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

[Bulo]

So at this point it's all but confirmed that this game is going to be yet another case of soyboys and women taking something that used to be cool and deforming it into a grotesque effigy they'll burn to own straight white gamers

You say that as if the first game didn't have LGBT representation too

Spoiler

 

[NecroLord]

The four playable clans will almost assuredly be Ventrue, Toreador, Tremere, and Brujah.

Tremere - pretentious cunts
Brujah - sick of those punks, they are nothing but a bunch of BLM activists, far from the warrior philosophers they were in the ancient days and the Dark Ages.
I rather would have preferred Malks and Nosferatu.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

Its strength lies in seven playable clans though, with its peak as Malkavian, Nosferatu and Tremere.

Interactions with your primogen, plus your own unique powers is what makes it worthwhile.

Joking aside, there is no way this is the general consensus, surely.

Nosferatu has one added line of dialogue at the start of each npc's intro, then defaults back to normal dialogue even when it actually contradicts their opening reaction.
Same with Malkavian, but at least not as jarring as with the Nosferatu.
The Tremere get one unique player house that you only go in to check the mail.

I'm not even going to touch the "Interactions with your primogen" because it's low hanging fruit.

They promised "surprises" so I expect at least one will be a clan that wasn't in the first one.

Banu Haqim/Assamite seems like a nobrainer to me. Turkic main character and we've seen both blood sorcery and celerity being used--they already have 2/3rds of Assamite Disciplines in the game, and I doubt they won't include something as iconic as Obfuscate as well.

 

[Tyranicon]

HS at least had decency to show dialogue checks.

And how do you know TCR doesn't?

Why didn't TCR show them in their video then? Such important part of RPG writing and they don't highlight it in their PR talk about «Narrative & RPG Stream»?

When the dev in the video is asked about how players will be able to customize their narrative experience, he doesn't outright answer that «you will have dialogue choices based on your clan and stats», instead giving some evasive non-answer. The only thing even related to character development mentioned is clans, with no additional info.

I of course, hope I'm wrong, but this is just another red flag.

I would probably rate the stream as a disaster. It built the opposite of hype. The little gameplay that was shown was bad.

Now this could be for any number of reasons, ranging from laziness to not understanding what the game's core audience wants to see. I've been there.

Or it could be that those sections were the best they have to show at the moment, which is worrying.

I want this game to succeed because of personal financial reasons, but at this point it's basically a red flag storage zone.

 

[Skinwalker]

Why couldn't this just stay dead? I have never been more disheartened by a game sequel than right after watching this trailer. Amazon "LotR" rapefest-tier awful.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

(Or did you mean the new Bloodlines? Nonetheless, if they have skill checks, why not show them in the video about dialogues and narrative?)

Because they don't really have anything to show (they told us about the narrative reactivity to clothing but couldn't show us) and they really shouldn't have shown those two obviously unfinished scenes to begin with since it only created negative reactions.

If checks are so important to you, you can always play Swansong.

The problem is that TCR choose to show these scenes first which had little choices and also the whole conversation looked like Swansong except for the internal mechanims which they better hide like Bloodlines.

Looks like Paradox has a real dumpster Phyre on their hands

 

[Grunker]

Codex after HSL: we didn't know how good we had it bros...

who is saying this

 

[Cricket McBangle]

They promised "surprises" so I expect at least one will be a clan that wasn't in the first one.

Banu Haqim/Assamite seems like a nobrainer to me. Turkic main character and we've seen both blood sorcery and celerity being used--they already have 2/3rds of Assamite Disciplines in the game, and I doubt they won't include something as iconic as Obfuscate as well.

Dying Light 2 has Banu Haqim DLC. And that shitty VR game that came out has you play as a Banu Haqim. They're probably in

 

[RagingNomad]

They promised "surprises" so I expect at least one will be a clan that wasn't in the first one.

Banu Haqim/Assamite seems like a nobrainer to me. Turkic main character and we've seen both blood sorcery and celerity being used--they already have 2/3rds of Assamite Disciplines in the game, and I doubt they won't include something as iconic as Obfuscate as well.

Dying Light 2 has Banu Haqim DLC. And that shitty VR game that came out has you play as a Banu Haqim. They're probably in

Shitty? Really? Right now I finished it, and that game is awesome. Fine atmosphere, style and plot. What's wrong with you?

 

[RagingNomad]

Its strength lies in seven playable clans though, with its peak as Malkavian, Nosferatu and Tremere.

Interactions with your primogen, plus your own unique powers is what makes it worthwhile.

Joking aside, there is no way this is the general consensus, surely.

Nosferatu has one added line of dialogue at the start of each npc's intro, then defaults back to normal dialogue even when it actually contradicts their opening reaction.
Same with Malkavian, but at least not as jarring as with the Nosferatu.
The Tremere get one unique player house that you only go in to check the mail.

I'm not even going to touch the "Interactions with your primogen" because it's low hanging fruit.

It's good that at least someone understands that VtMB actually doesn't have any serious differences between clans. And more of that, there is no actually choices that influence on you main story. After all you just choose an option from all available options, regardless of previous choices.

 

[NecroLord]

VtMB actually doesn't have any serious differences between clans.

Huh?

 

[Child of Malkav]

who is saying this

It's implied.

 

[Häyhä]

It is possible to go from bad to worse. In this case, eh, who knows or cares, neither studio did provide or have provided anything to be excited about. Hardsuit couldn't deliver a game so no point really comparing anything since it was all concept level work, we'll see if CR can actually get the game out.

 

[Cheesedragon117]

Post-Alpha? Now, I don't want to jump to conclusions, TCR, but I believe the common masses of plain people call that a "Beta".

Welp, that "sneak peek" was painful. The facial animations remind me of JRPGs where they only made one set of lip-synching for the Japanese dialogue, so they don't match the English voice acting. Except, that can't be the case here.

Now, considering this is likely the first conversation that takes place in-game, I think we can expect some degree of railroading from Lou's dialogue tree. I'm cautiously optimistic that things branch out once you're dropped into the open world proper. The voice acting and writing aren't too terrible, all things considered, and it's nice to see that the "Lou" character can still be accurately nicknamed "Rackula" by players. Her hair is sexy, too.

Verdict: Looking grim, but it's still too early to pass judgement just yet.

 

[sosmoflux]

Too early for you to pass judgement, maybe.

 

[anvi]

Didn't this get cancelled?

 

[Caim]

Didn't this get cancelled?

 

[Trithne]

Yes, but Paradox had already started taking preorders for a game that was several years away from release. They probably feel they're required to put something out to try and not throw their reputation in the gutter.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Banu Haqim/Assamite seems like a nobrainer to me.

Do Assamites still get darker the older they are? Can a 300+ year old Assamite Elder even look like the protagonist?

 

[Caim]

Banu Haqim/Assamite seems like a nobrainer to me.

Do Assamites still get darker the older they are? Can a 300+ year old Assamite Elder even look like the protagonist?

Sure, they look like this:

 

[Häyhä]

Damn, who knew Gerey was actually an Assamite methuselah who got cremated by the Camarilla(?)

 

[ColaWerewolf]

Do Assamites still get darker the older they are? Can a 300+ year old Assamite Elder even look like the protagonist?

Not in V5, no. Their new bane is that it's more difficult to stop themselves from diablerie compared to other vampires. The tremere curse that made vampire blood poisonous to them was also broken.

V5 did a lot to make the assamites playable and actually sought after by the players, to the point of almost pandering.

 

[DeepOcean]

Most* RPGs don't have super-compelling dialogue checks and this includes Bloodlines itself.

True but kinda not true, its been a long time since I played Bloodlines but i still remember a dialog check where, if you were a malkavian, with enough dementation, you could induce someone to howl to the moon and become permanent crazy and if you were a Ventrue, you could order that person to forget about you, it was one of the few moments where you had a check but I think that sort of thing fits really well on the fantasy of being a certain archetype of vampire (what clans basically are).

I would like more of that stuff and not less. It is a pity that developers always neglect dialog checks as pretty much 80% of people dont replay games.

 

[Xelocix]

 

[Semiurge]

Most* RPGs don't have super-compelling dialogue checks and this includes Bloodlines itself.

True but kinda not true, its been a long time since I played Bloodlines but i still remember a dialog check where, if you were a malkavian, with enough dementation, you could induce someone to howl to the moon and become permanent crazy

That's probably the quest 'Necromantic' where you can use different methods to convince Simon Milligan to shut up about what he's seen in the abandoned hospital. I use the dementation option as a Malk. With all other clans I use the persuasion feat to send him back to the hospital, and to Pisha...