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

[Vincente]

my contact

Did this contact of yours also whispered something about Gangrel & Nosferatu DLCs?

 

[Jimmious]

- No moving cars on streets.

Pure sequel qualities

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Moving cars on the streets are honestly one of the least important things when designing an open world environment.

EDIT: Also I think we can give the BL2 PC at least a little credit on their dance moves: At least everyone around them doesn't stop and seem embarrassed for them like in BL1 when you go dancing. Even if your moves are about as embarrassing, so they're probably just more polite in Seattle or you exude confidence.

 

[HansDampf]

The combat barks are really bad, not to mention the sound design. It sounds like an actor is standing in a booth reading off a sheet of paper. I really want these devs to play Condemned ... audio like that is what they need for this kind of combat. Well, pre-alpha and all that.

I also did hate the dialogue from the quest giver. "I am going to give you a quest. During this quest you will have an objective. I will now tell you what that objective is." Jesus christ.

How many different characters did Mitsoda voice? I counted at least 5

Don't worry. The voice acting is pre-alpha. The writing is pre-alpha. The combat is pre-alpha. The animations are pre-alpha. Maybe the engine is pre-alpha, too.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yes, but the great thing is, everybody can add these expressions during dialogues without knowing anything about Faceposer or details (like I added several myself in the UP) !

What's your opinion on the latest videos/trailers of Bloodlines 2? I'm curious.

Okay, here are my thoughts: Atmosphere and level design looks great and seems to be typical Bloodlines! I'm a shooter fan myself so I don't really like all the melee fighting and the player throwing away firearms, but I talked to my contact at Paradox and he claimed you can play this differently if you want. I also didn't really like the weird special moves that suddenly broke out of first person view! Voice overs were okay in my opinon as was the writing, but I suspect that a lot of this might not be final. I mean how many people is Mitsoda to voice himself in the game ? As has been said already the facial animations are weak and I will write my contact that they must work on this. I also didn't get what all these HUD bars were about and will ask him about it! Last not least I already noticed voice overs not fitting with lip movements or subtitles and fires burning through barrel sides, which were typical things I fixed in the Bloodlines Unofficial Patch. They should really have this checked before it's final, I don't want to do another patch !

Tell your contact that fighting hordes of enemies in Bloodlines 1 was part of the game that was the worst so they should not base the sequel around the worst parts of Bloodlines 1.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

A big soy yikes from me on the writing. It's not as SJW as I feared but it just doesn't have the same edge Bloodlines did. It doesn't seem as clever or as atmospheric. Also, none of the vampires look that much different from normal people. In Bloodlines, the vampires all looked distinct and had identity. No one stood out to me in this demo.

 

[Orma]

Look great tbh, can't wait to get lost in seattle

 

[Cross]

They managed to design melee combat that's worse than the first Bloodlines. Impressive. The hit reactions are asset flip scam game levels of bad. And this is supposed to be releasing in half a year.

Or should I say combat in general, rather than just melee combat. At around the 12:40 mark, a young (human) woman somehow manages to take half a dozen point-blank gunshots to the face without so much as flinching.

These NPCs don't have any personality. All their lines are purely exposittory. And that lack of personality extends to the side quests. The first 2 NPCs spend 5 minutes regurgitating a quest objective as nondescript as 'find Slugg...for reasons'. A far cry from Damsel asking you to stop irresponsible vampires from spreading diseases in between extolling the virtues of communism, or Knox the vampire fanboy who's so excited about being a ghoul that he blurts out the secret task his master entrusted to him.

Th dialogue view when talking to NPCs stays relatively zoomed out, which only serves to draw attention to their unnatural lack of body language. NPCs in the first Bloodlines were much more animated than this, despite the dialogue view only showing them from the shoulders up.

The new design of the Nosferatu (or what I think are supposed to be Nosferatu) looks pretty bad.

I'm not a fan of all the contextual third-person mini-cutscenes like 'press X to mist form' or 'press X to do a completely pointless backflip'.

It doesn't look like a stealth playstyle will be possible.

It's blatantly obvious the game is primarily designed for consoles/controllers (which for first-person games is vastly inferior to mouse and keyboard), though not surprising sadly.

Oh, and the only piece of music that stood out was an unused track from the first Bloodlines.

 

[Wesp5]

Also I think we can give the BL2 PC at least a little credit on their dance moves: At least everyone around them doesn't stop and seem embarrassed for them like in BL1 when you go dancing.

You are making a huge mistake here: in Bloodlines 1 the other dancers were so amazed by the player dancing that they gathered around him which was a cool feature that I will relay as missing to my contact. And in case any of you ever go dancing in clubs, this happens in real life whenever somebody is dancing great, at least when they are a beautiful female !

 

[Rahdulan]

Non IGN shit



I have the original on STEAM, Should I play it or hold off on something else?

It looks like they're trying to imitate the body language during dialogs which made Bloodlines stand out, but they have a case of way more advanced technology and way less giving a fuck going on. Not impressed in that regard.

 

[Lord Andre]

The gameplay shown is slightly above hot garbage... day 1 purchase it is.



Also, Mitsoda looks like a socially inept manchild that they need to parade around for the name recognition. The fat chick is there as his handler and to answer questions in his stead when the up close human contact turns his speech pattern to gibberish.

 

[ZVERMIX]

Leaked image from the gameplay recording session:

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Wesp5

Ask them what the hell is with that neck.

 

[ArchAngel]

Wesp5

Ask them what the hell is with that neck.

They wanted to make something big on the chick but since this is 2019 they could not make big boobs like Bloodlines 1.

 

[Space Satan]

Peak gameplay

 

[Modron]

Has anyone asked the most important question? Will money return?

 

[Ismaul]

This talk with club owner doesn't make sense. She didn't tell you what kind of information you need to purchase from Slugg.

Yeah what the fuck is up with that?

Throw away writing, not even bothering to enter into specifics and worldbuild a little. There are many problems in the demo, but this might be the worst.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

They wanted to make something big on the chick but since this is 2019 they could not make big boobs like Bloodlines 1.

maybe... but i might figured it out.

There are snake vampires.

Followers of Set clan.

Their signature Discipline is Serpentis which allows them to take on aspects of snakes.

Thats a snake. And thats why she doesnt have much of facial animations.

 

[Wesp5]

This talk with club owner doesn't make sense. She didn't tell you what kind of information you need to purchase from Slugg.

Yeah what the fuck is up with that?

Throw away writing, not even bothering to enter into specifics and worldbuild a little. There are many problems in the demo, but this might be the worst.

Obviously you met her before and might know what she is after. Or at least Slugg might know if you tell him about her, that could still all make sense...

 

[luj1]

Don't lie, you were expecting far worse.

This attitude is the protogenic cause of all decline

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Wait, was that dude really playing this on a steering wheel? For me, the biggest problem with this demo was that the player kept lunging forward past/into the enemies. It was like he had no depth perception or no control of his speed. But I suspect that has more to do with the player than the game, especially if he was playing it on a steering wheel controller designed for a racing game (WTF is wrong with Paradox’s PR?).

Need to watch it again now that I’m fully awake, but I have to admit that when the footage started and you can hear Brian as the newscaster talking about female sex slaves being discovered in a sex dungeon, it warmed the cockles of my cold, dead heart.

 

[Raghar]

I also didn't get what all these HUD bars were about and will ask him about it!

Left, bloodpoints 5 of them.
Bottom frenzy level, aka how close you are to frenzy.
Yellow bar, concusion damage. Recovers when not damaged for a while.
Green bar, aggravated damage, knifes and stuff. If you run out of yellow bar, it might go to health damage. I didn't see him running out of yellow bar, thus who knows what are consequences.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Wait, was that dude really playing this on a steering wheel?

Nah, its a sarcastic shop man.

 

[fantadomat]

Are people genuinely excited for this garbage? Hit detection does not exist, AI is braindead, the only good thing about this is how most places look nice.

Why don't you hate Vtmb 1 for these exact reasons? What , did that game have fantastic combat or something? And "garbage"? Passing verdict on this game based on 1 aspect of it and also the shittiest of them all, the combat?

Now to those in this thread. Just came here to read up on some news after a few days and I see people bitching about facial expressions, voice acting and combat, a few pages at least. What about skills, dialogue and dialogue options, reactivity, arsenal, immersive sim elements, stealth, level design hell anything else. This is supposed to be an RPG. I'm shocked you didn't complain about graphics.

I hate all vampire games equally, don't get me wrong. I never played the old Vampire games because I hated them when they released just as much. I'm just noting that this new one is completely broken, mechanically and engine-wise.

Choosing whether or not to play a game based purely on its theme is as bad as watching movies for the plot, or worse

I simply cannot stand vampires, I am sorry. I find them the most annoying thing ever, whether it's movies, games or fiction.

The fuck are you doing here then???

 

[J1M]

This talk with club owner doesn't make sense. She didn't tell you what kind of information you need to purchase from Slugg.

Yeah what the fuck is up with that?

Throw away writing, not even bothering to enter into specifics and worldbuild a little. There are many problems in the demo, but this might be the worst.

It could be intentional ambiguity because the game design didn't have the details fleshed out when the writing tasks were distributed.

The optimist might say that it is to introduce a sense of mystery.