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

[Delterius]

They wouldn't have focused on special Thin-Blood Alchemy disciplines for the beginning if you weren't a Thinblood outright either.

 

[ga♥]

Caitiff just means you don't belong to any clan/bloodline/defined ancestry AFAIK.

Usually all Thin-bloods are Caitiffs, but the reverse may not be true.

E.g. full fledged vampire not-thin-blood https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Joseph_Pander

 

[Saerain]

Guise, they already explained the plot.

a) A bunch of vampires embrace a big crowd of people
b) The Cammies try to shut it down and cover it all up but the place is firebombed before you can be executed
c) you and various other thinbloods are scattered to the wind, a sidequest involves tracking them down

Not bad. I'll happily sell them out for the cool kids' club.

I mean, the Camarilla's gone insane with 5E, but, against the alternatives, sign my dead ass up.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

They wouldn't have focused on special Thin-Blood Alchemy disciplines for the beginning if you weren't a Thinblood outright either.

yup. some of the disciplines are even featured in the CGI trailer.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Playing as a thin blood sounds pretty boring. The more I hear about the game the more my expectations lower, and they were already pretty low.

yeah, but you aren't thinking like a minmaxer.

tbh, it sounds like they're going to use the thin blood mechanics (and possibly diablerie) to make the player into a jack of all trades level 100 dragonborn that can use any discipline from any clan, provided he has the rep points with them.

again, I'm also guessing that we won't be able to play a true nosferatu etc. Just gain their disciplines. which, yeah, does suck.

 

[Ent]

Playing as a thin blood sounds pretty boring. The more I hear about the game the more my expectations lower, and they were already pretty low.

yeah, but you aren't thinking like a minmaxer.

tbh, it sounds like they're going to use the thin blood mechanics (and possibly diablerie) to make the player into a jack of all trades level 100 dragonborn that can use any discipline from any clan, provided he has the rep points with them.

again, I'm also guessing that we won't be able to play a true nosferatu etc. Just gain their disciplines. which, yeah, does suck.

Depends on what exactly joining a clan some amount of time into the story entails.

 

[Herumor]

tbh, it sounds like they're going to use the thin blood mechanics (and possibly diablerie) to make the player into a jack of all trades level 100 dragonborn that can use any discipline from any clan, provided he has the rep points with them.

Maybe they'll go the route of tomes, like Redemption? Something to put you on the right path, enabling you to gain minimum understanding of some Discipline and its powers, before investing experience to further your knowledge of it.

again, I'm also guessing that we won't be able to play a true nosferatu etc. Just gain their disciplines. which, yeah, does suck.

If the proper form of Obfuscate is included in the game, with Mask of a Thousand Faces included, I don't see why people couldn't play as a Nosferatu.

 

[J1M]

I find thin-bloods as a general concept somewhat stupid, but as long as they explore it well in the game it should be fine.

As others have mentioned, it would be pretty weird if every single clan had a 12th gen member chained up for you to diablerize upon joining. The caitiff route of being able to learn anything seems more likely from a gameplay standpoint.

The idea of escaping a culling and finding your own way sounds interesting, but the nature of a game where many are unfamiliar with the source material implies a mentor character of some sort because tutorial levels a la Deus Ex have fallen out of favor.

I think we have to assume the mass-embrace has more to do with the plot than just a side-quest to hunt thin-bloods. Perhaps something along the lines of the blood trade and the need for vamp blood to feed some higher gen kindred that recently awoke.

 

[Goral]

First they say something like this: https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/26/...oodlines-ii-interview-brian-mitsoda/view-all/

(...) Then we also needed to bring it back right. (...)

(...) We couldn’t pass up on it, especially with Brian being on board, and having that true successor feeling to it. (...)

and then something like this:

(...) The big thing for vampires in our game is to get resonance, which comes from feeding on people. It’s getting the emotional rush from feeding on people. Bag blood is like if all your food was Cheetos. You can technically get by on that, but it’s really not what you want to eat. (...)

These two things couldn't be more contradictory. Also, if they really want to add flavour to blood then feeding on faggots should result in them getting as sick as after feeding on bums with all the soy, HIV and other diseases they're carrying but we all know they won't go that way. It's the same with niggers, in general they are worse nourished than white or yellow so their blood should be of lower quality and they should have lesser blood pool. But here they will only focus on emotional side so we will throw up rainbows, rap and crave for chicken and watermelons.

Anyway, I don't see how that resonance could be a good thing but I see dozens of reasons why it can end in a disaster.

 

[Ismaul]

The idea of escaping a culling and finding your own way sounds interesting, but the nature of a game where many are unfamiliar with the source material implies a mentor character of some sort because tutorial levels a la Deus Ex have fallen out of favor.

Those are not mutually exclusive, if you escape the culling by intervention of your mentor to be.

 

[Western]

Playing as a thin blood sounds pretty boring. The more I hear about the game the more my expectations lower, and they were already pretty low.

Current hype level is set to 'not even worth pirating'.

 

[Zombra]

Delterius yeah but it says guns are treated as temporary opportunities

Delterius yeah but it says guns are treated as temporary opportunities

Indeed! This is where things get weird: you get guns from enemies and many of the previewers talked about it being a more limited opportunity thing AND you can use points to be more of a gunslinger. Perhaps its only that the inventory is more limited.

I like what this hints at. In the trailer, the PC uses telekinesis to grab a random sledgehammer and beat a guy down with it. Presumably you'd just drop it when the fight was over and keep going where you were going, instead of putting it in your giant backpack with 3 swords and 5 guns. I like the idea of a vampire who just grabs a gun, fires it until it's empty, and then throws it away. It speaks to me to suggest that monsters and animals don't get too hung up on material possessions.

My (possibly incorrect) impression is that they're going to be disguising loading screens with transit animations

I am super into it, for obvious reasons.

 

[Grunker]

When you decrease your generation via diablere, is + blood points all you get?

You also get the potential to learn advanced discipline powers and raise your statistics past 5 points, depending on how low your generation is. That's usually the 8th generation and below. And vampires of a higher generation can't use Dominate on you.

The most important initial difference is arguably being allowed to spend more Blood Points per turn.

 

[hajro]

Hope the sex mods live up to the hype

 

[Rahdulan]

When you decrease your generation via diablere, is + blood points all you get?

On top of what Lacrymas said at Gen9 you also get the ability to spend TWO blood points per turn versus one and that figure keeps going up as you go lower in generation.

 

[Ismaul]

Hope the sex mods live up to the hype

Think Tessera's gonna get involved again?

I hope so for the drama

 

[Storyfag]

The idea of escaping a culling and finding your own way sounds interesting, but the nature of a game where many are unfamiliar with the source material implies a mentor character of some sort because tutorial levels a la Deus Ex have fallen out of favor.

Those are not mutually exclusive, if you escape the culling by intervention of your mentor to be.

A mentor Vampire who shows you the ropes just after you narrowly avoided getting killed by a Camarilla court? Now who might that be...

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

Think Tessera's gonna get involved again?

I hope so for the drama

You better believe Tessera is already firing up his GIMP and drawing away drafts of all the nipples and triangular oversaturated pubic hairs he can put into the game. You better be ready for when he spergs out about all of this and writes multiple A4 sized rants about vulvas and 3d breast movements again, while simultaneously going on about being "faithful to the core material in modding".

My body is ready for the wild ride ahead!

 

[Wesp5]

Something to put you on the right path, enabling you to gain minimum understanding of some Discipline and its powers, before investing experience to further your knowledge of it.

Isn't it just normal to learn clan disciplines if you find a mentor willing to teach you? In the old WoD famous vampires often had a lot of disciplines not common to their clan...

 

[Quillon]

I'm not well informed about WoD but I don't like that they use Bloodlines in the title. Wasn't it a name for a sequel already? VTM: Redemption then Bloodlines? Its like that RDR2 thing, instead of coming up with another title, they use the sequel's name. Don't know if the story is related or anything but "VTM" should have been enough with a different subtitle at the end. It seems to me a cheap way of using brand recognition with generating hype with people who like that specific game instead of the already well known franchise.

 

[Grunker]

^ no, Redemption and Bloodlines have nothing to do with each other except the setting (though there are a few Redemption-related easter eggs in Bloodlines). This game is a sequel to the first Bloodlines.

It's weird to me people seem to think Redemption and Bloodlines are in the same series of games. No one ever says the same about, I dunno, Baldur's Gate and Pool of Radiance.

 

[Infinitron]

Is it really a sequel in any meaningful sense? Looks like an entirely standalone story also.

The more convincing excuse for calling it Bloodlines 2 is that it's aiming to be the same style of game whereas Redemption was an isometric thing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

We all already know why it's called Bloodlines 2 — it's another cashgrab cashing in on your nostalgia, stop trying to think of alternative reasons.

 

[Delterius]

should be called redemption 3

 

[Grunker]

Is it really a sequel in any meaningful sense? Looks like an entirely standalone story also.

The more convincing excuse for calling it Bloodlines 2 is that it's aiming to be the same style of game whereas Redemption was an isometric thing.

Redemption isn't isometric, it's more of a free camera 3rd person combined with a scroll-out. With Redemption I feel like it's more a case of no stringent design choice as far as the camera goes less than it being "isometric"...

It might be true that it's not a direct sequel, but with some of the same characters returning and basing itself on the events of the first game, it's at least much more related than Redemption and Bloodlines were, no?