World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025

[Ibn Sina]

Everything about this game from the trailers to the "artwork" to PR announcements looks BAD and embarrassing.

 

[Roguey]

Bloodlines, on the other hand, was in the 'not an existing fan' category - that is to say, I wasn't familiar with it beforehand and had to catch up. I loved it so much I took days off work to play.

Alot of the IP writer crowed tend to fake an affection for their current work for PR reasons of course, I remembering that i once joined a Narrative designers tumblr discussion were they tip each other how to write for a current game while avoiding playing it (watching YT walkthroughs and reading wikis were the popular solutions).
i highly doubt that she actuality played the game.

Would she really post a screenshot from character creation of a game she has no intention of playing to impress a few dozen people?

You guise made her annoyed enough to post a screenshot of her save menu.

Yes, I've played Bloodlines 1 - extensively. This was the end of my Ventrue run and the start of my Brujah run (admittedly I cut that short to play Tremere, which is ongoing). Lemme tell ya, being Ventrue in the Nosferatu Sewers? Nightmare. Skin of my teeth. Er, fangs.

Here's where it pays off to be an autist who takes everything at face value unless there's clear indication of falsehood.

Hope she was taking advantage of those shortcuts back to the surface which Troika put in for the people relying on bullets/blood bags to get through it. Though I tended to get myself lost trying to find my way back in.

 

[Abu Antar]

Everything about this game from the trailers to the "artwork" to PR announcements looks BAD and embarrassing.

I'm the optimistic type. My guess is a 4/10.

 

[Tyranicon]

Everything about this game from the trailers to the "artwork" to PR announcements looks BAD and embarrassing.

I'm the optimistic type. My guess is a 4/10.

The cope here is hoping that the marketing team is a bunch of nepotism hires and the actual game is made by talented people that are okay with their game being presented like trash.

FFS they didn't even have barebones animations ready for Ventrue reveal and instead only concept art gifs. This game is five years away from being ready.

 

[Abu Antar]

Everything about this game from the trailers to the "artwork" to PR announcements looks BAD and embarrassing.

I'm the optimistic type. My guess is a 4/10.

The cope here is hoping that the marketing team is a bunch of nepotism hires and the actual game is made by talented people that are okay with their game being presented like trash.

FFS they didn't even have barebones animations ready for Ventrue reveal and instead only concept art gifs. This game is five years away from being ready.

View attachment 44300

It might be five years from being ready, but you know they will push 1.0 either way.

 

[Shaja]

 

[Storyfag]

Seattle by Night season 2 is a direct prelude of Bloodlines 2, and things happening there will be a foundation for the events of the game.

I am still in the process of, ah, sinking my fangs into it.

Please post your impressions here once you're done. I personally can't stand watching these, it's always so cringe.

Only half of the episodes have been released until now, but here's what I could gather:

1. The Prince of Seattle is named Campbell, however the power behind his throne is the former Prince, the spectacular Lou Graham. It is unclear how or why she lost the formal praxis.
2. Ghouls have been going missing in recent nights.
3. The highway underpasses found throughout the city are collectively known as "the Jungle" and are gathering places for the detritus of society, kindred and kine.
4. Thinblood alchemists have discovered a pretty interesting blood-drug that, upon consumption, sates the Hunger as if the imbiber completely drained a mortal, and provides the benefits of the Blush of Life.

The remaining details seem to be specific to the chronicle.

The latest episode opened with Jason Carl, the Storyteller, namedropping Bloodlines 2 again, and encouraging anyone intending to play it to take a note of the Live Play's events. My note goes:

5. The Seattle Underground is, surprisingly, not home to the city's Nosferatu population.
6. Instead at least one man-sized, pale, clawed, wiry, and eyeless humanoid creature prowls down there. It is responsible for the death of at least one of the missing ghouls, and seems to hunger for Vitae (got into a feeeding frenzy when the coterie threw it a torpid vampire with an open wound) as well as flesh (nothing much was left of the aforementioned ghoul). My take is that it is a feral(?) szlachta. The Storyteller specifically let it slip that the skin and flesh were pulled over to cover or replace its eyes, which to me screams Fleshcrafting.
7. As happens often in the World of Darkness, the Prince's enforcer (called that several times, but never actually titled Sheriff), Benny, started clamping down hard on Thinbloods.

 

[Semiurge]

Lol, Like I said before. But why they choose Ventrue? And why they kept this mystery with last clan? I hoped that it will be Lasombra. And outfit looks like Lasombra's

This is so emo. Instantly brought flashbacks of these homos:

And what the hell are those shoes supposed to even be, slippers? The Banu Hagim model had some generic old-looking brown shoes instead of sneakers, as if the devs were afraid of making the ensemble look too "urban". The Ventrue outfit - combined with that unisex do - makes this Phyre look like an obnoxious liberal phyrebrand trying to larp as an imperious ruling caste vampire, but in doing so ends up as a grotesque parody instead. It takes more than a fancy military-inspired dress coat and some epaulettes to become someone to be taken seriously. I really fucking hate that hair, and that punchable androgynous dyke face.

Everything about this presentation screams "Choosing a sex is sooo last century, gender-neutrality is cooler". Well too bad for the queermos, no one wants to see their androgynous faces anywhere. We want men and women. Even Orlando switched between being a man and a woman, there was no in-between. And Tilda Swinton looked great as either, which can't be said about most of these zoomer neuters. Neither is nothing, either would be... something at least.

 

[Gahbreeil]

And what the hell are those shoes supposed to even be? The Banu Hagim model had some generic old-looking brown shoes instead of sneakers, as if the devs were afraid of making the ensemble look too "urban".

Wait! WAIT!

No equipment?

 

[Jenkem]

No 15 second trailer this time, guess they already used up the trailer budget? Alternately, the reception to them was so unpopular that they decided to just not bother.

A third possibility: given the animated concept art gif on the page, the class isn't even fully implemented yet, so there's nothing to show.

extended giga gameplay trailer at the GEOFFS

 

[Daedalos]

how shit will this realistically be?

Absolute trainwreck? fucking shit? Just bad? aggressively mediocre?

 

[Delterius]

This is so emo.

this thread isn't about glowing praise of the vampire game

 

[Roguey]

Someone tried to ask Longthorne some questions in that twitter thread I posted but unfortunately she's not in a position to fully answer them. She did drop some info though.

First: Dan Pinchbeck was actually more involved than I thought https://www.danpinchbeck.co.uk/vampire

Pitch creation and creative leadership, concept adaptation to fit publisher and IP requirements, gameplay vision (including mechanics, tone, player experience), Creative Direction (prototype, pre-production & production, until Alpha (spring 2023)), Narrative Direction (including story and character creation, overseeing writing and level design team, establishing narrative architecture, style guides, working with Kate Saxon/SIDE on casting, voice direction and editing), Publisher liaison (specifically IP/Branding teams).



Like with Deep, this game is still in production so I don’t want to say too much about it here, so let’s keep this one brief.

The VTM franchise is a really amazing one. I grew up on paper-based RPGs, even if I’ve got fairly basic tastes when it comes to video games (I’ve got more hours clocked up on Far Cry and Just Cause than is healthy). VTM is special even for an RPG. It’s incredibly rich and deep, it’s morally and ethically complex, it combines modern politics with ancient supernatural evil, it’s biblical, it’s personal, it’s queer. It just screams TCR and everything we’d always tried to embed in our games. When the opportunity to pitch for it came up, it was Dan Pinchbeck catnip. I was confident we could deliver - we’d been scaling up and bringing on more and more people with serious development chops and history. I knew I wanted to write the story too, we’d never been a studio that were going to finish someone else’s work.

As it turns out, that dovetailed with what Paradox wanted and the state of the project. The inspirations were clear for me: dark US dramas like Succession, The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Cards. Anchor the gothic in the contemporary. Know that monsters exist in boardrooms and bars everywhere. Know that we live in a world that pretends it’s slick and sophisticated but where we’re still beating each other to death with the jawbones of asses. Know that you could get knifed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you’re as likely to die from the poison dumped into your water in the pursuit of profit. Know that immortality is a curse as well as a blessing and that too much power strips humanity away like acid. One of my favourite lines from a novel comes from William Gibson’s Count Zero:

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”

As a writer, working in that space is just bloody inspirational.

And until more about the game drops, that’s pretty much all you get. The central character, Phyre, encapsulates everything that VTM means to me and it was a blast writing her and the rest of the gang . Once I’d put together the story and background, characters and context, I worked with a great narrative team - Sarah Longthorne, Arone Le Bray and Frances Wakefield-Harrey on putting flesh onto those bones - and again worked with Kate and SIDE to put together a fantastic cast.

I led the project from inception through until alpha in spring this year, then handed the narrative reins over to Ian Thomas and the creative leadership to Alex Skidmore, both hugely experienced devs. If you love VTM as much as me, then I reckon you’re in good hands. And I hope the dark heart that I started beating at the centre of this thing does it justice.

I bolded the things I found amusing.

She also got Arone to answer a question about voiced player character dialogue and summarized dialogue choices:

It's definitely opinion for me, but for me I tend to lose immersion if I'm picking responses rather than hearing them spoken. There is a lot more nuance that you can get across with modern gaming, because we have more tools at our disposal to do so. Is it better to have someone say "I'm sad" or is it better to hear their voice catch in their throat while they say something else?

I was there when we took Dragon Age from no Player character VO into the VO, and once I saw the difference in the quality of writing (and game narrative in general), I never looked back.

Praising DA2 writing over Origins is uh certainly something.

And finally her own thoughts.

For my own part, I would also add that it depends on choice cadence, style, shape etc. BL1 had a choice every time you say anything, and the response was by necessity a mini monologue. We wanted more of a fluid back and forth, and to be very intentional with choices.

BL1-style choices make sense when that's all your character ever says, but that wasn't the direction we were given. That's why we decided to summarise the content and intent, so that players know what they're choosing, while allowing us to rely more on performance (and subtext).

 

[Dadd]

how shit will this realistically be?

Absolute trainwreck? fucking shit? Just bad? aggressively mediocre?

Yes.

 

[Wesp5]

"The central character, Phyre, encapsulates everything that VTM means to me and it was a blast writing her and the rest of the gang."

So it's all about the central character then? Again this is more Cyberpunk than Bloodlines, where the player was only a pawn...

 

[Storyfag]

"The central character, Phyre, encapsulates everything that VTM means to me and it was a blast writing her and the rest of the gang."

So it's all about the central character then? Again this is more Cyberpunk than Bloodlines, where the player was only a pawn...

Well, Phyre IS an Elder. Though, more often than not, Elders are pawns too.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

Semiurge has a point about the shoes on the Ventrue outfit. You're playing an elder, so I can actually appreciate the weird emo coat. It feels like something that a person from the 1700s would find cool, in a nerdy boomer's boomer way.

But the leather slippers make no sense considering that this is supposed to be a snowed-in Seattle. I get that vampires don't feel cold, but what about the Masquerade?! Anybody walking around in 20 inches of snow with nothing but leather sandals on is more jarring than a Nosferatu. This outfit would work much better on a Malkavian.

BL1-style choices make sense when that's all your character ever says, but that wasn't the direction we were given. That's why we decided to summarise the content and intent, so that players know what they're choosing, while allowing us to rely more on performance (and subtext).

So Arone is just a retard, but Longhtorne's quote above is indicative that Phyre's narrative will streamline the responses. It'll be more like the Vampyr game or Swansong, where the character's personality directs their engagements, and less like the first Bloodlines or a Bethesda Games Studio protagonist. Player choice will likely only come in for pivotal decision-making.

I just don't understand it. After the criticism of the Fallout 4 protagonist (voiced, with family that's forced on you) compared to the F3/NV protagonist, they would learn that voiceless and with minimal emotional baggage leads to more immersion, not less. How can you be in this industry and not know about the whole Fallout protagonist debate. They even directly addressed it in Starfield by backtracking to no voiced protagonist. Were they living under a rock?

 

[Häyhä]

But the leather slippers make no sense considering that this is supposed to be a snowed-in Seattle. I get that vampires don't feel cold, but what about the Masquerade?! Anybody walking around in 20 inches of snow with nothing but leather sandals on is more jarring than a Nosferatu. This outfit would work much better on a Malkavian.

I can tell you that kids here today walk around during winter in -20 C, in trainers, in ankle-length socks with their ankles fully exposed. I've heard of some getting frostbites too and requiring medical care.

 

[Delterius]

(voiced, with family that's forced on you)

I maintain that having a background of sorts is not as bad as voice. The two together is what makes the 'you're playing as your very own... Phyre/Geralt/V' concoction. A voiceless protagonist comes with certain fundamental design and narrative choices that contextualizes the background. Not only is the voiceless protagonist much more open to interpretation, but it forces the writers to come up with background scenarios where the player inputs their interpretation of the background as well.

Pillars has a straightforward and ok version of this. Every version of the Watcher led a certain past life. What exactly it was about is something the game questions the player directly. That could have been the Elder. But instead we'll have a Geralt.

 

[Roguey]

After the criticism of the Fallout 4 protagonist (voiced, with family that's forced on you) compared to the F3/NV protagonist, they would learn that voiceless and with minimal emotional baggage leads to more immersion, not less. How can you be in this industry and not know about the whole Fallout protagonist debate. They even directly addressed it in Starfield by backtracking to no voiced protagonist. Were they living under a rock?

The guy was directly involved in Dragon Age II and honestly believes it was an improvement. Very "No, it's the children who are wrong" energy.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

The guy was directly involved in Dragon Age II and honestly believes it was an improvement. Very "No, it's the children who are wrong" energy.

Amusing that this will likely be the second sequel to a cult classic that he works on which ends up being underwhelming and unappreciated by fans of the series.

 

[Harthwain]

But the leather slippers make no sense considering that this is supposed to be a snowed-in Seattle. I get that vampires don't feel cold, but what about the Masquerade?! Anybody walking around in 20 inches of snow with nothing but leather sandals on is more jarring than a Nosferatu. This outfit would work much better on a Malkavian.

Being considered a loon isn't exactly breaking the Masquerade.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

Being considered a loon isn't exactly breaking the Masquerade.

A normal guy might just think you're crazy, but a hunter/SI would have red flags flashing in front of his eyes.

It's still ok as an outfit, just not the Ventrue signature outfit. It brings too much attention to the clan that is the biggest stickler for enforcing the masquerade.

 

[Tyranicon]

TCR: We don't have working ventrue animations that we can showcase yet, will have to wait until 2024.

Also TCR: The game's launching Fall 2024.

Come on wtf.

I mean, pretty stupid, but still...

 

[RagingNomad]

TCR: We don't have working ventrue animations that we can showcase yet, will have to wait until 2024.

Also TCR: The game's launching Fall 2024.

Come on wtf.

View attachment 44351

I mean, pretty stupid, but still...

I think it means that they have full playable version, but with rough animations and visuals like this moment: