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

[Gargaune]

The worst part of the gameplay trailer for me was when the Nosferatu goes 'no no no no no no no, all I had to do was keep my head down for a few nights' and your backseat driver handily pipes up with 'he's hiding something'. It feels like Fabian is in it because the devs can't bear the thought of not handholding the player for even a fraction of a second lest they miss something the devs have decided is important, which shows a lack of faith in either the intelligence of the player or how well the game communicates its plot points and themes.

That's not the only function, there's also narrative feedback. Devs noticed gamers liked companion banter and interjections in party-based RPGs and now they're trying to get in on that action with solo games too, so they try to contrive their own Alex Jacobsons. It's not necessarily without merit, comes down to execution - take CBP, some people like Johnny and some don't, that's fine, but I think a lot of the critics don't fully appreciate how gruesomely dull and lonely that game would've been if his role had been cut from the open world.

That said, Fabien's introduction with that gameplay trailer was not encouraging.

The more I think about it, the more I imagine voice actors trying their hardest to constantly say "Phyre" in a serious way that befits some one who demands respect and fear, and it just doesn't work.

Bro, nevermind the VAs, you'd get laughed off a D&D table if you rolled "Phyre."

 

[Harthwain]

I guess that concept can actually work (Ninja Ninja in Afro Samurai), but the execution here is just awful.

This could work. In Lamplight City (a pixel art point-click adventure in Victorian London) your companion dies and becomes a voice in your head. This works there because of the division of roles between the two characters (one is "acting", the other is "deducting") and the voice isn't speaking all the time, only when it's proper in the context.

Step 1: Don't give a X hundred year old vampire a name that even some zoomer mumble rapper would cringe at.

Wasn't THAT the reason behind it though? Although giving that kind of a name of an ELDER is dumb as hell regardless.

I mean...:

Spoiler

They really sound like some old people thinking what is cool with the kids these days.

 

[sosmoflux]

The real reason they give you sidekicks and voices inside your head is because normies don't have inner monologues and can't be left alone for more than 30 seconds or they "get bored"

 

[sosmoflux]

Modern psueds run focus tests with randoms off Craigslist, who have never played games before and inevitably start asking the Devs questions and putting the controller down
These moments are flagged as retention failures and designers reactively fluster up ways to bandaid fix them
Hence side kicks and voices
It's the cheapest most kitch way to keep a player's attention, just blast them with dialogue every 10 seconds so they can't put the controller down

 

[Skinwalker]

Note to self: play Vampyr.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

The worst part of the gameplay trailer for me was when the Nosferatu goes 'no no no no no no no, all I had to do was keep my head down for a few nights' and your backseat driver handily pipes up with 'he's hiding something'. It feels like Fabian is in it because the devs can't bear the thought of not handholding the player for even a fraction of a second lest they miss something the devs have decided is important, which shows a lack of faith in either the intelligence of the player or how well the game communicates its plot points and themes.

An explanation that makes sense to me is that Paradox demanded a Johnny Silverhand so Pinchbeck decided to make him as obnoxious as possible in the hopes that they would change their minds (they didn't).

Alternately it's Le Bray's idea. I believe it's within the realm of possibility that a Bioware QA tester who wasn't actually good enough to get promoted to a writer within the studio would think he's a fantastic character.

The intent as described by Longthorne

On Fabien, one of the dilemmas we encountered was how to make someone like Phyre relatable as a vehicle for the player, given how cold and detached most elders are (okay, except maybe Jack). Fabien basically acts as a counterweight because he is more connected to his humanity.

That seems sensible, but he doesn't have to be a total idiot who talks all the time.

I guess that concept can actually work (Ninja Ninja in Afro Samurai), but the execution here is just awful.

... you know what if they had guts they'd replace Fabien with a black guy. "He's hiding something"? Lame. "Hellllll nahhh, that nigga's HIDIN somethin'!" Hilarious.

That Fabien thing is totally in line with Dan Pinchbeck's other games. Everything from Dear Esther to Little Orpheus features some sort of voice-over narrative device. Dear Esther's "story" is only delivered through voice over that's triggered when you look at cave paintings. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is about finding audio shit and listening to what happened. Just looking at gameplay of Little Orpheus, which is a Limbo/Inside game for babies, that has some sort of voice over where an in-game character is also describing shit that the player can see.

 

[user]

The real reason they give you sidekicks and voices inside your head is because normies don't have inner monologues and can't be left alone for more than 30 seconds or they "get bored"

Modern psueds run focus tests with randoms off Craigslist, who have never played games before and inevitably start asking the Devs questions and putting the controller down
These moments are flagged as retention failures and designers reactively fluster up ways to bandaid fix them
Hence side kicks and voices
It's the cheapest most kitch way to keep a player's attention, just blast them with dialogue every 10 seconds so they can't put the controller down

It's kind of a vicious cycle and is true for every media. I mean, if you only experience games that have been created for this purpose, it's how you learn to confront them or get your dopamine fix. Market perpetuates this culture, because building these products both requires less effort and is what people are used to, to quickly move on to the next one.

Reminds me when I introduced ER to some friends, who had only experienced open world in marker beelining Ubisoft stuff. Initially they felt the game didn't have any content, got frustrated because they didn't know where to go or what to do and ran around in circles. It was fascinating.

 

[RagingNomad]

Interesting what this mark means

 

[whydoibother]

one of the dilemmas we encountered was how to make someone like Phyre relatable

Step 1: Don't give a X hundred year old vampire a name that even some zoomer mumble rapper would cringe at.

Step 0.1: Make the player character a fresh modern day fledgling, and make the inner voice a X hundred year old vampire.
This is MUCH easier for relatability, permits detailed character creation, etc.
Make it so a bunch of thinbloods tried to diablerieze an aged vampire, and something happened, and now you are fighting for control of your body with that old vampire. Works well in Cyberpunk, or Shadow of Mordor. Making it so we control the aged, out of touch, powerful and defined character, with a weaksauce thin inner voice is.... le dumb.

 

[The President]

I do wonder if “the nomad” would have been a better name for the player. You could in non-voiced dialogue refer to whatever name you want to give yourself in creation, but people would reference you as nomad.

 

[user]

I do wonder if “the nomad” would have been a better name for the player. You could in non-voiced dialogue refer to whatever name you want to give yourself in creation, but people would reference you as nomad.

buttD3stroy3r1337 would be better than Phyre

 

[laclongquan]

These are what we would be expecting from a modern game though.

Why would you?

Game dev, spec. AAA game dev, is much harder / more complicated now than it was ~20 years ago.

I’m making a small game now but I work w/ and talk to people making AA and AAA. It’s changed enormously.

Can people stop talking out of their asses for a second on this dumb site

Making a AA game now is comparable to making a AAA game 10 years ago - and it’s *still* harder and more complicated.

If your contribution to the discussion is to disagree without recalling your own dev experience or the testimonials of other devs contradicting what I’m saying, contemplate if this is a) smart b) incredibly dumb.

It's a self-inflicted problem, but a problem nonetheless. And even without it, I wouldn't expect much from a group of people who have never worked together before making a game from scratch in a genre most of them have never worked in before with a strict schedule.

That's because they are not making AAA games, they are making AAAA games (budget wise at least).

Twenty years ago they can get away with a few characters' head sculpting and voice acting. Think of Fallout 1 and 2.

Nowaday audience expect, ACTUALLY expect, every riffraff will have some non-generic voice acting (goodbye hello doesnt count, but dialog revelant to game progress or local area situations). And god forbid if you ever forget to set a walker's lines so they can taut the customers, because two commenters will complain about the lack, and a third complain about the gender bias (or the lack of trannie), and a fourth complain about the voice acting use West Coast accent instead of New Yorker etc...

This is feature creeping of highest order. It mean they need to integrate a much bigger voice acting department, much bigger demand on writings for dialog, and much bigger quality control to ensure all those voices and writings wont create big whoops, what with political correctness running amok in the industry.

 

[whydoibother]

Interesting what this mark means

He is a swordsman from the Neverwinter city guard?

 

[Wesp5]

I believe they added Fabien so he can explain every bit of modern tech to the player, otherwise it would have been so much more fun to have somebody from hundred years ago navigate todays world and they didn't dare to do this. Oh, and of course an Elder from hundred years ago would very probably be racist and sexist and Fabien will tell him all the time that he can't show this anymore today.

 

[Skinwalker]

Interesting what this mark means

He is a swordsman from the Neverwinter city guard?

Or the Dragon Age templars / inquisition.

 

[user]

I believe they added Fabien so he can explain every bit of modern tech to the player, otherwise it would have been so much more fun to have somebody from hundred years ago navigate todays world and they didn't dare to do this. Oh, and of course an Elder from hundred years ago would very probably be racist and sexist and Fabien will tell him all the time that he can't show this anymore today.

Maybe he will teach some of the gnognards here some tolerance and inclusion too!

 

[whydoibother]

I believe they added Fabien so he can explain every bit of modern tech to the player, otherwise it would have been so much more fun to have somebody from hundred years ago navigate todays world and they didn't dare to do this.

But the player is alive in 2024, and knows what a phone is. This explanation is needed to Phyre, not to the player.
On the other hand, the player maybe doesn't know what the Masquerade is, or who the Antediluvians are. The player may need THAT explained to them.
So it should've been you in control of the young, modern fledgeling, and the inner voice being the wisened elder giving you relevant information you might be missing. I don't need to be told what a car is. I've seen cars.

 

[The President]

My wife believes that Fabien is a humanity bar that you can’t cheat. Where in the first it was easy to maintain humanity 10 and lie, kill, and whatever, here the choices you make, Fabien will know and hold against you regardless.

 

[Harthwain]

I believe they added Fabien so he can explain every bit of modern tech to the player, otherwise it would have been so much more fun to have somebody from hundred years ago navigate todays world and they didn't dare to do this.

But the player is alive in 2024, and knows what a phone is. This explanation is needed to Phyre, not to the player.
On the other hand, the player maybe doesn't know what the Masquerade is, or who the Antediluvians are. The player may need THAT explained to them.
So it should've been you in control of the young, modern fledgeling, and the inner voice being the wisened elder giving you relevant information you might be missing. I don't need to be told what a car is. I've seen cars.

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption did the whole "Elder in modern era" thing and it was done really well without a voice in player's character's head (everything was explained contextually).

 

[Wesp5]

I believe they added Fabien so he can explain every bit of modern tech to the player, otherwise it would have been so much more fun to have somebody from hundred years ago navigate todays world and they didn't dare to do this.

But the player is alive in 2024, and knows what a phone is. This explanation is needed to Phyre, not to the player.

Of course I meant the player character, not the player. Otherwise I agree with you that it probably would have been much more interesting the other way around. But that would have been even closer to Johnny Silverhand too!

 

[Tyranicon]

one of the dilemmas we encountered was how to make someone like Phyre relatable

Step 1: Don't give a X hundred year old vampire a name that even some zoomer mumble rapper would cringe at.

Step 0.1: Make the player character a fresh modern day fledgling, and make the inner voice a X hundred year old vampire.
This is MUCH easier for relatability, permits detailed character creation, etc.
Make it so a bunch of thinbloods tried to diablerieze an aged vampire, and something happened, and now you are fighting for control of your body with that old vampire. Works well in Cyberpunk, or Shadow of Mordor. Making it so we control the aged, out of touch, powerful and defined character, with a weaksauce thin inner voice is.... le dumb.

This really is what they should've done. They're out of their depth trying to write an elder.

A new fledgling is much easier to write, and more relatable to their supposed target audience, and easier to build progression around.

The inner voice being an older vampire, perhaps even slightly amused they got diablerized by some whelp, will provide much more interesting commentary, and a better enemy within plotline that I assume they are going to attempt here as well.

 

[Storyfag]

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption did the whole "Elder in modern era" thing and it was done really well without a voice in player's character's head (everything was explained contextually).

And concepts such as the Masquerade and Camarilla were explained to the protagonist upon awakening in the modern era by vampires from the modern era. And it clicked.

 

[Storyfag]

This really is what they should've done. They're out of their depth trying to write an elder.

A new fledgling is much easier to write, and more relatable to their supposed target audience, and easier to build progression around.

The inner voice being an older vampire, perhaps even slightly amused they got diablerized by some whelp, will provide much more interesting commentary, and a better enemy within plotline that I assume they are going to attempt here as well.

All that being said, the concept of playing an Elder is much more interesting. They are just botching it. Badly.

 

[TramplePie]

This screenshot bothers me. They couldn't add a corrective blendshape to stop the shoulders from twisting like a balloon animal? On a melee attack you'll be seeing up close dozens of times in the game?

I'm sure it will be fixed before launch. Ha. Hahaha.

 

[Roguey]

Someone at reddit making claims https://old.reddit.com/r/vtmb/comments/1ai8877/did_outstar_lie_to_us/koth5u8/

At Paradox shareholders' AGM [Annual General Meeting] we were told three things. "HSL delivered nothing usable." "The new team have had to start from scratch." "This game is targeted at 25m copies sold."

Those are Cyberpunk numbers. Is this true delusion or a desperate lie to induce hope in the shareholders?

A prediction from nearly-three years ago:

Jefferies upgrades Paradox $PDX to BUY, expecting 700mSEK (= >2 million copies) of VtM: Bloodlines 2 "whenever its released" - a very bullish assumption considering the current state of the game & the company's past releases excl CK3.

"Bullish" is right. They'd be lucky to even get that.