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

[RaggleFraggle]

Honestly, the best outcome is that the game is quietly canceled. If it releases then it will almost certainly bomb and that will kill the urban fantasy genre in video games for the foreseeable future. Publishers will no longer want to fund urban fantasy games when the biggest one so far bombs spectacularly due to incompetence. (Yes, I know that’s stupid but that’s just how the market works.)

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)

Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!

Spoiler

 

[Semiurge]

Malkavians will be darker

You must be a malkavian prophet yourself.

 

[Reever]

I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)

Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!

Spoiler

How you gonna LARP as a mentally challenged weeb and not put this in your spoiler

 

[jungl]

They be better off making this a turn based sequel like divinity or diablo like redepemtion. Scaling walls jumping around being a bullet sponge. Its impossible for them to make the AI not look janky when you give them as many variables as the player has access to.

 

[GhostCow]

I meant I was confident. It's true that Brian's level of confidence varies with the situation. He convinced a coworker to leave her husband for him and then very likely cheated on her years later leading to their own divorce, so he seems to be quite confident with the ladies (pretty easy when you're a 6'4/193 cm silver fox)

Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong confidence rumour inspector friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because confident is not need anon for screeching harpy menhera anon! Is not! Confident is only need anon for cute strong wifes anon! It is true anon! It is! You are a good strong friend anon!

Spoiler

Leave my oshi out of this!

 

[Roguey]

Latest Chinese Room newsletter saying they still can't announce what they're working on but confirm both their projects use Unreal Engine 5 (Hardsuit's was UE4) and their studio has grown to 100 people.

We know we've been incredibly tight-lipped about the projects we're working on, but we have two games in development using the brand new Unreal Engine 5. So albeit that is all that we can reveal at this stage, we're just so thankful for all the support along the way. Our team is larger than ever, nearing 100 people in the core team, as well as our partners, all working towards the same goal of bringing the compelling worlds and stories to you.

 

[Herumor]

Brian Mitsoda was fired from Obsidian once (by Chris Avellone, no less!).

What was the given reason and has there been actual confirmation from someone at Obsidian for the real reason?

Why is nobody else making urban fantasy rpgs with original IPs?

Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?

 

[gerey]

Chinese Room

Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.

Who the fuck thought they were a good fit to develop a new Bloodlines? They have the same retarded political views as the previous band of retards, but even less of an understanding on how to make a game.

Is Bloodlines 2 some elaborate tax evasion or money laundering scam Paradox is running?

 

[Roguey]

Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.

Who the fuck thought they were a good fit to develop a new Bloodlines? They have the same retarded political views as the previous band of retards, but even less of an understanding on how to make a game.

Is Bloodlines 2 some elaborate tax evasion or money laundering scam Paradox is running?

All the people who worked on those walking sims were laid off with the exception of the company founder. Claims were made that it was all Sumo Digital's idea and Wester made the claim that if it wasn't for that pitch they would have cancelled the whole thing outright.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?

Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others. The thing is, there’s basically no overlap between the demographics. Almost all urban fantasy fiction is romance novels/shows. Seeking brand recognition is pointless.

What brand recognition does an obscure tabletop game have anyway? Bloodlines was a commercial failure with a cult following that Paradox has consistently failed to appeal to. Their licensed games they’ve flooded the market with so far suck and the IP is of questionable value at best, especially after Paradox has driven it into the ground by polluting the market with shovelware and alienating the tabletop fandom. I’m surprised devs kept asking to tack it on these unrelated games they had in the oven.

That doesn’t explain the lack of indie titles though. There’s loads of indie cyberpunk/horror/pixel/whatever games that aren’t tied to an existing brand. Yet urban fantasy is non-existent unless Paradox throws a game jam and then gets an astonishing 80 entries that the devs are somehow too lazy to make unless they can use this one shitty 30 years old pretentious emo goth IP. (Although I suppose the cash prize is pretty compelling.) They’re probably all crap anyway but it’s still astonishing.

So far the most we got was the dungeon crawler Bloodlust: Shadowhunter, which was apparently profitable enough that it got two sequels. I thought the engine would be great for a story rich crpg and I’m surprised the dev never did anything like that.

 

[GhostCow]

Anita Blake

Literal pornography. I quit once I got to the book with the hermaphrodite and I only lasted that long because I was an edgy teenager at the time. Please don't give anyone any ideas about making a game out of this series. Gaming is degenerate enough. I would have suggested something from the Mercedes Thompson series.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

How you gonna LARP as a mentally challenged weeb and not put this in your spoiler

Thank you Reever anon! Good strong friend anon! I do love you anon! I do! You are a good strong friend anon!

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Leave my oshi out of this!

What! Do not worry anon it is okay anon because I do love cute based schizophrenia menhera I CAN FIX HER wifes anon! I do! You are a good anon!

Spoiler

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anita Blake

Literal pornography. I quit once I got to the book with the hermaphrodite and I only lasted that long because I was an edgy teenager at the time. Please don't give anyone any ideas about making a game out of this series. Gaming is degenerate enough. I would have suggested something from the Mercedes Thompson series.

I knew the books were bad but I didn’t know they got that bad.

Anyway, I have ideas and outlines for an urban fantasy game myself. I’d really like to write a full script but without all the other stuff you’d need to make a decent game I can’t motivate myself. Unfortunately I didn’t learn drawing, instruments, or programming so script writing is all I can do at present.

 

[Herumor]

Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others.

You've just proved my point. None of those have brand recognition and Anne Rice is just gay romance and BDMS that happens to involve vampires.

 

[Semiurge]

and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy?

 

[Don Salieri]

Oh God, I didn't connect the dots until now, but these are the absolute cocksuckers that foisted Dear Esther and A Machine for Pigs upon us.

Look at this pleb who didn't get Machine for Pigs, it was a better game than the original Amnesia and if you think otherwise you should go back and replay both. Turns out the first game don't holds up while Pigs is as relevant as ever.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Women of the Otherworld, True Blood, Blood Ties, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, A Discovery of Witches, Night Watch, Lost Girl, and countless others.

You've just proved my point. None of those have brand recognition and Anne Rice is just gay romance and BDMS that happens to involve vampires.

Brand recognition is overrated anyway. Unless it's a huge brand like a movie franchise or something (although those are getting less and less valuable as studios ruin them), it's not going to be big enough to make much of a difference in profit unless you're making a cheap shovelware game in an uber niche genre where a couple thousand purchases by the tiny dedicated fandom of an obscure IP are considered amazing success beyond your wildest dreams. If you're making a free to play in an oversaturated genre, then brand recognition is completely irrelevant because you're guaranteed to turn huge profits unless your game is so sucky that it drives players away. Elden Ring and Apex Legends are completely original and they're huge. I'd think advertising would be a more important thing to focus on.

Also, the IP may restrict your game more than it helps. When Troika made BL they weren't fans of the IP and wanted to do their own stuff (Activision forced them to use the license), but due to contract stipulations they had to contact WW whenever they wanted to make changes and that proved to be extremely laborious and may have negatively affected development.

In any case, that doesn't explain the dearth of indie games.

 

[Delterius]

Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Because companies want to play it safe, in a way that still gets them money. Urban fantasy out of nowhere won't sell all that much without brand recognition - and you have what exactly when it comes to urban fantasy? Dresden Files?

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

codex will look at deadfire and go "waow I wish more games were like this!!!"

 

[Harthwain]

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.

 

[Delterius]

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.

The key operating words here are mainstream success. KCD and Disco are not jockeying for the forgotten realms audience. They transcend the pure rpg audience by default. A better case study would be Shadowrun. As far as combat rpgs go the Shadowrun trilogy is rather garbage. As far as settings go it is non standard in both ways: not only futuristic, but having elves in the middle of cyberpunk should be enough to weird out more than one buyer. And yet it was all successful anyways. So it's not impossible to succeed outside of realmesque, you just gotta appeal to the wider normiedom than the normies who mostly play rpgs.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.

The key operating words here are mainstream success. KCD and Disco are not jockeying for the forgotten realms audience. They transcend the pure rpg audience by default. A better case study would be Shadowrun. As far as combat rpgs go the Shadowrun trilogy is rather garbage. As far as settings go it is non standard in both ways: not only futuristic, but having elves in the middle of cyberpunk should be enough to weird out more than one buyer. And yet it was all successful anyways. So it's not impossible to succeed outside of realmesque, you just gotta appeal to the wider normiedom than the normies who mostly play rpgs.

Yup. This is why the pitches I'm preparing for urban fantasy try to maintain a sense of familiarity by recapping established genre tropes. It's basically the world we live in now but the paranormal is real and lives in a secret underworld beneath our notice. And it's more neutral, comedic, and campy in tone rather than "crawling in my skin!". Sure, there are vampires, werewolves, succubi, mummies and whatever that prey on the innocent, but there's also angels, slayers, charmed ones, and brooding vampire detectives running around fighting the darkness with witty quips.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the problem isn't urban fantasy or lack of brand recognition. the problem is making an rpg that isn't faux medieval fantasy. anything outside the world of wizards and castles is considered a risk. and, frankly, it is. the audience was raised in a very specific cocktail of early modern and fake medieval aesthetics and it is rather unwilling to let go.

I don't quite agree with that. If your game is good then people will like it. I mean, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Disco Elysium turned out to be mainstream successes. If you make a good game set in urban fantasy I am sure people will like it. But it has to be good on its own merits.

The key operating words here are mainstream success. KCD and Disco are not jockeying for the forgotten realms audience. They transcend the pure rpg audience by default. A better case study would be Shadowrun. As far as combat rpgs go the Shadowrun trilogy is rather garbage. As far as settings go it is non standard in both ways: not only futuristic, but having elves in the middle of cyberpunk should be enough to weird out more than one buyer. And yet it was all successful anyways. So it's not impossible to succeed outside of realmesque, you just gotta appeal to the wider normiedom than the normies who mostly play rpgs.

Yup. This is why the pitches I'm preparing for urban fantasy try to maintain a sense of familiarity by recapping established genre tropes. It's basically the world we live in now but the paranormal is real and lives in a secret underworld beneath our notice. And it's more neutral, comedic, and campy in tone rather than "crawling in my skin!". Sure, there are vampires, werewolves, succubi, mummies and whatever that prey on the innocent, but there's also angels, slayers, charmed ones, and brooding vampire detectives running around fighting the darkness with witty quips.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-secret-world.57964/

actually very good btw but for whatever reason it's an MMO, would be a classic next to games like VTMB if it was just a coop RPG