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

[Prime Junta]

That would be funny except that it's getting to be a bit of a meme. Even T:ToN and Deadfire did pretty much just that.

 

[gerey]

Part of your character's backstory will be that xer signed a consent form to be embraced.

 

[Tao]

So how did that bodyguard outfit (and Tender shirt) promo work?

I'd planned on snagging it to have in case the game ends up being good, but there was a fire in the building that day and I was too busy dealing with the chaos at work to finish the "quests", link the accounts, and watch the Twitch stream as it was broadcast.

Did they send codes or emails to accounts watching the stream or what?

For the bodyguard you have to go to their website, enter with you account and go to rewards or something. There you will find exactly what to do (in resume: explore the web and click in 5 images/gifs to gain points to unlock shit).

The tender shirt i believe it was for watching the stream. But you can check yourself to be sure.

 

[Haba]

What if my character is transage? A transage child cannot give xir consent!

 

[TrueNeutralPaladin]

Because everything else I've read so far sounds like the best possible scenario for a VtMB sequel anyone could have realistically hoped for.

CD Projekt RED.

But that possibility became unlikely when Paradox acquired White Wolf.

 

[Storyfag]

TBH I find the entire premise of this game very problematic. What if you don't consent to being embraced? How do they think players who have been raped will feel when encountering this?
edit: I'm being serious. I hope the writers take this into account and allow you to end the game early just by saying No and having the vampire respect your wishes.

Technically, there is little the vampire can do to force you to swallow the blood.

 

[Zakhad]

A lot of people in this thread sound like total boomers.

 

[boobio]

Or get banned for using Deus Vult memes on their official discord. It feels like the game is going to be infested.

Its all about shutting down honest and open discussion of this game. They just want blind praise and it is a sign of things to come.

 

[Life of the Party]

Here's a list of details that are currently known about the game

• Brian Mitsoda is lead writer (just like the original) alongside Chris Avellone and Cara Ellison
  
  
• Rik Schaffer is composing again
  
  
• Set in Seattle
  
  
• Seamless hub world
  
  
• Multiple hubs
  
  
• Direct sequel to 2004's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
  
  
• Takes place 15 years after Bloodlines
  
  
• Game starts off with a Mass Embrace at Pioneer Square where player is among the new vampires born from the event, you're captured and brought upon a court of prominent vampires like the first game to recount the events of the mass embrace before being sentenced to death, court is firebombed and you escape, thrust into Seattle to find out who's responsible
  
  
• Player is a thin-blood at first, later on you can choose a clan.
  
  
• No quest markers
  
  
• First-person with contextual third-person actions just like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.
  
  
• Fan-favourite characters from Bloodlines returning
  
  
• You can use telekinesis, turn into mist to go through vents and glide
  
  
• You can scale buildings, there's an emphasis on verticality
  
  
• Level design is very reminiscent of the original Deus Ex in the sense that you're offered many different pathways to approach a particular scenario
  
  
• The protagonist is not voiced
  
  
• Way more dialogue than Bloodlines
  
  
• Huge emphasis on character creation. You can choose your background, gender pronoun, employment history, body type and fashion
  
  
• Loads of secrets and hidden pathways to find
  
  
• Seattle as a hub world is described as "very active", crowds gather outside clubs and muggers prey on victims in side allies, all seamlessly done.
  
  
• Main side-questline involves hunting down and finding all the other thin-blood created from the Mass Embrace, each will have their own story about entering into their new life e.g you might find a married thin-blood struggling to deal with their newfound powers
  
  
• Blood resonance from the 5th edition will appear in this game. Using your enhanced vampire senses, you can see when NPCs are experiencing an intense emotion like fear, desire, pain, joy and anger. Humans give off a bright aura. Drinking a person with a strong resonance will give you an immediate bonus to things like melee power or seduction. If you drink a particular resonance constantly, you will acquire a taste for it and this will give you permanent buffs called "merits".
  
  
• If you continuously suck on people's blood in full view of the public, they'll be more wary of going to those areas and you'll see less citizens wandering the streets
  
  
• Emphasis on fluid combat, using vampiric speed to slide in and out of melee range and slash people and execute them with melee weapons. You can get special cinematic finishers in combat when you execute people a la Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Counters are in. Guns exist and are treated as temporary opportunities, you pick em up, use it, then discard it and move on.
  
  
• It is not confirmed whether or not you can carry weapons like in the original, pre-order skins for weapons point to being able to do so.
  
  
• NPCs can react to you depending on what background you chose for your character in character creation
  
  
• Game has modding support, available Day 1
  

 

[Prime Junta]

Sounds good. With Avellone on board as a major writer, I am quite optimistic about the quality of the game.

I have been unimpressed with his work of late. I do hope he has relocated his mojo.

 

[Black]

Sounds good. With Avellone on board as a major writer, I am quite optimistic about the quality of the game.

What's the latest game in which Avellone proved he's still got it?

 

[boobio]

I hope Chris Avellone cancels out Cara Ellison.

http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=cara_ellison

Here's a list of details that are currently known about the game

• Brian Mitsoda is lead writer (just like the original) alongside Chris Avellone and Cara Ellison
  
  
• Rik Schaffer is composing again
  
  
• Set in Seattle
  
  
• Seamless hub world
  
  
• Multiple hubs
  
  
• Direct sequel to 2004's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
  
  
• Takes place 15 years after Bloodlines
  
  
• Game starts off with a Mass Embrace at Pioneer Square where player is among the new vampires born from the event, you're captured and brought upon a court of prominent vampires like the first game to recount the events of the mass embrace before being sentenced to death, court is firebombed and you escape, thrust into Seattle to find out who's responsible
  
  
• Player is a thin-blood at first, later on you can choose a clan.
  
  
• No quest markers
  
  
• First-person with contextual third-person actions just like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.
  
  
• Fan-favourite characters from Bloodlines returning
  
  
• You can use telekinesis, turn into mist to go through vents and glide
  
  
• You can scale buildings, there's an emphasis on verticality
  
  
• Level design is very reminiscent of the original Deus Ex in the sense that you're offered many different pathways to approach a particular scenario
  
  
• The protagonist is not voiced
  
  
• Way more dialogue than Bloodlines
  
  
• Huge emphasis on character creation. You can choose your background, gender pronoun, employment history, body type and fashion
  
  
• Loads of secrets and hidden pathways to find
  
  
• Seattle as a hub world is described as "very active", crowds gather outside clubs and muggers prey on victims in side allies, all seamlessly done.
  
  
• Main side-questline involves hunting down and finding all the other thin-blood created from the Mass Embrace, each will have their own story about entering into their new life e.g you might find a married thin-blood struggling to deal with their newfound powers
  
  
• Blood resonance from the 5th edition will appear in this game. Using your enhanced vampire senses, you can see when NPCs are experiencing an intense emotion like fear, desire, pain, joy and anger. Humans give off a bright aura. Drinking a person with a strong resonance will give you an immediate bonus to things like melee power or seduction. If you drink a particular resonance constantly, you will acquire a taste for it and this will give you permanent buffs called "merits".
  
  
• If you continuously suck on people's blood in full view of the public, they'll be more wary of going to those areas and you'll see less citizens wandering the streets
  
  
• Emphasis on fluid combat, using vampiric speed to slide in and out of melee range and slash people and execute them with melee weapons. You can get special cinematic finishers in combat when you execute people a la Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Counters are in. Guns exist and are treated as temporary opportunities, you pick em up, use it, then discard it and move on.
  
  
• It is not confirmed whether or not you can carry weapons like in the original, pre-order skins for weapons point to being able to do so.
  
  
• NPCs can react to you depending on what background you chose for your character in character creation
  
  
• Game has modding support, available Day 1

 

[curry]

Anyone remember this show?

Yeah, watched it a few years ago. Too bad there was only one season.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Sounds good. With Avellone on board as a major writer, I am quite optimistic about the quality of the game.

What's the latest game in which Avellone proved he's still got it?

Kingmaker. He wrote Nok-Nok, arguably the best companion in the game. More importantly, he had a lot of high level input:

Spoiler

(In relation to this, Fairfax dropped me a line and asked, so figured I'd answer here about what I've done on Pathfinder, info, etc. )

So Alexander Mushlin is the Creative Director, Alexander Komzolov is the lead writer. I’m one of the writers reporting to the Alexander(s), but I’m not the lead writer on the game, no, and there are other writers on the project for sure.

This was mentioned before, but I did passes of the story with the Alexander(s) to expand it from the pen-and-paper roots so people who would play the game would still have some new content and we worked out the underlying theme for the story as well (in quoted section). In addition, some elements of the PNP path were taken in new directions to make them more suited for evil playstyles, which was fun.

I also worked with them on setting up the PNP quest arcs with the new companion quest arcs in chapters of the game (the companions add a lot) and gave feedback on the companions as well.

As for writing companions, it was a reverse of Fane from Divinity: Original Sin 2: I got elements of the "goblin rogue" (the companions weren't named at the outset, and I did help with naming companions). From that, was able to flesh out additional elements of his backstory, look, etc. then I wrote Nok-Nok from start to finish. (In Divinity, I only wrote Fane’s backstory, Stephen Rooney wrote the dialogue - it was always the case when talking with Swen that I wouldn't have time to write a companion.) I say a “reverse” from D:OS2 because Nok-Nok’s 1-paragraph character arc had already been approved by Paizo before I came on board (and same with some of the other story elements), but Alexander Komzolov and I agreed to change aspects about Nok-Nok afterwards even though his general arc remained the same (and some specific conclusion to his companion quest).

I also did the background for another companion that the Alexanders were interested in including in the game (he’s the halfling in the portraits with writing on his face), but he didn’t make it in. He wasn’t cut for scoping reasons involving his character (he had a portrait, backstory, and quest arc), but more the Alexanders wanted to make sure we could do the companions we had justice. If he had been included, I would have been writing him as well.

I also did the style guide, the module (on 2nd draft now), helped coordinate some aspects of the editing team (we had two editors who worked on the English versions), helped with UI text, and writing and edits on about 150+ other characters.

I didn’t write Amiri or Jubilost, although I would have been happy to (I was pretty busy on the other aspects, though, so I doubt I would have had time - writing companions can take months).

I like working with Owlcat (and Pathfinder) a lot, it’s been a good experience. I hope more Pathfinder games follow after Kingmaker.

For such an insanely ambitious game, Kingmaker turned out much better than it had any right to. The Owlcat guys deserve the credit, but it was very smart of them to bring in MCA in a consulting capacity rather than just hiring him as a freelance writer.

 

[Black]

For such an insanely ambitious game, Kingmaker turned out much better than it had any right to.

It's rtwp.

 

[frajaq]

I hear a lot about Tremere being a really rigid pyramid clan, but I don't think we saw much of that in bloodlines 1, I liked playing them because blood spells were cool and if you did things right you got a comfy chantry to live inside

Hope this aspect gets more expanded in bloodlines 2

 

[Herumor]

You can get special cinematic finishers in combat when you execute people a la Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

This was very off-putting to me. It really takes me out of the gameplay and player agency. I get why they do this, they want to give some flash to their combat, but ultimately these kinds of finishers just tend to be really weird. I remember one stealth takedown in Deus Ex (HR or MD, not sure) where Jensen taps the guy on the shoulder, punches him in the face and just lays him out on the floor with a big ol' THUD. Stealth. Prod with the prod.

I hear a lot about Tremere being a really rigid pyramid clan, but I don't think we saw much of that in bloodlines 1

Because you only ever saw Strauss, apart from your sire who ended up being killed in the next few moments anyway, and basically had no other Tremere to interact with.

Hope this aspect gets more expanded in bloodlines 2

It really can't, not where the player is concerned, because it would take away agency from the players.

 

[Black]

I hear a lot about Tremere being a really rigid pyramid clan, but I don't think we saw much of that in bloodlines 1, I liked playing them because blood spells were cool and if you did things right you got a comfy chantry to live inside

Hope this aspect gets more expanded in bloodlines 2

We didn't get to see that because, as Strauss explained, you were embraced outside of the pyramid.
But you get easily the comfiest haven.

 

[Skall]

*realistic light

Christ, that was an uplifting lunchtime viewing. Probably too sensitive/charged subject matter for a mainstream game to embrace, though.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Hope this aspect gets more expanded in bloodlines 2

It really can't, not where the player is concerned, because it would take away agency from the players.

It also can't because in V5 (this game is going with V5, right?) the pyramid kind of fell apart.

 

[Lacrymas]

>Seamless hub world
>Multiple hubs

Choose one.

Also, I don't trust the lack of discipline talk. All they've said is you can use telekinesis, glide and turn into mist. What if that's ALL you can do? Wouldn't it be prudent to mention you can learn various disciplines at one point in time? At least for marketing reasons.

Having too many people around will detract from the atmosphere. You are a lone stalker of the night, preying on lonesome people, having crowds of people around is the opposite of that. Blood resonance is gamey, I don't like it.

 

[alyvain]

TBH, for now it sounds like Batman: Arkham City, but with dialogues and RPG character progression

Edit: so, basically, new Deus Ex. Huh

 

[Delterius]

Also, I don't trust the lack of discipline talk. All they've said is you can use telekinesis, glide and turn into mist. What if that's ALL you can do?

no

>Seamless hub world
>Multiple hubs

fewer loading screens inside hubs

 

[Lacrymas]

Wall climbing in first-person games, prepare yourselves -

 

[Vincente]

*realistic light

Christ, that was an uplifting lunchtime viewing. Probably too sensitive/charged subject matter for a mainstream game to embrace, though.

''Beats me, Seattle is dead.''