressive.

You're missing the gender: woman / trans.

Funny thing that sexual orientation, race, or gender should be called character trait.

 

[gerey]

A gay muslim vampire is supposed to be bad, because... ?

You tell me.

 

[Dux]

Story packs. Weapon skins. Outfits. Pre-order bonuses. The whole nine yards. It's yours for only $100 or whatever the ultra mega edition amounts to.

Goddamn I'm disillusioned. Not sure what I was expecting in this day and age but I guess I'll never get used to it. I can't even imagine how badly this game's been chopped up already.

Pft, fucking story packs, people. That has to be the gayest thing yet.

 

[DeepOcean]

Nonsense. Levelling system was simplistic and convoluted at the same time. If it were released 2010+ by "AAA developer", it would be ridiculed as prime example of "dumbing down".

Nonsense. The system on Bloodlines is simple when compared to others at their time but it does it job to force hard choices on character progression, the major reason we call a game popamole is when it has pretending mechanics, when the game goes out of its way to make its own mechanics irrelevant.

Skyrim for example, offer alot of options on skill trees but none of those choices are hard choices and eventually you will be the Badass master of everything with ease and grand master of all factions, this was made by design from Bethesda and this decision is one of the major reasons why Skyrim sucks. This doesn't happen on Bloodlines. Skyrim doesn't have attibutes too and you don't apply attribute points on the start of the game, meaning that the game doesn't force you to make a character with hard strengths and weaknesses. Sure you can larp as much as you want on Skyrim but it isn't a RPG, it is as RPG as Assassins Creed Odyssey is an RPG.

You only had a few basic stats ( with straightforward passive +),

Nonsense. You have 12 skills to choose and 9 attributes not counting the disciplines, and yeah, they offer mostly passive bonus... like every RPG ever.

while skills&talents overlapped one another, giving exactly same bonuses.

The reason it is because on character creation, a Toreador has a lower pool of physical attributes, for example, yeah, you can make a Toreador brawler but that will be harder than to make a Brujah brawler and you will waste more precious points at it. Depending of the clan choice, you will have a easier time with social interaction or combat. It is convoluted if you are of the Todd Howard Wizard School of Popamole.

Some were completely useless ( Inspection, Hacking, etc),

Please name me an RPG that doesn't have underutilized skills and hacking is pretty important, unless you have meta knowledge from a walkthrough.

others game breaking ( like Celerity).Like everything done by Troika, no effort was even put into "balancing".

Yeah... I remember raping everything with an overpowered cypher build I made on Pillows of Eternity... I guess game developers talking alot about balance magically makes games actually balanced... Sure, even after alot of patches, there are obvious better choices on Pillows of Eternity, that same is truth on all RPGs made to this day, especially on games where the developer gone bankrupt right afterwards and it was a miracle it delivered it half finished.

And stat/book system practically required metagaming/online guide.

Practically required if you are min maxing, if you are just enjoying the game and aren't OCD about it, it is hardly required. This is valid to Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Baldurs Gate and the list goes on and on...

On top of this, you could easily max nearly everything by the end of the game, making "character building" virtually pointless. Skyrim was more "hardcore", in comparison.

The disciplines are clan exclusive, so you cant do this, if you don't read a guide with the location of every single free skill point and what skills can be ignored, you can't do it either, Bloodlines flaws were design flaws and you had to go out of your way to exploit them while Skyrim was retarded since the very intro. If Bloodlines were like Skyrim, you would be able to align with all the clans and don't being forced to choose a clan but being able to use all the cool powers... wait... this sounds suspiciously familiar to what I heard about Bloodlines 2.

Entire game, as a whole, is a prime example of Codexian: muh precioussss game of muh youth!

This is an argument from people that have nothing to say, it is just fucking empty rhetoric and shit social media psychology, you might feel an smart ass saying this but it is just an illusion, don't be a tard.

Hell, it even has the dumbest resolution in any rpg: in the final act, vampires are running around the streets and casting superpowers, while the whole point of the game is Masquerade (of Vampires secretly living in human society). While the main story is retarded fetch quest to find a sarcophagus so you don't open sarcophagus, so we might as well open the sarcophagus, so nothing really happens if we open ( or not) the sarcophagus.

This is the only point I agree with you, the ending could be better but I enjoyed the rest of the game... so...

 

[Wesp5]

Did we even figure out what Malkavian history with luck was supposed to give?

I think Troika didn't know themselves, the comment there is just "Luck modifier?"

 

[Lacrymas]

Kyl Von Kull, you've been eye-rolling me a lot under all my SJW and Cara posts in this thread, I want to know why.

 

[Yosharian]

Story packs. Weapon skins. Outfits. Pre-order bonuses. The whole nine yards. It's yours for only $100 or whatever the ultra mega edition amounts to.

Goddamn I'm disillusioned. Not sure what I was expecting in this day and age but I guess I'll never get used to it. I can't even imagine how badly this game's been chopped up already.

Pft, fucking story packs, people. That has to be the gayest thing yet.

It has the Bloodlines name, but this game will be nothing like Bloodlines when it comes to its DNA, its code.

 

[Roguey]

You're missing the gender: woman / trans.

I'd guess the the person who created the character is likely a white man and felt that adding either one of those traits would make the character too much of a fetish thing.

(Or: the creator is a woman and this guy is her fetish [Or: the creator is a gay man and you get the gist]).

 

[Orma]

 

[Egosphere]

the fuck is his avatar? Get your shit together Brian ffs

 

[Wesp5]

This is the only point I agree with you, the ending could be better but I enjoyed the rest of the game... so...

The ending of Bloodlines was great! Instead of getting another final boss out of the box something happened that made me laugh out loud. And it was all orchestrated by the guy who was the first vampire you met which is supposed to be typical for VtM where everybody is always using everybody else. If you mean the endless fighting before that, that sucked indeed though.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

so only people that don't play videogames get access to actual gameplay footage? thanks, i guess.

 

[conan_edw]

Well looks like we gonna see the gameplay next year

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I'm sure this has been posted by now, but...
https://archive.is/GTStL

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2: “It’s definitely taking political stances on what we think are right and wrong”

But the only somewhat worrying line is:

It just felt like a good place to start to ground it; the conflict between tradition and progress, conflict between money and artistic endeavours.

The article repeatedly tries to make it sound like there will be entire dialog trees about why Trump's wall is wrong, but half the time, I think they are talking about the inter-clan politics of vampires, which is 100% normal for a Bloodlines game.

Basically, it's designed to manipulate us into getting mad and sharing it.

 

[glass blackbird]

pretending to be woke in promo stuff is a good marketing strategy these days. in some ways it's better than actually being woke because the final product ends up not actually driving anyone away in the end

 

[thesheeep]

Why wouldn't it be real? A gay muslim vampire is supposed to be bad, because... ?
The only question I could image here is how he manages to put being a vampire under a hood with being a Muslim (being as ignorant about Islam as I am), but the thread you pointed out explains that pretty well to me.
Seriously, it's not like there are no homosexual Muslims, so depicting them in a game is not an issue.

Or is it that he's backing "progressive" norms? He's a gay Muslim, what do you expect him to do? Establish Sharia law?

He's a gay black Muslim feminist (who probably vapes and was vegan when he was human). It comes off as a parody of the clamor for diversity. Such people probably exist irl, but as with all cognitive dissonance-inducing states, it comes with either "creative interpretations" (to the point of hyperinterprations) or a lot of mental anguish. But that's besides the point, the context of his introduction is not the best one and it should've been obvious that people would either cringe or riot.

I don't think anyone denies he's a bit much "in your face". Still, I'd have to see much more than that description to seem him as some parody character. But, yes, the potential is certainly there.

Also, gay, black, Muslim and feminist aren't character traits, yet writers use these things as if they are. It's the worst part of identity politics, when labels become identity and reduce the complexities of human personality to a handful of qualifiers.

The problem is that, even nowadays (or especially nowadays?), you cannot really be a black gay Muslim without that defining a significant part of your life. It's just too exotic not to play an important part of your life, no matter where you are, at least one of these attributes is just going to become "a thing".
You cannot have a realistic character like that with those attributes just being "misc descriptors". Just gay? Sure. Just black? Mhkay. Just Muslim? Uhh.. don't think we're quite there, yet, to be honest. But all of them at once? Oof.
Of course, if those were the only attributes given to the character, if there was nothing else, then yeah, that'd be bad. But still, just from that snippet, I don't see it being the case.