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

[Semiurge]

Remember; sometimes dead is bettah

Bloodlines will come back wrong. This ground is sour.

Even in your dreams, you are beaten and defeated.
Me, I dream of a new Bloodlines games being good. I have soul left.

More likely it won't come back at all. The IP has the value of Half-Life by now as too much time has passed, and it's owned by a company that has its values askew. Really, it being some kind of interactive 2D story is the only way they could make it profitable.

Half-Life is a bad example. GabeN could waddle out in front of a green screen tomorrow on a random impromptu stream and announce Half-Life 3 and you would think Jesus Christ himself just showed up in the clouds and the rapture was upon us.

I don't know.... even EP2 is almost old enough to vote. Would zoomers know the brand?

 

[Skorpion]

Half-Life Alyx laughs at you in halflife3 sounds. Its already been done, try to keep up.
And yes it was met with rapturous approval by the masses.
Just dont ask Gaben about "Artifact" the game that shall not be mentioned on steam!

 

[Wesp5]

Half-Life Alyx laughs at you in halflife3 sounds. Its already been done, try to keep up.
And yes it was met with rapturous approval by the masses.

No, it was only praised by the few people owning VR equipment. And after watching full walkthroughs on YouTube, I must say I have played better fan mods, so just the VR part made this a success...

 

[whydoibother]

Half-Life Alyx laughs at you in halflife3 sounds. Its already been done, try to keep up.
And yes it was met with rapturous approval by the masses.

No, it was only praised by the few people owning VR equipment. And after watching full walkthroughs on YouTube, I must say I have played better fan mods, so just the VR part made this a success...

Watching a game being played to judge how fun it is....
I mean, if you watch a tabletop session of Gloomhaven, you could conclude that there are better Neverwinter Night video game mods, based on the plot or set pieces of whatever. But you couldn't tell how fun it is to play.
VR feels much, much better than it looks. The first hour of playing a VR game is legitimately magical, I couldn't get the grin off my face, I was giggling to myself alone in my room just playing the Oculus demo. The honeymoon is short, and both the tech and the software for it are lacking, but it absolutely feels better than it looks, and you shouldn't judge it on YouTube videos.

That said, Alyx has a worse plot, worse presentation, and worse combat set pieces than previous Valve made Half Life content. Part of that can be blamed on the damage Marvel movies did to popular culture, and the geek-is-chic normiezation of the genre. Or just my bitter cynicism showing. But part of it is just having to make things a certain way, so that they can be navigated and controlled in VR. It is very, very cool to be able to slosh liquid in a bottle, to play the piano with your hands, to lean behind a corner, to throw something for the blind creature to hear and run to, much better in VR than it would if it was just "press E to action". So its give and take, but I feel like it was more give than take.

Overall a good VR game, a so-so Half Life game, but not in any way bad. People saying its bad are either professional complainers, or just haven't played it in VR.
And your comment that this VR game "was only praised by the few people owning VR equipment" is just bizarre. It was only praised by people who played it? Yes? Okay? Good. As it should be. Would be very strange if people who can't play it praised it.

 

[Wesp5]

Overall a good VR game, a so-so Half Life game, but not in any way bad. People saying its bad are either professional complainers, or just haven't played it in VR.

I never said that it is bad, I just agree with you that as a Half-Life game it wasn't anything special and I have played better mods. It might shine in VR though.

And your comment that this VR game "was only praised by the few people owning VR equipment" is just bizarre.

I was referring to the foreposter's comment "rapturous approval by the masses", I don't think that "the masses" own VR equipment at the moment !

 

[Delterius]

Half-Life is a bad example. GabeN could waddle out in front of a green screen tomorrow on a random impromptu stream and announce Half-Life 3 and you would think Jesus Christ himself just showed up in the clouds and the rapture was upon us.

they did just announce counter strike 2 with 0 fanfare so i really do expect jesus to return on the eve of half life 3

 

[Skorpion]

Overall a good VR game, a so-so Half Life game, but not in any way bad. People saying its bad are either professional complainers, or just haven't played it in VR.

I never said that it is bad, I just agree with you that as a Half-Life game it wasn't anything special and I have played better mods. It might shine in VR though.

And your comment that this VR game "was only praised by the few people owning VR equipment" is just bizarre.

I was referring to the foreposter's comment "rapturous approval by the masses", I don't think that "the masses" own VR equipment at the moment !

The nearly 68,689 reviews (at 98% approval) on steam tend to disagree.
My point was that half-life 3 has already been made, its called Alyx.
And of course its only by people with VR sets, its a VR game after all so thanks for that redundancy.

 

[Wesp5]

The nearly 68,689 reviews (at 98% approval) on steam tend to disagree.

Okay, 70.000 is probably nice for a VR game, but how does this compare to like 20 million sold copies of Elden Ring?

My point was that half-life 3 has already been made, its called Alyx.

Alyx is nothing compared to even the original HL2 episodes and especially nothing compared to the leaked HL3 plot.

And of course its only by people with VR sets, its a VR game after all so thanks for that redundancy.

Yeah, and they were probably lucky to finally get a good VR shooter and a HL game at that, therefore the ratings .

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

The nearly 68,689 reviews (at 98% approval) on steam tend to disagree.

Okay, 70.000 is probably nice for a VR game, but how does this compare to like 20 million sold copies of Elden Ring?

Just for the record 70K reviews equate roughly to 40-50X the amount of copies.
It may not be Elden Ring (which is an unreasonable standard to live up to, for a VR game) but it's still a massive hit in its niche market.

 

[Tyranicon]

You guys are reminding me that I live in the timeline where Valve mostly stopped making games and instead now controls the PC vidya market.

:/

 

[Harthwain]

You guys are reminding me that I live in the timeline where Valve mostly stopped making games and instead now controls the PC vidya market.

:/

Which is bad mostly because games they made were pretty good.

 

[Semiurge]

You guys are reminding me that I live in the timeline where Valve mostly stopped making games and instead now controls the PC vidya market.

:/

This is quite possibly one of the greatest disasters that have ever befallen the gaming industry.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Remember; sometimes dead is bettah

Bloodlines will come back wrong. This ground is sour.

Even in your dreams, you are beaten and defeated.
Me, I dream of a new Bloodlines games being good. I have soul left.

A mod of the original with AI voices to make new content

 

[whydoibother]

Remember; sometimes dead is bettah

Bloodlines will come back wrong. This ground is sour.

Even in your dreams, you are beaten and defeated.
Me, I dream of a new Bloodlines games being good. I have soul left.

A mod of the original with AI voices to make new content

Would prefer an Open Morrowind type solution, where the game is ported to a modern engine and modders can work on this new, more robust skeleton.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

A mod of the original with AI voices to make new content

Speaking of content-adding mods, curious to know Wesp5's thoughts on the Clan Quest Mod since I've heard people say that it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the game.

 

[thesheeep]

The nearly 68,689 reviews (at 98% approval) on steam tend to disagree.

Okay, 70.000 is probably nice for a VR game, but how does this compare to like 20 million sold copies of Elden Ring?

Just for the record 70K reviews equate roughly to 40-50X the amount of copies.
It may not be Elden Ring (which is an unreasonable standard to live up to, for a VR game) but it's still a massive hit in its niche market.

But that's exactly the point: VR is (and likely always will be) a niche market of varying size.
Alyx is probably owned by pretty much everyone who owns VR systems capable of playing the game.
It also more than likely has a higher number of reviews-to-players than other titles.

An actual HL3, no matter if it was PC only or PC + console (+ possibly VR), would blow those numbers out of the water.
Besides, Alyx is a prequel, not a sequel. That alone makes it unreasonable to consider it a de-facto HL3.

 

[Modron]

Speaking of content-adding mods, curious to know @Wesp5's thoughts on the Clan Quest Mod since I've heard people say that it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the game.

Not sure if serious or joking, the added writing is pretty edgelordy and 13 year old tryhard like. Complete night and day change when it pops up in the middle of VtM:B's consistently good base game writing. Are there AI chat bots which you can make learn a specific batch of writing then enter your fanfiction tier original script in and have it output your vomit in the style of what it learned?

 

[Vincente]

the added writing is pretty edgelordy and 13 year old tryhard like

Sums up the Sabbat described in Bloodlines perfectly

 

[Wesp5]

Speaking of content-adding mods, curious to know Wesp5's thoughts on the Clan Quest Mod since I've heard people say that it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the game.

I was a beta tester for the new Sabbat content of the CQM actually and my feelings are mixed. I like the new hub and some of the new missions, but I don't like two critical story decisions that don't fit at all with the rest of Bloodlines. One is the Domination that hits the player without knowing that it has happened, I thought it was a bug at first, and the second is the stupid fight against the Anarchs and Bertram in that dark arena room. They would never do that in the first place...

 

[Wesp5]

Besides, Alyx is a prequel, not a sequel. That alone makes it unreasonable to consider it a de-facto HL3.

Also it retcons a critical event in HL2:EP2 and thus destroys the HL2 storyline like we know it anyway...

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Speaking of content-adding mods, curious to know @Wesp5's thoughts on the Clan Quest Mod since I've heard people say that it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the game.

Not sure if serious

Never played it myself (hence why I wanted Wesp5's opinion on it), but some YT retrospective guys were quite serious in making such statements.

e.g.

(Timestamped to when he talks about it.)

 

[Wesp5]

Never played it myself (hence why I wanted Wesp5's opinion on it), but some YT retrospective guys were quite serious in making such statements.

It's much better than the other big mods The Final Nights and Antitribu Mod, but claiming it is the same quality of the original game is pushing it.

 

[whydoibother]

Besides, Alyx is a prequel, not a sequel. That alone makes it unreasonable to consider it a de-facto HL3.

Also it retcons a critical event in HL2:EP2 and thus destroys the HL2 storyline like we know it anyway...

IIRC they are doing parallel universe shit, and always were going to do that kind of stuff. Which is why the Government Man is actually the God Man and is kind of like Q from Star Trek.

 

[Wesp5]

IIRC they are doing parallel universe shit, and always were going to do that kind of stuff. Which is why the Government Man is actually the God Man and is kind of like Q from Star Trek.

According to the leaked HL3 script by the original writer himself they weren't. But probably after it got leaked they decided they could never make it, so why not reset everything?

 

[Roguey]

IIRC they are doing parallel universe shit, and always were going to do that kind of stuff. Which is why the Government Man is actually the God Man and is kind of like Q from Star Trek.

According to the leaked HL3 script by the original writer himself they weren't. But probably after it got leaked they decided they could never make it, so why not reset everything?

It seemed clear to me from the leaked script that a big problem with HL3's story is that their Big Emotional Shock Ending broke Alyx and there was nothing they could think of that could fix it, which very likely contributed to why they found it impossible to complete when they were actively working on it. So they just got rid of the moment.