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

[alyvain]

Groundhog Day: Bloodlines 2 is just announced and everyone discusses Rudi, your friendly neighbourhood gaympire.

There is no escape. You will live this day over and over, till you sanity will be lost in the sands of time.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Didn't they say this was developed simultaneously with v5?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

I don't think we are. We're just noticing negative trends in both and wondering if the negative trends in the tabletop game has something to do with the ones in the videogame.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Groundhog Day: Bloodlines 2 is just announced and everyone discusses Rudi, your friendly neighbourhood gaympire.

There is no escape. You will live this day over and over, till you sanity will be lost in the sands of time.

hey guise, did you hear about the gay muslim vampire in Bloodlines 2?

 

[Black]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Stop. Posting. Forever.
Jew.

 

[ga♥]

Unpopolar as it may be. Since I read the V5 core manual, I really didn't find it full of SJW as people tend to think here.

There is that "Disclaimer at the beginning", Rudi the queer-black-antifa-vamp, Carna (that noone mentioned) who is a feminist fighting the patriartical Camarilla. And nothing else.

It's like 2 pages of content, if you dismissis the disclaimer...and they are like at the end, as an Appendix in a thing called "loresheet". It's basically some char stuff for people to build campaigns on.

Sounds like they just gave SJW some material to LARP, but the core lore is still intact (mostly).

 

[Luckmann]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Stop. Pretending. Like. They. Are. Not. Related. In. Ownership. And. Fluff.

Didn't they say this was developed simultaneously with v5?

Yes. It's why it's so fucking stupid to try to pretend that one does not affect the other, especially with the type of damage control that we know that the developers are doing, combined with the facts of the game we know so far. This situation isn't at all comparable to the situation as it was with VtM:B the first time around, not by a long shot.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Stop. Pretending. Like. They. Are. Not. Related. In. Ownership. And. Fluff.

This tbh.
It's not even like Paizo licensing their IP to Russian developers, it would be like Paizo owning a game development company and being able to oversee its development.

 

[vota DC]

In case anyone needed a reminder why V5 and Bloodlines 2 is so fucking shit.

Also, they practically removed Smiling Jack, who now has a single mention in the V5 Anarch book, from being a major and important Anarch character, and replaced him with the literal fucking meme that is Damsel, who is now characterized as setting up fuckmeets with whyte mails just to kill them. Not even joking. It's cringe^200.

People are wishlisting a game, therefore it's popular and the announcement not a shitshow xD

Come now, Inshillitron, you cannot be this retarded.

All this complaining is like saying a restaurant is bad because one of the chefs picks his nose in the kitchen. Its dirty and gross, but if nobody told you about it, you would have eaten the food anyway.

Except the kitchen is in plain view, and the food looks awful. If it looks like shit and smells like shit, and you saw the chef put literal shit on the vegetables before cutting them, odds are that you're not just going to be reluctant to eat it, but that it actually tastes like shit, too.

Looks like they looked at the Siege of Dragonspear controversy with pre-loaded SJW politics injected by Amber Scott and their response was "Hold my non-alchoholic Swedish beverage...". Constantly amazes me that buisnesses put politics and narratve/ideology over professionalism, profit, and talent driven intriguing fantasy. If you hadn't quoted the appendix, I would have thought the following crap was a role playing suggestion.

So because I support Donald Trump, Ukip, and Brexit - it seems that I'm unfit to play a RPG as a vampire. I suppose they would expect me to say something like: "Fucking stupid lefty Swedes" at this point; but I'll just respect their right to a pov and skip their game. MCA & Brian Mitsoda or not.

Spoiler

Fucking stupid lefty Swedes

Maybe balance reasons.
I mean compare Lacroix and Smiling Jack.
Now with the new anarch leadership someone like Lacroix has chance to win.
Same for a newbie thinblood. Even if played by players how he can conquer Seattle in few days?

By the way that dialogue is unintentionally funny:
--blablabla go to Copenhagen to say nazi aren't welcome
*Newbie vampire is called NAZIsomething*

 

[Chippy]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

I won't go full retard on this as only interested in the game because MCA/Mitsoda. But I think you're totally wrong. Clearly the publisher / the Swedes arn't gonna let a product that represents their IP (and a video game audience) mis-represent their sense of civility; it's right there in the appendix. I could be wrong...maybe they had a meeting and arrived at the consensus that the 'Swedish diversity and inclusion mandate' was disengaged for video games - in order to give MCA/Mitsoda full creative control. But you just have to look at how they wrote up the 'Jaennete + mental health = Brian Mitsoda needs 2019 training for Bloodlines 2' stuff recently to have my doubts.

Hope I'm wrong. Won't hold my breath.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the-masqueradebloodlines-2-devs-say-the-pitch-was-a-tremendous-risk/

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 pitch was a 'tremendous risk'
"I went into that first Skype meeting with them expecting to watch a burial."

When Paradox Interactive acquired White Wolf, hope of a Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines sequel surged again, including at Hardsuit Labs. The studio that was last week revealed to be developing Bloodlines 2 wasn't approached by Paradox, however, and the publisher already had its own plans.

"When we got wind of Paradox acquiring the World of Darkness IP, within about ten minutes I had my creative director Ka'ai Cluney come into my office and say 'We need to contact Paradox. Do you know anyone there, because we need to pitch them a game?',"Andy Kipling, CEO of Hardsuit Labs, tells us. "We spent November and December and January putting together a pitch that we could show them at DICE. My assumption, for what it's worth, was Paradox had a clear plan in place and that we would be coming in from out of the fold to try and make a hail-Mary pass."

A meeting was arranged, but Paradox wasn't expecting this to be the start of a new game. It was hesitant to give away the keys to White Wolf's supernatural universe too easily.

"I went into that first Skype meeting with them expecting to watch a burial," says Florian Schwarzer, product manager at Paradox Interactive. But it wasn't a burial. "This was very much Hardsuit Labs taking a tremendous risk and getting us to the point were we made a decision for them. Nothing more, nothing less."

For more details about Bloodlines 2 and the rest of this interview, check out our upcoming cover feature in the PC Gamer magazine, available next week.

 

[ga♥]

I still don't get why they had to wait for Paradox to buy White Wolf. Couldn't they (or anyone else) just strike a deal with WW for a WoD vamp game?

 

[Storyfag]

I still don't get why they had to wait for Paradox to buy White Wolf. Couldn't they (or anyone else) just strike a deal with WW for a WoD vamp game?

They needed funding which WW did not have. Paradox did.

 

[Infinitron]

The World of Darkness setting belonged to CCP before that (EVE Online devs). Unkillable Cat can tell you how far they would have gotten with those guys in charge: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...p-mockery-thread-aka-wod-got-cancelled.91030/

 

[ga♥]

The World of Darkness setting belonged to CCP before that (EVE Online devs). Unkillable Cat can tell you how far they would have gotten with those guys in charge: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...p-mockery-thread-aka-wod-got-cancelled.91030/

It wasn't the setting. It was the whole White Wolf.

[...]White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with CCP Games in 2006,[2] White Wolf Publishing operating as an imprint of CCP hf, but ceasing in-house production of any material, instead licensing their properties to other publishers.[...]

So, they didn't want to licence it? Asked for too much?

 

[Infinitron]

It's a good question tbh. There were no World of Darkness video games made during the CCP period. Is it because nobody asked? It's worth looking into.

 

[ga♥]

Uh oh... most of WW original staff has been fired by Paradox because of this.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...fter-vampire-the-masquerade-lgbtq-controversy

Paradox taking control of White Wolf after Vampire: The Masquerade LGBTQ+ controversy
Tabletop dev will “no longer function as a separate entity” after “crude and disrespectful” use of Chechnya's anti-gay purges
James Batchelor

UK Editor

Monday 19th November 2018

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Paradox Interactive

Paradox Interactive has stepped in to assert control of White Wolf Publishing, the developer behind tabletop RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade.

The incident follows passages in an upcoming handbook that alludes to real-world suffering of LGBTQ+ people in the Chechen Republic, Russia.

A post by Paradox's VP of business development Shams Jorjani on the White Wolf announced he was taking over as interim manager. The White Wolf team is being "restructured and integrated directly" into Paradox.

White Wolf's future lies in brand management, overseeing the creative vision for the World of Darkness (which encompasses Vampire: The Masquerade) and helping licensees develop new products in this setting.

"White Wolf will not longer develop and publish these products internally," Jorjani wrote. "This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it."

Jorjani also points out efforts to recruit new leadership to take over White Wolf have been ongoing since September.

However, this intention to integrate White Wolf has no doubt been accelerated by recent controversy over the V5 Camarilla handbook for Vampire: The Masquerade. According to our sister site Rock Paper Shotgun, a chapter about a vampire-run Chechnya referred to the persecution of LGBTQ+ people as "a clever media manipulation."

"While homosexuals are indeed held in detention facilities for days, and humiliated, starved, tortured, and eventually fed upon and killed, this is not the point. The point is to distract from the truth of what Chechnya has become."

Paradox slammed this as "crude and disrespectful" given the widespread media reports of anti-gay purges in the region last year.

"The World of Darkness has always been about horror, and horror is about exploring the darkest parts of our society, our culture, and ourselves. Horror should not be afraid to explore difficult or sensitive topics, but it should never do so without understanding who those topics are about and what it means to them.

"Real evil does exist in the world, and we can't ever excuse its real perpetrators or cheapen the suffering of its real victims."

Paradox has apologised for not identifying this earlier, and has taken steps to ensure the handbook does not continue to spread. Sales and printing for this product has temporarily been suspended until the offending passage has been removed, and the digital version will also be updated.

Paradox acquired White Wolf back in 2015. While these events centre around a tabletop RPG, the games publisher's reaction shows the firm stance it takes on such a serious topic.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Stop. Conflating. Stuff. From. Tabletop. With. The. Video. Game

Stop. Pretending. Like. They. Are. Not. Related. In. Ownership. And. Fluff.

This tbh.
It's not even like Paizo licensing their IP to Russian developers, it would be like Paizo owning a game development company and being able to oversee its development.

Didn't Paradox boot White Wolf's leadership and dissolve it as a separate division like four months ago, not too long after V5 came out? And then they decided to stop developing their own p&p content, instead they're just going to license it:

“The creation and sale of these books would not happen under the incarnation of White Wolf that we are building,” Jorjani said. “The creation, production, and editorial oversight of such products is now entirely run by Modiphius Entertainment and their partners.”

https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/22/...ampire-the-masquerade-modiphius-entertainment

I know this was ostensibly about the Chechnya thing (and the pedophile thing, and the neo-nazi thing, and the rapey stuff, and just generally being too edgy by half and not very good), but Paradox also said they'd been planning to do this for a while.

"White Wolf will not longer develop and publish these products internally," Jorjani wrote. "This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...fter-vampire-the-masquerade-lgbtq-controversy

I think it's safe to say that Paradox was not thrilled with White Wolf's output. If it's a question of choosing between the 5E sourcebooks and Brian Mitsoda, my money's on Mitsoda. Paradox is a video game company after all.

 

[Drakron]

It's a good question tbh. There were no World of Darkness video games made during the CCP period. Is it because nobody asked? It's worth looking into.

Nobody asked because they performed poorly, there arent many of then to begin with.

 

[ga♥]

It's a good question tbh. There were no World of Darkness video games made during the CCP period. Is it because nobody asked? It's worth looking into.

Nobody asked because they performed poorly, there arent many of then to begin with.

I always thought it was the most popular PnP after D&D (I am talking about VtM). Or at least it is (was?) pretty popular here.

edit: I see you are talking about the vidya selling performance. AFAIK there are only 2 VtM games. Any citation on the poor selling?

 

[Riddler]

Yea I agree. I think vampires have a sort of love thats different from what humans experience altogether because they dont have the urge to "start families". Besides sex is not a requirement for love as you said.

I think of it more as a cerebral understanding/comprehension of love and attachment. Yeah, it's very hard for humans to justify this kind of love without the sex backing it up (it's a shame, really), but vampires don't have hormones to worry about. They also "reproduce" asexually and receive pleasure when they bite any gender, and that's bound to change your outlook eventually. It could even supply interesting stories, a neo-Nazi finds himself "attracted" (figuratively speaking) to both genders after being turned into a vampire, then starts torturing himself over that and saying to himself that he can't be a degenerate, etc. I think that'd be a more powerful "SJW" story than whatever tranny support groups or gay black Muslim feminists they can churn out.

Isn't it also the case that emotions and someone's general humanity sort of dies over time the older a vampire becomes, transitioning from somewhat human to a farily alien monster mimicking humanity.

 

[Cael]

Deep Silver distribution deal: https://www.kochmedia.com/en/2019/0...ship-with-koch-media-for-retail-distribution/

PARADOX INTERACTIVE EXTENDS PARTNERSHIP WITH KOCH MEDIA FOR RETAIL DISTRIBUTION

Paradox Interactive and Koch Media team up to unleash the Children of the Night and conquer Galaxies while running whole Cities on their journey! The new agreement between both companies includes physical distribution rights for the following titles:

• Age of Wonders Planetfall: The upcoming Sci-Fi-Strategy spectacle from Triumph Studios, which is due to release on August 6th 2019 for PlayStation®4, the Xbox One Family of devices as well as PC. Koch Media will cover the physical distribution of this title worldwide.

WTF??? They turned Ae of Wonders into a console sci-fi game???

You guys don't need to argue anymore. The new Vampire game is going to be absolute shit!

 

[Drakron]

I always thought it was the most popular PnP after D&D (I am talking about VtM). Or at least it is (was?) pretty popular here.

World of Darkness have 2 VtM games and 3 Hunter games, the Hunter games are on the XBox.
None were commercial successes, if Bloodlines was such a great game then why is Troika dead? Because it didnt sell back then and it simply became a "geek" thing like PS:T that was also a failure despite apparently everyone and their mother having played it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The World of Darkness setting belonged to CCP before that (EVE Online devs). Unkillable Cat can tell you how far they would have gotten with those guys in charge: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...p-mockery-thread-aka-wod-got-cancelled.91030/

That's a hypothetical I don't want to get into, but it's telling that CCP didn't try to do anything with the license game-wise, except for that aborted MMO they wasted millions on trying to get past the concept stage.

"Press E to seduce" and all that.

 

[Infinitron]

Bloodlines was a legendary flop, released unfinished on the same day as Half-Life 2 and left to die. I thought that was common knowledge. Not sure about Redemption though.