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

[jungl]

What a train wreck. I mean its not paradoxes fault they don't know how to judge how good a studio is. Their in house studio produces amateur text based map games with little programing skill involved. When hardsuit said to them "ya we are like you guys but don't worry we know make fps games lol". They took hook line and sinker to their financial losses. Very sad but paradox should of never owned the WoD license considering their record.

 

[Smerlus]

Best RPG news I've heard in a while.

 

[Roguey]

hiring soy producer guy from ubisoft

Professional Ubisoft Hatchet Man is probably the Cleveian hero of this story who told Paradox that there was zero hope Hardsuit would be able to shape this up into something shippable. Stones of Arnhem part 2.

No Mitsoda, no Bloodlines.

I don't see them hiring him back, so it's dead. Irreversible damage to the brand and the game. I have no interest in playing the salvage operation of Mitsoda's game. His characters are what made the original good.

They'd better call whatever game they make something else than Bloodlines.

Mitsoda's the guy who wrote the terribly bland Dead State and insisted that they hire Cara Ellison. His abilities as a writer have deteriorated considerably since 2004.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Mitsoda's the guy who wrote the terribly bland Dead State

fuck you

It has one of the largest cast of companions with actual dialogue in any RPG I can think of. All of them are unique, I don't remember any of them being poorly written.
There was nothing wrong with the writing in the game.

 

[Wesp5]

What precedent is there for a developer being fired after years of work and a completely new developer coming in and salvaging a decent game out of their mess

Prey (originally kinda sorta Prey 2) would probably be the closest analogue... and it came out 12 years after originally announced. Not sure that's a positive act to follow.

Indeed, because Arkane's "Prey" had nothing in common with the original except for the name to trick naive players not being aware that they made System Shock 3 !

 

[Wesp5]

It has one of the largest cast of companions with actual dialogue in any RPG I can think of. All of them are unique, I don't remember any of them being poorly written.
There was nothing wrong with the writing in the game.

I never played this, but I can neither imagine Mitsoda to do such bad writing that you need to fire him, nor to delay a game or make it a mess just with his writing alone!
He was a good friend of Cluney though and I can picture him not recognizing that the latter lost control of the project from the gameplay side of things...

 

[Jenkem]

Mitsoda's the guy who wrote the terribly bland Dead State

fuck you

It has one of the largest cast of companions with actual dialogue in any RPG I can think of. All of them are unique, I don't remember any of them being poorly written.
There was nothing wrong with the writing in the game.

it's right up there w/ Kingdoms of Amalur and Fallout 76, huh?

 

[Roguey]

Mitsoda's the guy who wrote the terribly bland Dead State

fuck you

It has one of the largest cast of companions with actual dialogue in any RPG I can think of. All of them are unique, I don't remember any of them being poorly written.
There was nothing wrong with the writing in the game.

When I stopped playing Dead State, I had found 13 allies and the only one I can remember is Dwight Schrute. It's pretty bad when the only memorable dialogue from the entire game is from a rip-off of a sitcom character.

 

[grimace]

This man never ages.

Is he...

Spoiler

immortal

???

LOL at wanting Brian Piss-soda back, when he and his company were the problem.

The release was updated in the steam library page...

And so am I

Big Brain Brian Mitsoda cover model for Bloodlines 2 alpha project and published author.

Please, Brian, write us an Anne Rice vampire story and publish it as fan fiction telling the true story of the failed development of BloodlessVines.

Spoiler

Tell us who sucked the project dry and left it to die!

 

[Testownia]

As soon as we can, we’ll let you know what the future development team of Bloodlines 2 will look like.

Yeah, good luck with that. What precedent is there for a developer being fired after years of work and a completely new developer coming in and salvaging a decent game out of their mess? None that I can recall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Paradox quietly moved on from this and wrote it off as a loss.

Duke Nuk'em Forever...

 

[Caim]

As soon as we can, we’ll let you know what the future development team of Bloodlines 2 will look like.

Yeah, good luck with that. What precedent is there for a developer being fired after years of work and a completely new developer coming in and salvaging a decent game out of their mess? None that I can recall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Paradox quietly moved on from this and wrote it off as a loss.

Duke Nuk'em Forever...

I'd say that I'd love to see Duke Nukem in the World of Darkness, but then I realize that I already have since I have gone through the Hunter: The Reckoning core rulebook.

 

[Testownia]

In terms of style and writing, I'd give it to Failbetter Games.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Lord almighty, did they hire Duke Nukem Forever developers to make this?

You're onto something there:

I was wondering where the infinity symbol fit into things.

 

[prengle]

gee whiz i hope Sonic Team can release VTMB2 by the next fiscal quarter!!

 

[Mefi]

What happened with Magna Mundi?

Modder drama is a fair summary but a bunch of modders turned dev spent months arguing that their game was perfectly on track and would be ready for release even as Paradox was coming to the realisation the chap leading the project was a fantasist and the game they were pretending to make was unplayable in every sense. Chap's family ended up having to get him put into a mental institution because he's so delusional. Surprise ending is that it turns out he doesn't have a mental health issue, he's just a bullshitter. Not sure if he's still planning to take Paradox through the European courts for, so he claims, signing over the ownership rights to their game engines to him or not.

 

[ChildInTime]

How's that Outshill lady taking these news? I want some more drama.

 

[Jason Liang]

Whoever said "non-consenting Kindred" was onto something, I think. In the latest version of VtM, vampires will be polite good bois who dindu nuffin and ask for consent. Didn't Lestat do that in Interview? That's homoerotic enough to be palatable to the woke.

Louis, not Lestat.

 

[Ninjerk]

Whoever said "non-consenting Kindred" was onto something, I think. In the latest version of VtM, vampires will be polite good bois who dindu nuffin and ask for consent. Didn't Lestat do that in Interview? That's homoerotic enough to be palatable to the woke.

Louis, not Lestat.

"I'm going to give you the choice I never had." Something like that's Lestat's line. I didn't remember it before.

 

[Tao]

Whoever said "non-consenting Kindred" was onto something, I think. In the latest version of VtM, vampires will be polite good bois who dindu nuffin and ask for consent. Didn't Lestat do that in Interview? That's homoerotic enough to be palatable to the woke.

Louis, not Lestat.

"I'm going to give you the choice I never had." Something like that's Lestat's line. I didn't remember it before.

Dude, it's not even close to be the same.

Lestat was toying around. He is a whimsical character not a human right activist, wtf are you talking about xd

Besides in the books is Marius who sire that writer. The movie took a few licenses.

edit:

 

[lycanwarrior]

You people should cool it with mocking comments, think of every poor consumer who preordered this game for the stop sign

Taking this time to appreciate the comedy of Paradox putting up a stop sign as a preorder bonus while the devs themselves talked about how the stop sign dialogue was insensitive to the mentally ill and they weren't going to include anything like that. P'dox should take this time to consider which direction they want to go in.

I think Spiders/Cyanide have top tier writers, they're just operating within the constraints of what little resources they have. I'd love to see them get a shot at a huge title like this (though I imagine they'll just hand it to Harebrained).

I imagine Cyanide's in the doghouse now on account of Earthblood doing so poorly. The writing was also received quite poorly here.

Oh yeah,they will give it to those sjws for sure. Which is really stupid because they won't be able to do a third person open world rpg for sure. Their forte is making top down TB rpgs with trannies in them. It will be a huge mess if they give it to harebraindead.

Before Bloodlines, Troika had only ever done pseudo-isometric turnbased RPGs and they had never worked with Source before (or anyone else for that matter). I'd have more faith in them shipping a decent RPG than any other Paradox-owned studio. That being said, I doubt it's going to them.

Is there a source regarding Earthblood? Not that it would be shocking if it did poorly but still...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I imagine Cyanide's in the doghouse now on account of Earthblood doing so poorly. The writing was also received quite poorly here.

earthblood was funded by uncle sweeney

 

[Wesp5]

Is there a source regarding Earthblood? Not that it would be shocking if it did poorly but still...

At least the Metacritic ratings are not good: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/werewolf-the-apocalypse---earthblood

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is there a source regarding Earthblood? Not that it would be shocking if it did poorly but still...

At least the Metacritic ratings are not good: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/werewolf-the-apocalypse---earthblood

In a world where you can pick up The Last of Us Remastered for a song, there’s no reason to waste your time on Earthblood.

This is a deeply average game reminiscent of cheap B-movies,

From story to visuals to level design, the game feels outdated

video game jo*rnalists

 

[Maculo]

I am hopeful we will have a thread along the lines of "Why did Sirotek go bankrupt" several years from now on Bloodlines 2. I want to know the leadup to taking Hardsuit Labs off development. It blows my mind for something reason, especially the press release and how it struggled to put a semi-positive spin on this development.

Off topic, but I am reminded of that retro space horror game Routine, where the developer went AWOL.

 

[Takamori]

I WARNED YOU BRO ABOUT THE VAPOURWARE