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

[Vulpes]

How can you permanently mark thinbloods when vampires regenerate all their wounds and always revert to their original appearance, sooner or later?

Is there a designated Camarilla brander who regularly checks up on all the thinbloods to see if they need to be rebranded?

There is no automatic regeneration or regrowth of lost limbs for thin-bloods and something like branding would be treated as an Aggravated injury, which is a lot harder to recover from for both them and normal vampires. There's also no need to constantly re-brand them when there are already dime a dozen level 1 rituals that can permanently alter someone's appearance, such as:
Brand - makes scars, burns, tattoos and any other changes to the flesh permanent (renamed to Seal the Brand in V5)
Beat your Way to Glory - beat the superficial characteristics out of someone and onto you (this is what V20 Anarch Sorcery is like BTW)
Rebirth of Mortal Vanity - lengthens your hair
Purity of Blood - expels foreign materials like piercings, tattoos, hair dye, etc.

And before anyone tries to come back with the "B-B-BUT ONLY TREMERE CAN DO BLOOD MAGIC!!!" cope, that's false as anyone can learn blood sorcery and about a third of the clans already have access to it. What makes the Tremere unique is that they have a much easier time learning the Paths and rituals belonging to other clans.

 

[Storyfag]

How can you permanently mark thinbloods when vampires regenerate all their wounds and always revert to their original appearance, sooner or later?

Is there a designated Camarilla brander who regularly checks up on all the thinbloods to see if they need to be rebranded?

There is no automatic regeneration or regrowth of lost limbs for thin-bloods and something like branding would be treated as an Aggravated injury, which is a lot harder to recover from for both them and normal vampires. There's also no need to constantly re-brand them when there are already dime a dozen level 1 rituals that can permanently alter someone's appearance, such as:
Brand - makes scars, burns, tattoos and any other changes to the flesh permanent (renamed to Seal the Brand in V5)
Beat your Way to Glory - beat the superficial characteristics out of someone and onto you (this is what V20 Anarch Sorcery is like BTW)
Rebirth of Mortal Vanity - lengthens your hair
Purity of Blood - expels foreign materials like piercings, tattoos, hair dye, etc.

And before anyone tries to come back with the "B-B-BUT ONLY TREMERE CAN DO BLOOD MAGIC!!!" cope, that's false as anyone can learn blood sorcery and about a third of the clans already have access to it. What makes the Tremere unique is that they have a much easier time learning the Paths and rituals belonging to other clans.

The original sorcerers were counted amongst the Tzimisce, the Setites, the Assamites. Then there were the Abyss mysticism of some Lasombra, the rituals of the Cappadocians and the peculiar powers of the Salubri (might have been pure Valeren, with no shred of sorcery). Then came the Usurpers.

It is closer to half the Clans, not a third

 

[La vie sexuelle]

The design is serviceable for a Hollywood stripper, but the main offence is the lazy way Troika modelled her. She and Tourette share the same face model which makes VV look like a reskinned Tourette.

You are probably aware that Jeanette was in the Vesuvisu during the alpha version of Bloodlines. Troika moved her into the Asylum and probably did a quick remodel to create VV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YRGnk0uazk&t=1s

So the female Malkavian was based on an early version of Jeanette. Too bad they didn't keep the old head. It's a pity that her dialogues were clicked/not heard, because I think they are VV animations (according to Mitsoda, Jeanette's model is just a placeholder at this point) and probably her voice.

It's also a pity that the facial animations of these sewer monsters didn't make it into the full game.

The old Jeannette looks exactly like the Jeannette in that poster you can acquire from Gary Golden. The mask-like makeup is even more pronounced than on the new Jeannette. The poster must use their original concept for her.

I think it is original concept of herharacter. A very round head, literally smudged makeup and aggression in the eyes. Then they had a more realistic, sad whore style one, and finally they mixed them. The original version of the character was a 1:1 Harley Quinn from the Batman cartoon era.

 

[Semiurge]

The original version of the character was a 1:1 Harley Quinn from the Batman cartoon era.

Very close to the poster.

 

[normie]

and then he found Annie Carlson

 

[La vie sexuelle]

The original version of the character was a 1:1 Harley Quinn from the Batman cartoon era.

Very close to the poster.

Yeah, but this poster was rather shitty photoshop :D

 

[sosmoflux]

Never seen that poster wtf

 

[Semiurge]

Never seen that poster wtf

You've never done the unofficial quest "Poster Hunt"? It's even in the vanilla BL1.

 

[Storyfag]

Never seen that poster wtf

Haven't been checking your email, eh boss?

 

[Fedora Master]

Game bad.
Have some dumb/cool Mage art

 

[S.torch]

Once again we’ve got Writer Cherish Goldstraw and Narrative Director Ian Thomas describing the profiles to you as they appear at the beginning of our story.

So they have a narrative director and a narrative lead? Just how many people do they need to write a videogame's story...?

 

[Fedora Master]

What kind of name is "Cherish" "Goldstraw"

 

[Nano]

 

[Roguey]

So they have a narrative director and a narrative lead? Just how many people do they need to write a videogame's story...?

For an RPG, a lot. Bloodlines 2 is leaner than most, with that one Glassdoor review from a few months ago mentioning "core-team spread even thinner than buttery thin (i,e. whole departments can literally just be one or two people. Great for ownership and agency, terrible for work-life balance)"

The original Bloodlines was written/designed by Jason Anderson, Leonard Boyarsky, Brian Mitsoda, TJ Perillo, and Chad Moore.

 

[Tyranicon]

A reminder that Homeworld 3 had a director of narrative properties with a PhD.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Game bad.
Have some dumb/cool Mage art
View attachment 54914View attachment 54915View attachment 54916

From Sabbath book:

 

[The President]

From the dev diaries it seems like TCR’s narrative crew is the only that isn’t small.

 

[Fargus]

Well, they usually make shitty walking sims...

 

[Fedora Master]

And of course...

 

[AfterVirtue]

What kind of name is "Cherish" "Goldstraw"

 

[Semiurge]

Game bad.
Have some dumb/cool Mage art
View attachment 54914View attachment 54915View attachment 54916

From Sabbath book:

Multi-tentacled attack-vaginas. As if it hasn't always been clear that the lore is a vehicle for sexual deviancy of the most profound nature.

 

[AfterVirtue]

A reminder that Homeworld 3 had a director of narrative properties with a PhD.

Good reminder... Did you perchance met our strange but interesting friend? Meet, if you didn't know him, the esteemed Arthur Schopenhauer - On University Philosophy
But we can summon the italian Papini and his "universities as privileged factories of state idiots" (https://www.lunieditrice.com/product/chiudiamo-le-scuole-giovanni-papini/)

Point being that a PhD has jack shit to do, by itself, with being good at teoretical or creative endeavours.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Game bad.
Have some dumb/cool Mage art
View attachment 54914View attachment 54915View attachment 54916

From Sabbath book:

Multi-tentacled attack-vaginas. As if it hasn't always been clear that the lore is a vehicle for sexual deviancy of the most profound nature.

There is a lot of truth in this, but I think that these two cases I pasted were intended to be, above all, transgressive. And there is no transgression without a sense of border. It's terrible and perverse so that we can better understand where we are. Besides, the entire World of Darkness is like that. Or was.

It's funny, but when we are now ruled by perverts, their fetishes are presented as entertainment for the whole family (see the opening of the Olympics). I'll say the same about the new Vampire, where monsters are seen as carriers of shared values, and not something terrible that we would normally avoid (an extreme case - Beast: The Primordial from 2016).

 

[AfterVirtue]

And there is no transgression without a sense of border.

Like there is no eroticism without a sense of shame and a distance between public life and intimacy.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

And there is no transgression without a sense of border.

Like there is no eroticism without a sense of shame and a distance between public life and intimacy.

I'm from a different culture than Anglosaxon. There is nothing about sex that you can be ashamed of, you can only do something shameful with sex (just like with any other thing, e.g. food). Transgression is going beyond the rules to a) move the boundaries, b) confirm their validity.

There is also a third group, people like Georges Bataille - transgression opens your "third eye" giving you a unique view of reality.