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

[Loostreaks]

It's funny because combat here looks as shit as it does in Cyberpunk yet every codexer is sucking CDPR's tranny dick in that thread. Makes you think

Combat in 2077 already looks hundred times better than any Arpg or Immersive Sim ( except Dishonored). You're either a troll or ignorant idiot at this point.

 

[luj1]

Combat in 2077 already looks hundred times better than any Arpg or Immersive Sim

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Searching at Linkedin and at Hardsuit Labs official page I've found this:

Current Openings (12) at Hardsuit Labs (most of them from last month, some of them only 2 weeks ago):

https://workforcenow...e=MP&lang=en_US

Level Designer

Hardsuit Labs is looking for a talented Level Designer to join our growing team, and to help us create exciting new gameplay experiences!

Character Animator

We at HSL employ a variety of handkey and motion capture techniques and are looking for a strong animator who can contribute immediately

Producer

Cool, level-headed and even-keeled – you keep the horses looking forward when the cart is on fire. We’re looking for an enthusiastic

Senior VFX Artist

Hardsuit Labs is currently looking for a Senior VFX artist to join our team. You’ll use your artistic and technical skills to bring the ...

Technical Designer

We are looking for someone with excellent communication and problem-solving skills, who has experience working with multiple disciplines.

Creative Director

We are looking for an experienced Creative Director to join our team. Manage the creative process from inception to launch and translate ...

Art Director

Reporting to the studio art director, you will provide artistic leadership and will be a vision holder in the execution and delivery of a...

Senior UE4 Engineer

We are looking for a well-rounded and self-motivated Programmer to join our growing team. This is a great opportunity for someone who ...

Senior Gameplay Engineer

The ideal candidate has a long-standing passion for playing games, a strong aptitude for critical thinking and analysis, and demonstrated...

Systems Designer

We are looking for talented systems designer to join our growing team and help us create exciting new gameplay experiences! You are the ...

Senior Animator

We are looking for someone who excels at problem solving, communication, and has a passion for animation. Hardsuit Labs is looking for ...

Combat Designer

We are looking for someone who feels comfortable collaborating across various disciplines, and has experience building and tuning



Hardsuit Labs seems to be aware of all the things that need work. Maybe they don't have yet the appropiate people to improve on those so instead of raging against all what you think is bad about the game if you know any person who could take those jobs you know what to do. The game clearly needs some talented people. Spread the word if you want them to deliver the game we all have been waiting for.

I just hope they will delay the release date for the game. Definitely needs some big touches for it to shine. Specially in facial and combat animations. Well, ALL animations in general.

I insist, Spread the word everywhere. I will definitely do.
Otherwise, things may not change...

Speaking as a former dev. They're not going to be able to hire guys, acclimatise them, and get them working making the game not shit within the time they have left. Even with crunch and generous milestone rewards that's not workable.

 

[unfairlight]

What a trainwreck. This will be even worse than the first one. The only thing I will give them credit for is that the climbing looks nice, but the rest is garbage.

 

[Alexios]

My current prediction: The Outer Worlds will have better combat and writing than Bloodlines 2, and Boyarsky will finally take back the valor stolen from him by Mitsoda, the guy who showed up mid-development and left before release because he was mad about Activision freezing the game before it was "finished" and could tell Troika had no future.

"Evil corporations" will never be better writing than anything involved with VTM, no matter how shit Bloodlines 2 is. And nothing that's so far been revealed from Outer Worlds shows that it will have better combat.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

Is it shit?

 

[Alexios]

This looks really bad.

 

[Delterius]

This will be even worse than the first one.

another for the kys pile

 

[Delterius]

My current prediction: The Outer Worlds will have better combat and writing than Bloodlines 2, and Boyarsky will finally take back the valor stolen from him by Mitsoda, the guy who showed up mid-development and left before release because he was mad about Activision freezing the game before it was "finished" and could tell Troika had no future.

"Evil corporations" will never be better writing than anything involved with VTM, no matter how shit Bloodlines 2 is. And nothing that's so far been revealed from Outer Worlds shows that it will have better combat.

its p realistic tho

 

[Mr. Hiver]

sullynathan

Yeah, guess what cherry pick quoting and pulling a year old demo makes you?

 

[sullynathan]

>We haven't seen combat of cyberpunk
>I post nearly an hour of gameplay and 10 minutes of combat
>retard complains about cherry picking

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Complain? I just told you shithead and you just did it again.

"guess what cherry pick quoting and pulling a year old demo makes you? "

dumbfuck.

Plus, you also conveniently and moronically - left out - that nobody is praising Cyberpunk for combat.

You dumb devolved shit.

 

[S.torch]

>We haven't seen combat of cyberpunk
>I post nearly an hour of gameplay and 10 minutes of combat
>retard complains about cherry picking

what cherry-picking? the combat in cyberpunk looks far better than the buggy mess in this sequel

 

[unfairlight]

Cyberpunk looks endlessly better than this on every level. Good visuals, way better AI, first person cover system, enemies dropping dead as you expect them to. In this it looks like you slap around a person in a stunlock until they fly around like a deflating balloon or as if you were casting an Oblivion spell at them through your gun until they die, with janky autoaim, bad sensitivity and no acceleration. It doesn't just look bad, it will play worse.

 

[Wunderbar]

Cyberpunk was in development for eternity, and has like $200m budget while being developed in a relatively cheap Poland.

 

[sullynathan]

like I said, poles sucking CDPR's tranny dick as usual

 

[jf8350143]

Every thread, no matter it's outer worlds or VTMB 2, there is always people say crap like "Cyberpunk 2077 looks better than this".

No shit, its budget is probably higher than all the other RPGs comes out in the last three years combined. If it didn't look miles better than the other game when it comes to combat and graphics it only means CDPR is completely retard and don't know shit about how to spend their money. Yet the dialogue options they show in their demo is still way limited comparing to those smaller budget game, which didn't have a very extensive dialogue tree in the first place.

Even if Cyberpunk is a better game, so what? Are we only allowed to play the best game in the Market and nothing else?

 

[Nano]

Cyberpunk looks endlessly better than this on every level. Good visuals, way better AI, first person cover system, enemies dropping dead as you expect them to. In this it looks like you slap around a person in a stunlock until they fly around like a deflating balloon or as if you were casting an Oblivion spell at them through your gun until they die, with janky autoaim, bad sensitivity and no acceleration. It doesn't just look bad, it will play worse.

You're the reason mid-tier studios are nearly extinct.

 

[NullFlow]

I can tolerate jank, awkward combat and stiff animations, but with this game being less than a year away from release and still looking like this, it's a bit of a worrying sign. Not a fan of its nu Deus Ex and Dishonored style UI either, and the quest marker on top of the screen better be removable.

 

[Roguey]

"Evil corporations" will never be better writing than anything involved with VTM, no matter how shit Bloodlines 2 is.

You can side with the evil corporations.

And nothing that's so far been revealed from Outer Worlds shows that it will have better combat.

Look at melee/ranged combat in TOW, then look at it here. It's worse here.

 

[Herumor]

I'd love to see that dug up. Not being sarcastic. Any ammo we had to get stupidity markers removed from the game would be valued, at least in our hearts.

I found this: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Announced for PS4, Coming Q1 2020

Written by Brian Mitsoda, Cara Ellison, and the esteemed Chris Avellone, you'll get to explore the seamless hub-world of Seattle without any quest markers from the first-person perspective.

But that seems to be written by the person writing the article rather than being stated by the devs/publishers.

 

[Goral]

The only thing I've liked in this gameplay (so yeah, my opinion of it got lowered after seeing 15 minutes of it) was the fact that we got XP only for the quest (so no grinding here) and the verticality but the latter might get old really fast. The writing, as has been said already, seems rather awful based on the fragments we got. "All I need you to do" and just below "all you have to do". That's some elementary school level of writing, although the worst examples have already been posted (and yes, I'm aware that spoken language isn't the same as written one but somehow in Bloodlines they've managed to do it right). Not to mention that for some reason NPC's name is hovering over their heads, WTF?
Then we have a Nosferatu who wants us to do him a favour and in exchange he offers us absolutely nothing. WTF? The quest marker is also egregious and voice acting is just average which is a shame considering how good VO in Bloodlines is. What's possibly the worst though is that it's been developed for consoles and it shows. The wheel, the press X prompt and the dumbed down everything.

Jews are wrong, it's better to give than to take

OK, I'll just do you a favour out of the goodness of my heart.

Are you Slugg Slugg? Seriously, this name hovering is annoying, especially when in the next screen we get to know his name. That's some revolver Ocelot level. BTW, it seems strange that we know who to look just by name, she could have given us his picture or tell at least that he's a frog/ogre (not sure if telling us he's a Nosferatu would help, as fledgling and thinblood at that obvious things aren't so obvious). We learn from Nosferatu that he's a Nosferatu too but we should have learned that from Elif (it's been suggested that she knows where he is but since he knows her it's more difficult for her to get close), going to Nosferatu is just filler content and just another stop without much significance.

Visually it looks good but as I've said here the atmosphere is too dark (and yes, I know it's called WoD) and Seattle looks like too much of a shithole. It's like being forced to play in sewers for the whole game. Now compare it to Vienna (where there was snow for example) or to Prague (where we had the chance to play during the day) or to any Bloodlines (outside) location. It's just too much of a difference. Hopefully we will see some more interesting locations later because this part of Seattle is too much of a dump.

Additionally, while it may be considered as nitpicking (can't argue with that) it seems very strange to stand next to an NPC for so long while saying nothing and all he's doing is staring at us while swaying from left to right. I know it's been like this in VTMB but here it's more visible for some reason. I'm not sure if stopping the time would make it better but it looks awkward the way it is now.

Yeah, a YELLOW tent is totally inconspicuous and it's not yellow because it's easier for the player to find a yellow tent among normal ones . The real question is, can we get the data from the tent via metagaming? I sure hope so, there's only so many places a person can hide in a tent (plus with Auspex I wager it wouldn't be that hard to notice). And it must be so since all we got from Slugg was "yellow tent" and we immediately got the data so it must have been at plain sight apparently :].

And here are some questions/observations that I would like developers to know so Wesp5 , if you agree with me on anything please send it to your contact.

• WTF jumping out of a high building doesn't break the masquerade in a masquerade area?

• Is lockpicking dependant on skills? Doesn't look like it in the gameplay, there is no skill check visible (unlike in VTMB). Also, in VTMB performing criminal acts next to NPCs got police on our heads, it doesn't seem to be the case in here which is a huge decline.

• Why is everyone following the quest marker instead of exploring the area? Are there so few things to do there or is it so linear that you can't go anywhere once you receive a quest? It looks bad when compared to Bloodlines where you had the chance to meet with various relevant NPCs (other than Mercurio) or visit interesting areas (like the hospital, where you had the chance to make a ghoul). I hope it's just journalists being retarded and conditioned to just follow arrows like the sheep they are.

• Where's our laptop/computer for quests? If all we'll have is a smartphone give us at least a chance to interact with it in a significant way. If all it does is showing us quests then quest journal would be better for it.

• Where is the save/load feature? Did they disable it so that we wouldn't be able to see that other choices were illusionary only and led to the exact same results? That would be my guess because I don't believe no one would try to do it.

• Can we get the data from the tent via metagaming?

 

[Daedalos]

I liked the gameplay trailers, gives me good vibes for the game. Yea the combat looks shitty, but it did in bloodlines 1, too, no excuse though.

I don't really care about facial animations, they looked "ok" to me in the trailer, not really gamebreaking. The visuals of Seattle does look impressive, hopefully the overall story, C&C and writing will too.
Gonna be making a malkavian for sure.

 

[ZVERMIX]

The visuals of santa monica does look impressive

The game takes place in Seattle.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm pretty sure the VO was placeholder, but is it possible that the writing is also placeholder?