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

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Mods will fix it.

 

[Darkwind]

This is why when you watch Sopranos there's hidden motives and hidden agenda everywhere and nothing is "in your face". That's why people love it and that's why it's quality writing.

 

[Alex]

Wherein Cara confirms she quit/was fired from Bloodlines 2 back in September

I left in sept to work on other things

And a Glass Door review from September, possibly written by Cara herself given the writing style and subject matter.

I have been working at Hardsuit Labs full-time for less than a year

Pros

It’s a development studio you can work at in Seattle

Have fun events

Pizza!

If CEOs can’t understand your work, you’ll be able to finish it without constant questions and bad critiques

Diverse studio, progressive studio outside of pipelines, welcoming of LGBTQ even if not fully inclusive in game content

Cons

Read the recent news, it’s all confusing for us too but good for design and story. just took too long to get rid of bad actors

Poorly-trained old and new management, top to bottom, affects everything and difficult to get work done or tracked

Cheap on one hand, wasteful on the other

Can’t seem to have a studio meeting without announcing who’s gone this week

Cowardly and poor performance feedback or none at all until too late, creates paranoia about who's next

Hire developers and put no trust in them, especially game design

No idea how to make an RPG and it’s shown for the past few years

Game design needed a fresh restart, and senior designers hired need to be listened to

Other producers need to be trained and need to do actual work

Firings have made the news, and while necessary, could have been avoided through vetting when hiring

Paradox is half in, half out, but all trouble

Advice to Management

Trust design to figure it out it’s why you hired us

“Not as bad as it used to be” is NOT a good answer to issues

Get through this project and scatter to the winds, maybe start smaller studios that do shooter clones and shooter DLC – games you understand

Tell us when you’ll be in the office and when you’ll have the thing you promised actually done

Free the programmers from outsourcing prison or let them go to actual game studios where they can make cool stuff

Change your company motto from “we make great games” to “we’re still figuring it out bear with us”

While diversity is good, could be improved and listened to

If that is Cara, quite the backstabbing of Mitsoda there, calling him and Cluney a couple of con men. Accurate, though, based on my assessment.

I dunno who "Cara" is, but being disliked by SJWs is never a bad thing.

 

[Silverfish]

was it ever alive even

And it won't be born again!

Delterius take some communists with you.

Seize their means of production.

 

[Joseph Stalin]

Worry not, comrades. Sooner or later Paradox will give the franchise over to Larian Studios.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Worry not, comrades. Sooner or later Paradox will give the franchise over to Larian Studios.

TB VtM

OK

 

[Black]

Wherein Cara confirms she quit/was fired from Bloodlines 2 back in September

If that is Cara, quite the backstabbing of Mitsoda there, calling him and Cluney a couple of con men. Accurate, though, based on my assessment.

I dunno who "Cara" is, but being disliked by SJWs is never a bad thing.

You're a fool, SJWs dislike each other all the time, devour each other all the time, for not being progressive enough or by pushing the wrong woke trend of the moment.
See: Rowling.

 

[Hellraiser]

I haven't been this disappointment with the development of a sequel since Van Buren got axed. Mitsoda getting fired was pretty much another Van Buren moment for me. Maybe not the same order of magnitude and not exactly the same type of disappointment obviously, but this one is just emanating with either "its gonna be axed" or "its gonna be a depressing unfinished turd with signs of how it could have been great", either way resulting in not getting the sequel I hoped for.

Also which one of you wrote this in the PC Gamer article comments:

Thants • 5 hours ago • edited

This is amazing commitment to staying true to the feel of the original. They're even replicating the horrible development experience that left the game half-finished.

 

[Black]

I noticed something here in her review.

Diversity in the place is good, but everything surrounding game development is bad. Makes you think

I'd say get woke go broke but people constantly keep telling me it just isn't true.

 

[Kalin]

cancel this clusterfuck

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

Worry not, comrades. Sooner or later Paradox will give the franchise over to Larian Studios.

DOS in a VtM skin would be interesting... I guess.

 

[T.Ashpool]

we're probably already getting a crpg WoD game from hairbrained schemes. probably not vampire though but Wraith or Changeling

 

[Joseph Stalin]

cancel this clusterfuck

Too much money and marketing invested into this one. Also, this would be yet another proof for the "get woke - go broke" adage being true.

 

[thesheeep]

I noticed something here in her review.

Diversity in the place is good, but everything surrounding game development is bad. Makes you think

I'd say get woke go broke but people constantly keep telling me it just isn't true.

It's never the full story. Pretty much nothing goes belly-up just by getting woke.
I think it is safe to say by now that it is a symptom of things going very wrong at a top level with unqualified people making wrong decisions.
So if you see something getting woke, the going broke might indeed follow, but not necessarily due to wokeness.

Considering that Cara person's views and likely attempts at pushing agendas through the medium, can't say I'm too sad she isn't working on the game any more.
However, the constant firing of staff is indeed a very bad sign.

Who knows, maybe the thing will be cancelled and we'll be spared what would possibly (if you take the constant firing as a sign of a project going very wrong) have been a bad sequel.
Kinda like how fans dodged a bullet when System Shock 3 got canned.

League of Geeks, though... that's not a step up, though, pretty sad.

That depends, really.

If the new job lets you do what you enjoy and is just a much better fit for you, I'd say it is a definite improvement.
Easily worth less "prestige" and less money - as long as the money is still enough for your lifestyle.

If, of course, it is just a filler to not go broke then yeah, not a step up.

 

[Kazuki]

The game will be clusterfuck of release.

I'm sure there's someone mad enough to dedicate his entire life to fix this game just like the first one.

 

[Storyfag]

I think it is safe to say by now that it is a symptom of things going very wrong at a top level with unqualified people making wrong decisions.

But that is a symptom of wokeness. How do you think those unqualified people got to the top level in the first place? Diversity quotas.

 

[Hellraiser]

I think it is safe to say by now that it is a symptom of things going very wrong at a top level with unqualified people making wrong decisions.

But that is a symptom of wokeness. How do you think those unqualified people got to the top level in the first place? Diversity quotas.

I think this is a chicken and the egg kind of problem. Either managers are unqualified because they were hired by woke criteria or they were unqualified which is why they started running things (including hiring) using woke criteria, thinking that is a good idea.

Anyway it is pretty clear that it is

 

[Infinitron]

There are no "diversity quotas" in the gaming industry. People are constantly drawn to this topic when the obvious explanation is right in front of your eyes. Paradox hired a noname multiplayer shooter studio to make a sequel to one of the greatest RPGs. It didn't work out!

 

[Storyfag]

There are no "diversity quotas" in the gaming industry.

True, I was referring more to the film industry in recent years. Even then, are you absolutely confident the entire gaming industry in general and Hardsuit in particular does not have such quotas? Honest question, inquiring minds need to know.

People are constantly drawn to this topic when the obvious explanation is right in front of your eyes. Paradox hired a noname multiplayer shooter studio make a sequel to one of the greatest RPGs. It didn't work out!

Still, that noname multiplayer shooter studio's hiring policy (ahem Cara ahem) was... extravagant to say the least.

 

[Namesake]

There are no "diversity quotas" in the gaming industry.

OK, but there is a growing pressure to hire non white males, and even a growing pressure to hire non gamers. Once you get someone who's drunk the soylaid in hiring/lead positions, it's over.

 

[mondblut]

Even then, are you absolutely confident the entire gaming industry in general and Hardsuit in particular does not have such quotas?

There are no "quotas". There is only a race to drive those pesky straight white men out from creative and decision-making positions where they could possibly hinder the pozzed propaganda disguised as entertainment.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I just wanted another vampire RPG..

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/bloodlust-2-nemesis-sequel-to-bloodlust-shadowhunter.114744/

 

[Lambach]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/bloodlust-2-nemesis-sequel-to-bloodlust-shadowhunter.114744/

Bruh....

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Cara's new job: https://twitter.com/LeagueofGeeks/status/1317953668084199424

Lessons learned from Brian Mitsoda:

 

[mondblut]

They might as well just cancel this clusterfuck of a project at this point.

Why? Watching things crash and burn is the best kind of entertainment we can still get in the clown world. Far better entertainment than this shitstain of a game could ever become.