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

[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.

 

[Gargaune]

Bullish

>> enhance(4,6)

ish

>> decrypt

shi

>> chatgpt("shi")

t

>> recompile(all)

Bullshit

 

[gaussgunner]

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

Typical Jim Cramer pump-n-dump bullshit.

 

[Tyranicon]

"This game is targeted at 25m copies sold."

 

[whydoibother]

Maybe they "sold 25 million", as in they negotiated a big fee with Microsoft for GamePass, years ago when sentiment was indeed bullish.
So as long as they release ANYTHING, they are already making money, with those guaranteed sales.
Obviously I'm just speculating, but the game is advertised on Xbox's website, and money was cheap back when it was announced, and Microsoft was on a spending spree, and people were legit hyped for it. Would you be surprised if Microsoft signed a deal with Paradox to make this available to all GamePass users and pay Paradox millions of sales worth for the privilidge?
Would also explain why the game isn't cancelled, or rebranded, and they insist on releasing it as the same game that was marketed (and was signed into contract).

 

[Semiurge]

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

That damn untapped market. If these studios would just stop chasing casuals there's be more quality games.

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.

So, "Fabian approves +1" and he will be romanceable?

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

For Cyberpunk numbers they will have to contract CDProjekt. Next time, if there will be a next time.

 

[The President]

There is no way they were expecting 25 million in sales for BL2, that’s just insane.

 

[Storyfag]

It's not 25mil copies sold. It's 25mil revenue generated

 

[scytheavatar]

Maybe they "sold 25 million", as in they negotiated a big fee with Microsoft for GamePass, years ago when sentiment was indeed bullish.
So as long as they release ANYTHING, they are already making money, with those guaranteed sales.
Obviously I'm just speculating, but the game is advertised on Xbox's website, and money was cheap back when it was announced, and Microsoft was on a spending spree, and people were legit hyped for it. Would you be surprised if Microsoft signed a deal with Paradox to make this available to all GamePass users and pay Paradox millions of sales worth for the privilidge?
Would also explain why the game isn't cancelled, or rebranded, and they insist on releasing it as the same game that was marketed (and was signed into contract).

Microsoft valuing BG3 at 5 million shows how much they see the CRPG genre as being worth. Paradox will be lucky to get 5 million from Microsoft for a sequel to a game that sold less than Arcanum.

 

[Wesp5]

Paradox will be lucky to get 5 million from Microsoft for a sequel to a game that sold less than Arcanum.

Are there any numbers on how well Bloodlines sold over the years? Because it is still quite expensive compared to other games from that time except for sales.

 

[Fedora Master]

Is this true delusion

PDX are fairly delusional, so...

 

[Herumor]

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.

Your wife is putting more thought into this than the devs.

 

[whydoibother]

Paradox will be lucky to get 5 million from Microsoft for a sequel to a game that sold less than Arcanum.

Are there any numbers on how well Bloodlines sold over the years? Because it is still quite expensive compared to other games from that time except for sales.

GameSensor asks for money to see their data, but Google has this bit indexed:

In December 2023, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was bought by >$10K players for a total of $30K.

Thats for one month, but it is the Christmas month and powered by Bloodlines 2 hype. Still funny that Bloodlines 1 is selling better in 2023 than it did on release.

 

[Ryzer]

I have this on VGInsight just for Steam:

$8.2m​

gross revenue

649k​

units sold

https://vginsights.com/game/2600
All that money goes straight into Bobby Kotick's pockets.

 

[Alienman]

Ah, the gambler CEO is gambling. Or maybe they scored a weird government deal with the EU to incentivize people to get jabbed. People will get the game for free with the jab. However, it might work in the opposite way

 

[Gargaune]

Maybe they "sold 25 million", as in they negotiated a big fee with Microsoft for GamePass, years ago when sentiment was indeed bullish.

Or maybe it's a transcript error and it's not 25 million copies, but 25 million dollars. That'd be like some 350.000 copies at AAA price, very doable. Or maybe it's 25 million Swedish Krona, so around 35.000 full price copies, even more doable!

 

[Moink]

It's 100% a mistranslation, if it's dollars then 350k copies seems perfectly reasonable for an AA release but I doubt they'll even shift that many copies.

 

[Child of Malkav]

All that money goes straight into Bobby Kotick's pockets.

Please understand, he really, really needs that yacht.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Or maybe it's a transcript error and it's not 25 million copies, but 25 million dollars. That'd be like some 350.000 copies at AAA price, very doable. Or maybe it's 25 million Swedish Krona, so around 35.000 full price copies, even more doable!

Dude, spoiler that stuff. No one wants to be critically hit by math when they open up the page.

 

[whydoibother]

Maybe they "sold 25 million", as in they negotiated a big fee with Microsoft for GamePass, years ago when sentiment was indeed bullish.

Or maybe it's a transcript error and it's not 25 million copies, but 25 million dollars. That'd be like some 350.000 copies at AAA price, very doable. Or maybe it's 25 million Swedish Krona, so around 35.000 full price copies, even more doable!

Or just 2.5 million copies, which is an ambitions, but achievable goal for this sort of game.
Or maybe they think it will do Cyberpunk 2077 numbers for real.
There's options, could be a lot of things. Could even be something some redditor made up.

 

[Gargaune]

Could even be something some redditor made up.

...

See, if I were a Paradox stockholder, I'd develop a sudden interest in whether our CEO has a Reddit account right about now.