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

[Heroic Liberator]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

 

[Storyfag]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

Meh, never cared for them much. Then again, never cared for actual Brujah much either.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

Meh, never cared for them much. Then again, never cared for actual Brujah much either.

Never gonna make it with that attitude, brah. Gotta embrace the philosopher king clan.

 

[Storyfag]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

Meh, never cared for them much. Then again, never cared for actual Brujah much either.

Never gonna make it with that attitude, brah. Gotta embrace the philosopher king clan.

Naaah. Gotta flesh-shape the philosopher king clan.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

Meh, never cared for them much. Then again, never cared for actual Brujah much either.

Never gonna make it with that attitude, brah. Gotta embrace the philosopher king clan.

Naaah. Gotta flesh-shape the philosopher king clan.

Lmao this nigga can't get a haircut without consulting his nearest fleshcrafter.

 

[Storyfag]

True Brujah > modern Brujah.

Meh, never cared for them much. Then again, never cared for actual Brujah much either.

Never gonna make it with that attitude, brah. Gotta embrace the philosopher king clan.

Naaah. Gotta flesh-shape the philosopher king clan.

Lmao this nigga can't get a haircut without consulting his nearest fleshcrafter.

That is true for every Cainite

 

[Longes]

People that inspire Arone?
Anthony Burch

 

[NecroLord]

The absolute state of Vampire V5.

 

[Longes]

You should play Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption. It is set during the Dark Ages.

I did, it was a fun game. Christof falling into torpor and waking up in Modern Nights was a nice touch, too.
But I digress, here's a skinhead Brujah, directly taken from clanbooks. Pardon the scan quality.

Spoiler

Source, or didn't happen. This isn't in 1e or Revised edition clanbook.

This, however, is real:

 

[NecroLord]

Here's the source bro
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_5th_Edition

 

[Harthwain]

Bro, you're late to the party.

 

[Vincente]

This isn't in 1e or Revised edition clanbook.

I'm pretty sure it's in 1st Edition, can't find a complete scan of the book though, sadly. If it's good enough for you, 1st edition wiki page shows the Skinhead character between Streetwalker and Rogue Cop / Vigilante.

 

[NecroLord]

I already knew about Rudi ya'll.
Thought I should remind you of what you can expect to find in Vampire V5(and by extension Vampire: Bloodlines 2,if it will even be released).

 

[Harthwain]

Thought I should remind you of what you can expect to find in Vampire V5(and by extension Vampire: Bloodlines 2,if it will even be released).

You shouldn't. This shit has been the main talk of this thread for hundreds of pages by now, because of the lack of any real news, and spawned a bunch of debates on the state of the White Wolf, Paradox and World of Darkness (lore/writing/books/rpg).

 

[Sarathiour]

Thought I should remind you of what you can expect to find in Vampire V5(and by extension Vampire: Bloodlines 2,if it will even be released).

You shouldn't. This shit has been the main talk of this thread for hundreds of pages by now, because of the lack of any real news, and spawned a bunch of debates on the state of the White Wolf, Paradox and World of Darkness (lore/writing/books/rpg).

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/search/45378/?q=rudi&t=post&c[thread]=126124&o=date

Like clockwork, every three months or so.

 

[Longes]

This isn't in 1e or Revised edition clanbook.

I'm pretty sure it's in 1st Edition, can't find a complete scan of the book though, sadly. If it's good enough for you, 1st edition wiki page shows the Skinhead character between Streetwalker and Rogue Cop / Vigilante.

I concede, you are probably right. I'm now noticing that the scan I have is missing a bunch of pages between.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

I got a Steam Deck recently and Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption has a verified rating, which is pretty weird. Even so, once you get used to the Deck’s trackpads, it works great.

Havent tried Bloodlines yet

 

[Bad Sector]

I got a Steam Deck recently and Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption has a verified rating, which is pretty weird.

Note that it is Valve doing the ratings by their own decision - developers can request them to put some priority for the checks but if someone in Valve decided to check if the game works, they can verify it regardless of what the developers/publishers do.

For example Prey 2006 isn't even available for sale but IIRC (was the first game i tried) not only is verified, it also has custom control scheme.

 

[The President]

I forgot about Rudi, Jesus Fucking Christ, I would have bet anything that was fake, but a real writer actually made that, wow. I hope the rest of v5 is better.

I've asked around quite a bit about this game and I got to give them credit, they've kept the fine details of this colossal fuck up under wraps. I can't say I know anything groundbreaking but here it is.

-I can say Chris Avellone was out of there and his writing was gone long before he ran into his current problems. It wasn't implied to me there was bad blood.
-Apparently the new developer is in fact working on the old build and not creating a new game entirely. They were given everything that was worked on, though I envy no one who tries to pick up the pieces of years of another's coding.
-Most of the problems were organizational and technical. From what I understand there was an overreliance on contractors and outside groups to handle a lot of the coding and assets and as development dragged on, it became clear they didn't have enough or adequate talent to really polish and finish all the fine features in house. A lot of work was done but they just couldn't put the whole puzzle together.
-The firings basically happened due to a lack of faith in current leadership and a complete breakdown of communication between departments. No one tried to rally everyone when they fell behind.
-Lots of issues in gameplay and balance that just couldn't get resolved quickly enough. There's a lot to this one, but simply put the disciplines weren't totally balanced when you are trying to stay primarily a melee game. The thin blood disciplines kept getting shifted and rebalanced and the perks from resonances had to keep being changed to prevent a few of the clans from being too weak in some of the mid to later game fights.

 

[Longes]

I can say Chris Avellone was out of there and his writing was gone long before he ran into his current problems. It wasn't implied to me there was bad blood.

That is fairly well known and confirmed by Avellone himself
https://chrisavellone.medium.com/what-the-fuck-happened-to-bloodlines-2-1ad557bf2284

To explain my contract: I worked on Bloodlines 2 for almost 2 and a half years, from 2016 to mid-2018, then my contract came to an end. They didn’t use anything I wrote during that time, which was a number of major characters and side missions, check my LinkedIn. This made me sad, but it’s not my choice. The whole experience was like the last five minutes of Barton Fink (not the beach scene, the scene before it, know-it-all), but stretched out over 2 and a half years. Even if I had known all that work was useless, I’d have written anyway, even though its part of your life you don’t get back, so you can’t really dwell on it too much. I’ve been on projects where a LOT more got thrown away… as Bloodlines 2 proved for almost everyone on it in the end, apparently.

 

[Sarathiour]

Lots of issues in gameplay and balance that just couldn't get resolved quickly enough. There's a lot to this one, but simply put the disciplines weren't totally balanced when you are trying to stay primarily a melee game. The thin blood disciplines kept getting shifted and rebalanced and the perks from resonances had to keep being changed to prevent a few of the clans from being too weak in some of the mid to later game fights.

I would not care that the game wasn't balanced, but from the footage, the combat was just looking like pure shit. It's not like VtMB was good on that regard, but that was the least of their worries anyway.

 

[Roguey]

-Apparently the new developer is in fact working on the old build and not creating a new game entirely. They were given everything that was worked on, though I envy no one who tries to pick up the pieces of years of another's coding.

Cricket McBangle mentioned that Hardsuit had sent them everything in randomly numbered zip files, I would hope that that was done for researching purposes and keeping whatever art they can use, and not trying to actually salvage the code for reasons outlined here.

 

[Wesp5]

Cricket McBangle mentioned that Hardsuit had sent them everything in randomly numbered zip files, I would hope that that was done for researching purposes and keeping whatever art they can use, and not trying to actually salvage the code for reasons outlined here.

This doesn't really make sense. Unless HSL build Bloodlines 2 completely differently to Troika, I don't see how a new team should have big issues analysing and reusing the assets! Do you think I knew anything about the game before I started patching? Most of the Bloodlines 1 assets are compressed in VPK archives and I could hardly make out any kind of order either. Also throwing all writing and characters away would mean to loose all the voice-acting which is expensive too...

 

[Roguey]

This doesn't really make sense. Unless HSL build Bloodlines 2 completely differently to Troika, I don't see how a new team should have big issues analysing and reusing the assets! Do you think I knew anything about the game before I started patching? Most of the Bloodlines 1 assets are compressed in VPK archives and I could hardly make out any kind of order either. Also throwing all writing and characters away would mean to loose all the voice-acting which is expensive too...

You were patching a game that was considered good enough to release and it's accurate to say that you also sometimes break things in the process.

From Paradox's year end report of 2021 they mentioned a write-off of $24 million. One assumes a write-off of this size for this particular company was Hardsuit's Bloodlines 2, so legally, they can't even use it anymore (they already wrote it off). Other studios have completely discarded voice-over before; it happened with Mitsoda's own Alpha Protocol and Amy Hennig's Uncharted 4.

 

[whydoibother]

They should just make a Bloodlines expansion for Crusader Kings 2 already. An official, well integrated one.