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

[Roguey]

Paradox has set the Steam release date back to "Coming soon."

No, Steam made them change it to Coming Soon. Steam recently forced all games to use standardized formatting for release dates so they work in multiple languages

https://archive.ph/wip/qnq6J

The standardized formatting is why it changed to December 2023 from "To Be Announced" (or some similar non-standard variation) in the first place (that date was supposed to be an internal placeholder, not for the public). Paradox had to manually set it to Coming Soon days after the change had been made.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

I can't wait to see this become Codex GOTY in 2024

 

[Modron]

If we live long enough, we will see it dethroned by a Visual Novel in RPGcodex's 2031 GOTY.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

If we live long enough, we will see it dethroned by a Visual Novel in RPGcodex's 2031 GOTY.

Damn, so that's how long it's gonna take for nu-ZA/UM to shit out Disco Elysium 2

 

[OSK]

If we live long enough, we will see it dethroned by a Visual Novel in RPGcodex's 2031 GOTY.

Damn, so that's how long it's gonna take for nu-ZA/UM to shit out Disco Elysium 2

Pentiment 2.

 

[Jason Liang]

Do we even have a Bloodlines 1 thread anymore?



Includes shoutouts to rpgcodex and Wesp5 !

 

[Tao]

To be fair Bloodline is the only "good" vampire game made since probably Redemption (and this one was a tought one to play then and even harder now). Hell, a lot of the love people have for skyrim/oblivion is just because its one of the few games that let you rolplay more or less as a vampire.

Recently we seem to have a rise in interest for making vampires games again i suppose, but the only one that has really deliver something that was not a supper disappointment (for me at least) was Vampyr and still is hard to call it a vampire rolegame. All we really have from this renewal focus on vampires are the "choose your game" novel adventures that - as good as one can find them personally- they hardly are videogames.

 

[jungl]

nah I enjoyed this indie shit vampire rpg more then bloodlines. Can't remember if you play as a vampire or slayer. The game starts you off at a pier in middle of the night. The combat is turn based and I think it was made by russians. Bloodlines is a overrated storyfag game.

 

[Delterius]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

 

[Caim]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

Specifically Awakening, or did you mean Ascension?

An Ascension game could work but a good one would be trippy as fuck. Or they'd go really out there and focus on Void Engineers exploring the Umbra in a game that's like Mass Effect but with techno-wizards.

 

[Delterius]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

Specifically Awakening, or did you mean Ascension?

An Ascension game could work but a good one would be trippy as fuck. Or they'd go really out there and focus on Void Engineers exploring the Umbra in a game that's like Mass Effect but with techno-wizards.

I think so, yeah.

I've been told before that a Mage videogame is a hard one to even conceive of because magic is supposed to be so free form in those games. But I'd still be fine with it if most of the 'envelope pushing' as it were comes from dialogue choices and such. I just want more of these urban fantasy settings, man.

Hell if I was one of the Powers that Be there'd be a Vampire, a Mummy, a Mage and even a Changeling: the Glamourbombing all in development.

 

[Caim]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

Specifically Awakening, or did you mean Ascension?

An Ascension game could work but a good one would be trippy as fuck. Or they'd go really out there and focus on Void Engineers exploring the Umbra in a game that's like Mass Effect but with techno-wizards.

I think so, yeah.

I've been told before that a Mage videogame is a hard one to even conceive of because magic is supposed to be so free form in those games. But I'd still be fine with it if most of the 'envelope pushing' as it were comes from dialogue choices and such. I just want more of these urban fantasy settings, man.

You'd need one hell of an excuse to explain why everyone can stick to their own paradigm without running into paradox, though it'd be funny to have an Ecstatic snort a line of coke to split their timeline and create duplicates of themselves so that they can beat the shit out of the Men In Black, or have a Progentor turn into a REEEEEEing mess because a Verbena lit some herbs.

 

[Delterius]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

Specifically Awakening, or did you mean Ascension?

An Ascension game could work but a good one would be trippy as fuck. Or they'd go really out there and focus on Void Engineers exploring the Umbra in a game that's like Mass Effect but with techno-wizards.

I think so, yeah.

I've been told before that a Mage videogame is a hard one to even conceive of because magic is supposed to be so free form in those games. But I'd still be fine with it if most of the 'envelope pushing' as it were comes from dialogue choices and such. I just want more of these urban fantasy settings, man.

You'd need one hell of an excuse to explain why everyone can stick to their own paradigm without running into paradox, though it'd be funny to have an Ecstatic snort a line of coke to split their timeline and create duplicates of themselves so that they can beat the shit out of the Men In Black, or have a Progentor turn into a REEEEEEing mess because a Verbena lit some herbs.

I'm a filthy wiki reader, so I defer to you. I did read the books but that was long ago and since I never got to play anything the knowledge didn't stick. Can you have a Shadowrun: Hong Kong type of situation where magic users exploit irrational beliefs still low key held by culture they are in? Like, most americans believe in ghosts and all sorts of bastardized feng shui. I'm talking very lowkey spells here.

 

[Caim]

i was in the shower today and a synapse fired, bringing back a memory of me thinking 'wow! if bloodlines 2 does really well maybe paradox would greenlight a mage the awakening game!' so i just stayed in the shower for 5 minutes more

Specifically Awakening, or did you mean Ascension?

An Ascension game could work but a good one would be trippy as fuck. Or they'd go really out there and focus on Void Engineers exploring the Umbra in a game that's like Mass Effect but with techno-wizards.

I think so, yeah.

I've been told before that a Mage videogame is a hard one to even conceive of because magic is supposed to be so free form in those games. But I'd still be fine with it if most of the 'envelope pushing' as it were comes from dialogue choices and such. I just want more of these urban fantasy settings, man.

You'd need one hell of an excuse to explain why everyone can stick to their own paradigm without running into paradox, though it'd be funny to have an Ecstatic snort a line of coke to split their timeline and create duplicates of themselves so that they can beat the shit out of the Men In Black, or have a Progentor turn into a REEEEEEing mess because a Verbena lit some herbs.

I'm a filthy wiki reader, so I defer to you. I did read the books but that was long ago and since I never got to play anything the knowledge didn't stick. Can you have a Shadowrun: Hong Kong type of situation where magic users exploit irrational beliefs still low key held by culture they are in? Like, most americans believe in ghosts and all sorts of bastardized feng shui. I'm talking very lowkey spells here.

In Ascension you need to believe that you can do magic in the way you are doing it, otherwise it won't work. One of the things that comes with character growth is that you start to discard yoru own tools until you yourself can become magic through ways of becoming an archmage and reach the Ascension of the game's title.

If you'd try to do cast a fireball by ways of "It's magic I ain't gonna explain shit" then it'll blow up in your face because reality doesn't let people just cast fireballs. If you try to cast fireball but you build a raygun that exploits some weird pseudotechnobabble you could get away with casting fireballs this way: this is mostly how the Technocracy and the Etherites do things. You can also try to appease the spirit of fire by burning incense, chanting and doing a little jig and cast fireball this way. The latter won't fly in the eyes of most people, but if you do that in the style in line with the beliefs of a spirit-based religion in front of adherents of that religion, it works just fine. And not just through bullshitting your way into a fireball: said fire spirit actually exists and will help you if you do it right.

One of the key tenets of Ascension is that reality is by consensus: if you could convince enough people that yes, you CAN shoot fireballs then reality would shift into people being able to shoot fireballs from their hands. But doing so would be next to impossible and not just because of all the other wizards coming around to slap your shit because they disagree with the idea that people should be able to shoot fireballs from their hands. The question of what reality should be like is the core conflict in Ascension, and it's not just about humans going up against the eldritch horrors trying to turn reality into their torture porn playground.

 

[Delterius]

One of the key tenets of Ascension is that reality is by consensus: if you could convince enough people that yes, you CAN shoot fireballs then reality would shift into people being able to shoot fireballs from their hands. But doing so would be next to impossible and not just because of all the other wizards coming around to slap your shit because they disagree with the idea that people should be able to shoot fireballs from their hands. The question of what reality should be like is the core conflict in Ascension, and it's not just about humans going up against the eldritch horrors trying to turn reality into their torture porn playground.

I think I understand the concept in theory. What I'll do now is read what sort of stories people tell in their campaigns. I can sort of imagine a videogame story about someone just getting into this world and learning the basics, but I can't put the core conflict of Mage into any specifics. It seems that the problem for a videogame is less so that magic is 'freeform' and more the CC part. If the devs put their foot down and decided what sort of paradigms the PC and all other setpieces work with and against then, well, they sorta strip the cool parts of playing an RPG. In any case every time I read through the wikias and other excerpts the more I want to see it made.

 

[Tao]

nah I enjoyed this indie shit vampire rpg more then bloodlines. Can't remember if you play as a vampire or slayer. The game starts you off at a pier in middle of the night. The combat is turn based and I think it was made by russians. Bloodlines is a overrated storyfag game.

Now i'm curious. What game?

 

[RaggleFraggle]

To be fair Bloodline is the only "good" vampire game made since probably Redemption (and this one was a tought one to play then and even harder now). Hell, a lot of the love people have for skyrim/oblivion is just because its one of the few games that let you rolplay more or less as a vampire.

Recently we seem to have a rise in interest for making vampires games again i suppose, but the only one that has really deliver something that was not a supper disappointment (for me at least) was Vampyr and still is hard to call it a vampire rolegame. All we really have from this renewal focus on vampires are the "choose your game" novel adventures that - as good as one can find them personally- they hardly are videogames.

I tried one that was a romance novel and I found it extremely boring because I'm just not into that genre. I tried playing The Vampire Regent because it wasn't romance but I gave up in the first five minutes because the character creation was so unwieldy.

I think a lot of these try too hard to be serious and don't embrace the inherently silly b-movie nature of the genre. Troika did and that's why Bloodlines has still endured after so long. They didn't even pitch it as a licensed game and had to constantly go back-and-forth with the IP owner to get their creative vision in the game.

Right now urban fantasy is the domain of romance novels. Few devs are interested in making video games in the genre. The CYOA games are mostly romance novels in text game form.

There's only two vampire-centric games I'm looking forward to: Nighthawks and Moonfall. There's nothing else I've found interesting. Vampyr and DARK were both busts.

What I find extremely frustrating is that WRF Studios made functional vampire games in his Bloodlust: Shadowhunter series but nobody else has licensed that code. The games are pure dungeoncrawlers with nonsensical lore tacked on in spots, but you could modify that code to make more story-driven rpgs and save a huge amount of time.

 

[ArchAngel]

Paradox has set the Steam release date back to "Coming soon."

OH HAI Jenkem , can you please show me where in the Calendar is the year "Coming Soon" ?

It is just after "Global warming has arrived"

 

[Daedalos]

So whens this shit out, im slowly dying and suffering from existential dread.

gimme the fuken game aight

 

[Roguey]

So whens this shit out, im slowly dying and suffering from existential dread.

gimme the fuken game aight

This year, next year, or never.

 

[Delterius]

So whens this shit out, im slowly dying and suffering from existential dread.

gimme the fuken game aight

what's going on with this game?

 

[Storyfag]

FTFY

 

[Delterius]

Storyfag somehow i feel the ming xiao ending better conforms my feelings on the matter but yes

 

[Storyfag]

Yes, same here. I was merely looking to replace this specific scene with the homage.

 

[Not.AI]

One of the key tenets of Ascension is that reality is by consensus: if you could convince enough people that yes, you CAN shoot fireballs then reality would shift into people being able to shoot fireballs from their hands. But doing so would be next to impossible and not just because of all the other wizards coming around to slap your shit because they disagree with the idea that people should be able to shoot fireballs from their hands.

There was a famous Greg Egan novel on this subject. In it, by publishing a theory of physics that enough people believe, it becomes the laws of physics and determines what's possible in the world. (Which happens by the end.)

Novel is called Distress. From 1995.

Edit. There were a couple other novels where this was a central plot point, I recall. Trying to remember...