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

[Roguey]

Too many women involved.
VTMB was about women, not by women.
Confirmed DoA.

Narrative design is majority-female for pretty much every RPG developer now. This was even more true for the previous iteration.

 

[processdaemon]

Here's what she specifically wrote, someone who played it would have to comment on the quality

I'm gonna parrot opinions I read online but apparently the Sebastian character was one of the high points of character design (story-wise) in the game.

Yeah he was, the quests weren't amazing or anything but certainly better than everything else in the game. Given how vanilla and safe everything else is she must have had to fight hard to be allowed to put even the tiny amount of edge that that questline had into the game so props to her for that I guess

 

[Roguey]

Here's what she specifically wrote, someone who played it would have to comment on the quality

I'm gonna parrot opinions I read online but apparently the Sebastian character was one of the high points of character design (story-wise) in the game.

Yeah he was, the quests weren't amazing or anything but certainly better than everything else in the game. Given how vanilla and safe everything else is she must have had to fight hard to be allowed to put even the tiny amount of edge that that questline had into the game so props to her for that I guess

Potentially good news for people worried the game's going to be filled with Rudi's Army characters

Worried about the way writers tell stories nowadays, almost sterilized, afraid of offending groups or touching sensitive subjects. Here's hoping you're not in that category. Vtm almost relishes in that, at least it used to

Kindred are hardly savoury, and each character is their own flavour of monster. They are not spokespeople for our ideas, and no ideology is without flaw. We all have to laugh at ourselves.

Once you're embraced, nobody cares about what group you once belonged to, only which you belong to now and where you sit on the hierarchy. Who is using who and for what.

No vampire activists here.

 

[user]

There is (I was certain PK would be an irrelevant flop too), but at the time they were specific about the genre! These guys are rather vague. Hope I am wrong, but their description as I understand it, is more reminiscent to a, most likely linear, action/adventure game.

Well, depending on how you see it Bloodlines was linear. And not that far off from being action/adventure. Sure the action part sucked, and there were skillchecks. But it wasn't Age of Decadence. It wasn't built around creating different experiences via those skill checks, and passing all of them was a trivial thing.

The real C&C was clan choice. It was all about having to walk through the sewers as a Nosferatu, having voices and special dialogue options as a Malkavian, having special Tremere Chantry content as Tremere, and some minor clan reactions here and there. It was about being able to stealth around easily as a Nossie, and using the sleep spell as Tremere. That sort of reactivity is not really at odds with an action/adventure game.

The trailer has shown us that there will be combat, so it's not a walking sim. If the TCR pictures teasing the in-game UI can still be believed, then the very straightforward character building of this kind of tabletop game is still in. So I'm not wary of the game's genre. At least not yet.

Hope I am wrong, but their description as I understand it, is more reminiscent to a, most likely linear, action/adventure game.

And how non-linear and non-action-y Bloodlines 1 is? There is a divergence point at the end, but other than that there is very little in terms of non-linearity or anything that seriously impacts your run. Which, sadly, is common to heavily narrative-driven RPGs.

Really, I don't believe I am looking B1 through rosy glasses or something here, but I think it was decently non-linear given the era it came out.

And that small amount of free-roaming it had, where you could talk to irrelevant npcs, coerce/mug/drink some of them, provoke hunters, rob apartments, discover some quests without these strictly being in your way, find random lore, return to some places just because you got better with a skill to crack something, or meet again npcs and getting slightly different dialogue or progress to their story etc, is pretty important to me. And we are talking about a 2004 game here - one would think a proper sequel should build upon those.

Yes, most of the C&C was clan choice and powers. But how much room for exploration, optional areas and quests would you think those linear missions will have for decent C&C to take place? Or NPCs you choose how to deal with and get special dialogue by being a Malk or Nos? Is traversing the city via sewers and avoiding people so that you don't violate the Masquerade the same with just choosing a more stealthy route on a linear mission to avoid a couple of encounters? Is having at least a little choice about what you tackle next the same with going through a fixed series of 1-2 objectives missions in each playthrough?

 

[Cross]

Here's what she specifically wrote, someone who played it would have to comment on the quality

I'm gonna parrot opinions I read online but apparently the Sebastian character was one of the high points of character design (story-wise) in the game.

Yeah he was, the quests weren't amazing or anything but certainly better than everything else in the game. Given how vanilla and safe everything else is she must have had to fight hard to be allowed to put even the tiny amount of edge that that questline had into the game so props to her for that I guess

Potentially good news for people worried the game's going to be filled with Rudi's Army characters

Worried about the way writers tell stories nowadays, almost sterilized, afraid of offending groups or touching sensitive subjects. Here's hoping you're not in that category. Vtm almost relishes in that, at least it used to

Kindred are hardly savoury, and each character is their own flavour of monster. They are not spokespeople for our ideas, and no ideology is without flaw. We all have to laugh at ourselves.

Once you're embraced, nobody cares about what group you once belonged to, only which you belong to now and where you sit on the hierarchy. Who is using who and for what.

No vampire activists here.

She is an activist. Get ready to be lectured by a tranny vampire about your cis privilege.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

designed to inject some much-needed house rivalry

Based, she gets it

For sure the game will be filled with vampire women in position of power, especially Lou the ex-Prince and the new asian Prince(?) you see in the trailer.

But that's ok, because if you really think about it females really do have the perfect vampire mindset. It's why Tourette and VV are so popular. Males love a bitch character. And the only thing they love more than a figurative blood-sucking vapid cunt is a literal blood-sucking vapid cunt.

 

[Vincente]

She is an activist. Get ready to be lectured by a tranny vampire about your cis privilege.

So she knows that one shouldn't inject real life views into video game characters, even though she herself might hold these opinions?

 

[Roguey]

Really, I don't believe I am looking B1 through rosy glasses or something here, but I think it was decently non-linear given the era it came out.

It was more on-rails compared to Troika's previous games.

She is an activist. Get ready to be lectured by a tranny vampire about your cis privilege.

Pretty much everyone in the game industry has those beliefs. Doesn't mean they'll necessarily lecture you about it in their games (the difference between pozzed and woke).

 

[Delterius]

Granted I know nothing about the Larps, this is interesting because maybe mitsoda and crew really departed heavily from V5.

They didn't.

Except for the Thinblood superpower bonanza needed for all their silly level traversal ideas...

Oh, Thinblood Alchemy isn't their invention either. From the wiki it's supposed to be able to mimick lesser effects of other disciplines. I'm sure there's a way to turn into mist if you can do that.

 

[Wesp5]

For sure the game will be filled with vampire women in position of power, especially Lou the ex-Prince and the new asian Prince(?) you see in the trailer.

That is troubling me a bit. If the player is indeed forced to play a female too, like the website hints at, we will get Swansong all over again and I believe that flopped hard...

 

[Roguey]

That is troubling me a bit. If the player is indeed forced to play a female too, like the website hints at, we will get Swansong all over again and I believe that flopped hard...

Swansong had three protagonists and was also a walk-and-talker with a needlessly-harsh saving system and sent to die on the Epic store for a year.

 

[user]

Really, I don't believe I am looking B1 through rosy glasses or something here, but I think it was decently non-linear given the era it came out.

It was more on-rails compared to Troika's previous games.

Obviously. Imagine a VtM in the scale of Arcanum in 2004, requiring animations, effects, voicing and whatnot. I am sure that if it was within Troika's budget and capabilities, they would go for it - at least that's what its design tells me.

 

[Delterius]

Really, I don't believe I am looking B1 through rosy glasses or something here, but I think it was decently non-linear given the era it came out.

It was more on-rails compared to Troika's previous games.

Obviously. Imagine a VtM in the scale of Arcanum in 2004, requiring animations, effects, voicing and whatnot. I am sure that if it was within Troika's budget and capabilities, they would go for it - at least that's what its design tells me.

To be quite honest, what BL1's design tells me is they wanted to make a linear game set in a world/ruleset heavily focused on narrative. Which makes sense. It's not so much that you're seeing BL1 through rosy glasses, but your standards to what constitutes decently non-linear are, well, I wouldn't be surprised if BL2 turned out to be as 'decently non-linear' as BL1. To give you an idea, I also wouldn't be disappointed.

CDProjekt tried to make a narrative heavy RPG set in a heavily urbanized sandbox. It was clearly the wrong decision. BL1's scope is much more reasonable and fair. So much so I can see a normie studio making BL2 that way. And why wouldn't they? BL1 was a first person shooter with RPG mechanics that used the source engine. It was a mainstream game. The reason it failed isn't because BL1 was a crust of the earth classic RPG. It did because it was a technical disaster that had to compete with HL2.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

CDProjekt tried to make a narrative heavy RPG set in a heavily urbanized ballpit

FYP np.

 

[Delterius]

CDProjekt tried to make a narrative heavy RPG set in a heavily urbanized ballpit

FYP np.

someone never crashed their car against a building that didn't really exist and end up in a left over map from blood and wine how's that for exploration

 

[HeatEXTEND]

someone never crashed their car against a building that didn't really exist and end up in a left over map from blood and wine how's that for exploration

Ok I'm intrigued lol.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

For sure the game will be filled with vampire women in position of power, especially Lou the ex-Prince and the new asian Prince(?) you see in the trailer.

That is troubling me a bit. If the player is indeed forced to play a female too, like the website hints at, we will get Swansong all over again and I believe that flopped hard...

I'm pretty sure that's due to World of Darkness defaulting to she/her pronouns on characters without a canonical gender.

 

[likash]

This game is never coming out. The fall of 2024 date is fucking bullshit.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

In the trailer, the first set of arms at the very start seem to belong to a man, while later on they seem to be strictly feminine. So I assume you can pick the sex of the playable character.

 

[Vincente]

Can you imagine if they also made the player character arms black? We would have ten more pages of shitpost.

 

[The President]

Narrative rooms have been female for some time now, which honestly makes sense as women do read more in general.

It’s weird how many of the younger people are obsessed with this gender identity shit though. It’s not even that long ago I finished college in a state as blue as the sky and that freak show was on the sidelines then.

I actually don’t care so much if the character is female as long as it’s done well.

 

[Wesp5]

Can you imagine if they also made the player character arms black? We would have ten more pages of shitpost.

If I remember correctly you could choose gender and skin color in Bloodlines, only the latter was connected to certain clans because the character creator was very limited.

 

[Vincente]

Can you imagine if they also made the player character arms black? We would have ten more pages of shitpost.

If I remember correctly you could choose gender and skin color in Bloodlines, only the latter was connected to certain clans because the character creator was very limited.

Hey, I'm sure people here didn't mind male Brujah being black, given the clan's history of sudden, violent outbursts.

 

[RagingNomad]

For sure the game will be filled with vampire women in position of power, especially Lou the ex-Prince and the new asian Prince(?) you see in the trailer.

That is troubling me a bit. If the player is indeed forced to play a female too, like the website hints at, we will get Swansong all over again and I believe that flopped hard...

Why are you always talking about "her" moment? It means nothing to our character. Obviously its about woman with - "My blood is singing"

 

[user]

Really, I don't believe I am looking B1 through rosy glasses or something here, but I think it was decently non-linear given the era it came out.

It was more on-rails compared to Troika's previous games.

Obviously. Imagine a VtM in the scale of Arcanum in 2004, requiring animations, effects, voicing and whatnot. I am sure that if it was within Troika's budget and capabilities, they would go for it - at least that's what its design tells me.

To be quite honest, what BL1's design tells me is they wanted to make a linear game set in a world/ruleset heavily focused on narrative. Which makes sense. It's not so much that you're seeing BL1 through rosy glasses, but your standards to what constitutes decently non-linear are, well, I wouldn't be surprised if BL2 turned out to be as 'decently non-linear' as BL1. To give you an idea, I also wouldn't be disappointed.

CDProjekt tried to make a narrative heavy RPG set in a heavily urbanized sandbox. It was clearly the wrong decision. BL1's scope is much more reasonable and fair. So much so I can see a normie studio making BL2 that way. And why wouldn't they? BL1 was a first person shooter with RPG mechanics that used the source engine. It was a mainstream game. The reason it failed isn't because BL1 was a crust of the earth classic RPG. It did because it was a technical disaster that had to compete with HL2.

Not exactly. For starters I take their choice of engine and style (more costly 3D game) as granted, but sure they could have made a 2D or isometric rpg wich much less linearity, C&C and so on. Also value spatial/level/progression non-linearity (as long as there is a point) as much as narrative.

Just found this, Boyarsky saying that they wanted it to be more of an open world, but had to comply with technical limitations, which makes sense because their hub system shows that they did everything they could towards that goal. A lot of flavor outcomes, substantial clan differences and small quest variations also does show this for the narrative part - tbh I hardly remember details about the vanilla ones, because latest playthroughs were with mods, but I remember they ...tried.
https://youtu.be/owwU--bKFsA?feature=shared&t=694

Now, I don't know where the choice to use source and not just make a vampire game like Arcanum came from, but a company like Paradox financing e.g. a decent quality semi-open world game is not much of a problem today in terms of budget and technical limitations (not like it's an overhyped sci-fi open world game promising real time galaxy exploration or something

), unless they consciously chose to milk the IP with a low-effort linear action game.

In other words, unless it's an evolution/true sequel to BL1, which, for me at least, means expanding on what they simulated back then, I'll be fucking upset (maybe even cry a little).