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

[Grunker]

The few people who played it and could report it say the game was fun enough.

I wouldn't trust Paradox employees like Outshill.

I don't understand. If the chinese room bit more than they can chew then wouldn't it make sense for them to reuse as much as possible from the previous work done by Hardsuit labs? I don't think they reworked everything from zero. It doesn't make sense. And the release is 2024. There's no way. In the trailer you can see some of the vampiric powers like hovering and that explosion thing that were also shown in the previous vtmb 2 videos from Hardsuit labs.

Gonna drag this link out again https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/644203572507082752/a-bunch-of-you-have-questions-about-project

The quick version is that it would take far more time learning how to figure out HSL's cobbled code than it would be to start over themselves. Three+ years is enough time to make a role-playing game that doesn't try to take a kitchen sink approach or do too much.

You never told me your own guess, R. I say this is going to be a total collapse of a jankfest. Maybe not notoriously poor in a memorable sense, but I foresee it'll clearly not be an honest effort/ok game in the rough. It'll be unequivocally bad.

What's your prediction?

I don't know. Teaser trailers barely tell you anything, I'll need to see what they have in January or possibly even later. I have more optimism in this premise than Mitsoda's, that's it.

Well you’re no fun. Take a guess

 

[Cross]

Three+ years is enough time to make a role-playing game

Not in the current year, and certainly not from this developer. Their walking simulator Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was released more than 3 years after they announced it, and that was even with funding from Sony.

I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being a glorified action game, with a few different abilities depending on your Clan, and for the rest a boring skill tree like you have in every modern action "RPG". That might be the reason why they made the protagonist an Elder, so they wouldn't have to bother with all those pesky RPG character development systems.

 

[Delterius]

Well you’re no fun. Take a guess

i hear systemic depression by christmas is a safe bet but i don't see what's that got to do with bloodlines 2

 

[Cricket McBangle]

Three+ years is enough time to make a role-playing game

Not in the current year, and certainly not from this developer. Their walking simulator Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was released more than 3 years after they announced it, and that was even with funding from Sony.

I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being a glorified action game, with a few different abilities depending on your Clan, and for the rest a boring skill tree like you have in every modern action "RPG". That might be the reason why they made the protagonist an Elder, so they wouldn't have to bother with all those pesky RPG character development systems.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was made by like 20 people. All those people are gone and now Bloodlines 2 is being re-jiggered by a studio that's grown 5 times that size at least plus they're receiving a lot of support from Sumo Digital, which has like a shit ton of studios who do all sorts of support work. The Chinese Room isn't even making their Still Wakes The Deep game by themselves. Sumo has thrown a lot of employees from their other studios on that project too.

A "medium"-sized AAA action-RPG in three years is totally doable especially with the inevitable DLC onslaught this game is going to receive.

 

[Atlantico]

Gonna drag this link out again https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/644203572507082752/a-bunch-of-you-have-questions-about-project

Reminder this link only provides an educated guess but has no actual inside knowledge on the project. Don't know why you are dragging it out again.

Using that to form your own conclusions is fine, but quoting it as a source is lmao

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I don't think this is true. As far as strategy games dying overall, I can't really speak to that but it seems like Paradox has reliable fanbases that will eat up anything they put out.

Sure, but they're capitalizing on that through DLCs for games that already have a loyalized consumer base that was built over the years. But when they go on to release sequels to said games, it's questionable whether they'd be able to retain the same amount of loyal consumers. Not only because the sequels on release happen to have a lot less content than their DLC-bloated predecessors (hence regardless of how good the sequel is, a lot of people will prefer to stay with the more complete game even if the newer iteration has more polish which in turn could lead to a better gaming experience a few dozen DLC and quite a few years down the line), but also due to their questionable development strategies like with their focus on pointless 3D gimmicks meant to appeal to a broader audience as well as their neglect for historical simulation as the main pillar of their game: partly due to incompetence, partly due to prioritizing memes over immersiveness (& their casualization of gameplay) and - perhaps most damning - due to their desire to have stronger brand identities for each of their grand strategy franchises. Not that the latter is a bad thing in itself, but they already had that by virtue of each franchise covering a different historical period; issue is that they now want this brand identity to correspond to general gameplay differences as well - one area of gameplay being overdeveloped while the other areas are heavily underdeveloped (e.g. HoI is the war simulation franchise, so the rest of the gameplay is reduced to lame foci & co.; Vicky is the economic simulation franchise, so the rest is reduced to subpar mechanics like with their partial implementation of EUIV-style diplomacy and with their abstractization of war in Vicky3). And that can only be done to the detriment of the simulationist sort of gameplay that they set out to achieve with all of their grand strategy franchises. No wonder that Paradox prefers to continue milking the overbloated EUIV with DLCs rather than releasing EUV since the latter will either turn out as an Imperator (if Johan actually ends up removing mana, implementing pops and so on) or - in spirit with their 'brand identity' nonsense - it'll turn out as the Paradox equivalent to Risk with a corresponding lack of depth in gameplay and with no simulationist appeal. And at that point, just like with CK2 and Vicky2 fans that didn't move onto the sequels (many of whom did give them a chance and ended up disappointed in them), a lot of people will continue playing EUIV and not move onto EUV.

(Also paging Delterius & FreeKaner for this particular discussion.)

 

[Roguey]

Well you’re no fun. Take a guess

Might as well flip a coin. Pessimists will be pessimists, optimists will be optimists. I don't know the scope or the parameters they've set for themselves so I have no clue.

Reminder this link only provides an educated guess but has no actual inside knowledge on the project. Don't know why you are dragging it out again.

A "guess" made when the game was cancelled that turned out to be absolutely correct based on the recent announcement. A game developer with vocational knowledge knows what he's talking about, what a shock.

Person with experience in this field: This is likely going to happen.
You, person with no experience in this field: But what if something else?!

 

[Herumor]

I wouldn't trust Paradox employees like Outshill.

I have no idea why people like her - people employed in PR/community manager/shill-in-charge - were ever taken seriously to begin with. She gets paid to tell you it's gonna be good.

 

[True Ukrainian]

People are far too confident Mitsoda would've waved his magic wand and fixed the mess HSL's game was shaping up to be.
TCR so far has shown good judgement in getting rid of the cringe (Thinblood protag w/ clan disciplines, wacky stoner sidekick, shameless 'member berry antics with Damsel's return and Ocean House callbacks, etc.). I'm pretty confident we'll be getting the better game with them, whatever that may actually amount to.

Wasn't the thin blood protagonist meant to promote their new ruleset? It could have been an interesting choice to have a weak player character with the need to actively use the blood alchemy system (harvesting resonance from humans to get limited use disciplines).

 

[Atlantico]

A "guess" made when the game was cancelled that turned out to be absolutely correct based on the recent announcement. A game developer with vocational knowledge knows what he's talking about, what a shock.

No. Partially correct, some parts seem to check out, others are completely up in the air because this is indeed a guess. That's how guesses work, this Tumblerina you keep quoting has no privileged information at all — whatsoever — on this project.

Person with experience in this field: This is likely going to happen.

Ah I remember the good old days of the lockdowns and the dangerous virus and the vaxx. I remember people "with experience in this field" telling everyone to get injected with a questionable treatment called a vaccine, without even being one. I remember people "with experience in this field" telling us natural immunity didn't really work, what you needed was regular injections.

How many injections did you get Roguey?

You, person with no experience in this field: But what if something else?!

Turned out I was right about the global pandemic. Turns out anyone can actually be right about things they aren't (seemingly) experts on, just by using basic deduction. Claiming expertise is utterly uninteresting and a banal logical fallacy anyway.

 

[True Ukrainian]

As an aside, someone recommended that I play Vampire Night Road and it is honestly the closest thing to bloodlines that I have experienced.

 

[Delterius]

that I have experienced.

yes but can we trust your expertise you might have taken a vaccine

 

[True Ukrainian]

that I have experienced.

yes but can we trust your expertise you might have taken a vaccine

I took the vaccine but I refused to get boosted. Does that count?

 

[Modron]

The last time I tried a VTM cyoa text game it had trannies and pronouns in it. Each and everyone of those choice of games are written by a different a person it's a bit like walking through a minefield in regards to what you're going to get.

 

[Roguey]

The last time I tried a VTM cyoa text game it had trannies and pronouns in it.

Every VtM is going to have this stuff in it, what matters is how everything else is executed.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

People are far too confident Mitsoda would've waved his magic wand and fixed the mess HSL's game was shaping up to be.
TCR so far has shown good judgement in getting rid of the cringe (Thinblood protag w/ clan disciplines, wacky stoner sidekick, shameless 'member berry antics with Damsel's return and Ocean House callbacks, etc.). I'm pretty confident we'll be getting the better game with them, whatever that may actually amount to.

Wasn't the thin blood protagonist meant to promote their new ruleset? It could have been an interesting choice to have a weak player character with the need to actively use the blood alchemy system (harvesting resonance from humans to get limited use disciplines).

It might have been inspired by that but Mitsoda said that they wanted the player to see what the different clans were like before choosing one as "picking a clan, changing your mind, and then restarting with a new character" was apparently some problem that needed addressing.

 

[Gradenmayer]

People are far too confident Mitsoda would've waved his magic wand and fixed the mess HSL's game was shaping up to be.
TCR so far has shown good judgement in getting rid of the cringe (Thinblood protag w/ clan disciplines, wacky stoner sidekick, shameless 'member berry antics with Damsel's return and Ocean House callbacks, etc.). I'm pretty confident we'll be getting the better game with them, whatever that may actually amount to.

Wasn't the thin blood protagonist meant to promote their new ruleset? It could have been an interesting choice to have a weak player character with the need to actively use the blood alchemy system (harvesting resonance from humans to get limited use disciplines).

It might have been inspired by that but Mitsoda said that they wanted the player to see what the different clans were like before choosing one as "picking a clan, changing your mind, and then restarting with a new character" was apparently some problem that needed addressing.

For thinblood to not be a shittier human, game would have to shit out another “chosen one” plot, right?

Why would any clan accept a thinblood?

 

[Cricket McBangle]

People are far too confident Mitsoda would've waved his magic wand and fixed the mess HSL's game was shaping up to be.
TCR so far has shown good judgement in getting rid of the cringe (Thinblood protag w/ clan disciplines, wacky stoner sidekick, shameless 'member berry antics with Damsel's return and Ocean House callbacks, etc.). I'm pretty confident we'll be getting the better game with them, whatever that may actually amount to.

Wasn't the thin blood protagonist meant to promote their new ruleset? It could have been an interesting choice to have a weak player character with the need to actively use the blood alchemy system (harvesting resonance from humans to get limited use disciplines).

It might have been inspired by that but Mitsoda said that they wanted the player to see what the different clans were like before choosing one as "picking a clan, changing your mind, and then restarting with a new character" was apparently some problem that needed addressing.

For thinblood to not be a shittier human, game would have to shit out another “chosen one” plot, right?

Why would any clan accept a thinblood?

I believe you chose your clan through Diablerie.

 

[scytheavatar]

I don't understand why anyone would want TCR to rescue the work done by the Hardsuit version............. Paradox's assessment was that the Hardsuit version is irredeemable trash and there's a need to reset the project. With that assessment I am not sure there's any good in TCR touching anything in the Hardsuit version. Generating of asset is easy and straightforward, it's actually making a good game that is complicated and that we do not know if TCR can pull off.

 

[Delterius]

Wasn't the thin blood protagonist meant to promote their new ruleset? It could have been an interesting choice to have a weak player character with the need to actively use the blood alchemy system (harvesting resonance from humans to get limited use disciplines).

It was more along the lines of White Wolf and the HS/Mitsoda people working together to create mechanics and game concepts, both for Bloodlines 2 and Vampire. From what I understand the idea of Resonance - that the blood of people carrying certain emotions go on to affect the Vampire, includig mechanically - was developed for BL2 and V5.

The way I see it, the problem with the thinblood concept is two fold. First, one of marketing, ie the idea that playing a thinblood is merely playing a vampire except shittier. That's not really true. But wax about lore all you want - it won't matter. It's in the name, you're a creature whose blood is thin.

Then you might ask, what if we lean on it? What if we promise the strange and unearthed powers of thinblood arcana, as well as the experience of being caitiff in ruthless camarilla society? That brings us to the second problem: the devs didn't really want to lean on it. One of the first things we learned about the game is that you're a thinblood, result of an illegal mass embrace, and that you're somehow trusted (BL1 style) to investigate what happened (Edit: Wesp corrected me in a following post). The nail on that thinblood coffin is that we were gonna somehow attain full clan status. Which is not unheard of in the setting, but it's even more indicative of how the devs wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

I have no reason to believe the same dynamics isn't happening with TCR. The screenrant interview (bear with me, I'm reading tea leaves here) is interesting, in that Alex Skidmore (TCR) takes the lead with almost every question, except the one which talks about the new game's premise, where Sean Greaney (WoD-PDX) starts answering:

I'm not sure how much you can reveal right now in general, but I would love to hear some about the different powers that players will be able to have in this game. I know you start as a Thin Blood, so you're not quite as powerful, but I assume that doesn't last forever.

Sean Greaney: We can talk a little bit about this. So first of all, we've actually taken the other approach in this project - you don't start as a Thin Blood, you start as an elder vampire, and this is the first time that we're doing this in a World of Darkness product. I'll leave that for Alex to talk about. On the powers front, we won't speak specifically because that's the next thing we're going to go into; we're going to start talking about the playable clans, and then eventually the player experience of those and revealing those sorts of things.
But a lot of this is about claiming the vampire fantasy that Alex can also speak to that is a bit undefined in video games, I would say, very well defined, obviously, in film and television. But there's an open fantasy that I think the team is doing a really, really good job approaching and defining. And I've never felt quite as much like a vampire as I do in this game.
Alex Skidmore: Yeah, thank you, Sean. For clarity, when The Chinese Room started on the project in 2021, we're building our own vision; it's our own narrative, our own sort of world and gameplay and everything. So things you would have heard before, now it's a new thing. As I said, instead of starting as Thin Blood, it's a game about being an elder and exploring that side of VTM. Because elders are quite rare, so that for us in a really, really cool thing to do, and also a nice contrast to the first Bloodlines game as well, where literally the start of the game was the scream as you became a vampire. And we went, "Okay, that's kind of done. What if we did an elder vampire?" So very much our own vision, if that makes sense.

Odds are that there's a mutual collaboration in place, and it's hard to say which side had the most pull. It does seem like both the TCR and the WoD people are taking ownership of the premise behind BL2. To what extent it's a matter of professionalism - we've been hired to do this job, let's do it - we might never know. One thing might be certain though. Without a Mitsoda, TCR isn't married to any sort of vision. Which can be both a good and a bad thing. It's down to wether the developers can grow to become interested in the project. RPG developers have done merc jobs before that turned out well.

 

[Harthwain]

The way I see it, the problem with the thinblood concept is two fold. First, one of marketing, ie the idea that playing a thinblood is merely playing a vampire except shittier.

Actually, you could argue that playing as a thinblood had potential. First of all - you can show the player that playing as a vampire isn't as fantastic as some people might think when they think or talk about becoming a vampire. Being a pariah of the vampire society would also be a good excuse to make the player take part in lower aspects of it, while still keeping them superior to human. It seemed to go that way in the beginning, considering the early reveal material for Bloodlines 2. Throw in a resource-limited system and it could've been an interesting game (at least on paper).

 

[Herumor]

I believe you chose your clan through Diablerie.

That sounds especially retarded. Yeah, Camarilla allowed for blood hunts and what not, but outright Diablerie? That's more Sabbat's MO.

 

[Delterius]

The way I see it, the problem with the thinblood concept is two fold. First, one of marketing, ie the idea that playing a thinblood is merely playing a vampire except shittier.

Actually, you could argue that playing as a thinblood had potential. First of all - you can show the player that playing as a vampire isn't as fantastic as some people might think when they think or talk about becoming a vampire. Being a pariah of the vampire society would also be a good excuse to make the player take part in lower aspects of it, while still keeping them superior to human. It seemed to go that way in the beginning, considering the early reveal material for Bloodlines 2. Throw in a resource-limited system and it could've been an interesting game (at least on paper).

Sure! You can argue a great many things. I'm one of those people who prefers the concept of a Hunter game where you're a normal bucko trying to kill the neighborhood Nosferatu, rather than a holy vatican law soldier. But I'm talking about marketing there. And even this thread probably retains some post or another of people bitching that they are playing a shittier vampire.

 

[Delterius]

I believe you chose your clan through Diablerie.

That sounds especially retarded. Yeah, Camarilla allowed for blood hunts and what not, but outright Diablerie? That's more Sabbat's MO.

Diablerie is the ultimate crime in Camarilla society. However the Cam is often on the backfoot and a Blood Hunt or a wider war with the Sabbat are some of the few mitigating circumstances where they won't ask too many questions if you come back with a fucked up aura. You'll still be shunned by polite vampire society, and odds are you'll be more or less confined to the city you're in, since they know you by name rather than reputation.

You have to remember that the Traditions exist to benefit the Camarilla hierarchy. In a pinch both the Prince and their Sheriff have the authority to disregard the Traditions themselves. The point of forbidding diablerie is because Camarilla vampires don't want to live in a society where people are eating each other all the time, but the reason it's forbidden in the first place is because the big honchos don't want kids eating their Elders. It's like tax evasion in a way. All the cool kids are doing it and the system works as long as enough people can't even consider it.

So let's say you're Prince of Milwaukee and the vampire Jay comes before you, having diablerized Mike. Maybe Jay did what you wanted as Mike was Sabbat, there was a fight, and then Jay ended up diablerizing Mike. Maybe it was a big war with the Sabbat, and Jay isn't even the only one who ended up diablerizing someone. You have to decide wether this instance of diablerie is a threat to you and to the Camarilla. If so, then you have to decide how to dispose of them. If it's just Jay then you could kill him on the spot. If it's Jay and a bunch of others, maybe you should bide your time and keep them under surveillance to crash their planes later.

 

[Wesp5]

One of the first things we learned about the game is that you're a thinblood, result of an illegal mass embrace, and that you're somehow trusted (BL1 style) to investigate what happened. The nail on that thinblood coffin is that we were gonna somehow attain full clan status. Which is not unheard of in the setting, but it's even more indicative of how the devs wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

As far as I remember you are not trusted to investigate what happened, you do it yourself because you inherit your haven from a vampire who already was investigating something. You can see this in the background of the demo videos, the wall pinned with all the hints. I agree though that turning the Thin Blood into a real vampire would have been a problem and I don't know what HSL planned there. Also I really disliked that the Thin Bloods had very powerful disciplines right from the start. At first you needed to choose one of them, but probably after HSL discovered that level design for three unique traversal disiplines was impossible, you got all three of them, so you were overpowered right from the start. Maybe that gave TCR the elder idea?