Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines sequel? Remake?

Followup article lost in the holiday shuffle.



Woke politics an issue with the move. New devs have to be kept quiet.

Punko said:

Yea, this isn't going to be a trainwreck at all.

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People who track employment have noticed that former Hardsuit employees seem to be re-employed by another studio that is fully owned by Paradox.

It is assumed that they've parted ways with Hardsuit only to rebuild the team in-house at one of their own development studios that they fully own. But since it's bad optics, they will not admit it at this time, or risk pissing off a lot of devs in the industry.

Essentially Paradox the publisher took a job from Hardsuit and then moved it to one of their own game development houses that is fully owned by Paradox.

It's really bad optics and likely why they took a stance on refusing to disclose where the project moved to.

Moving the project to a development house that Paradox fully owns, means that if the game is a failure-- then the blame can fall directly on Paradox and have repercussions for future brand trust.

Again, just a rumor based on employment trending since Bloodlines 2 was pulled from Hardsuit.

Paradox is still an SJW shithole, only difference between them and Hardsuit is that Paradox actually cares about money and turning a profit on their investments. Whatever studio they shipped it off to will release a game that's at least playable, but it will still be a woke-infested dumpster fire that no one who enjoyed the original should even consider supporting.

Oblio said:

/fingerscrossed

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Well, that at least takes it out of the vaporware category and puts it into the "maybe it wont be some shitty abomination" category. Never played anything from the new studio, but it looks like it's all adventure games and they are using a lead that worked on Fable, so still no confidence that they will be able to come close to the original game.

There was a vampire booth at PAX and I was like 'oh man is Bloodlines still a thing somehow?', but the booth was for a fucking iOS card game and a VR game lol.

The next day they had Bloodlines 2 banners up everywhere but nothing more than the trailer they released, no demo or anything.

The entire booth was staffed by soylords and bluehairs, for whatever that may bode.

ronne said:

.

The entire booth was staffed by soylords and bluehairs, for whatever that may bode.

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So it was a video game booth.

Calling it: It's gonna be a beat em up with minimum dialogue choices with a stripped back rpg mechanics, characters that were suppose to show up from the original will not be in this.

is John Dimaggio in it?

Singh'sSpot said:

Calling it: It's gonna be a beat em up with minimum dialogue choices with a stripped back rpg mechanics, characters that were suppose to show up from the original will not be in this.

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Well, I'm pretty sure this is literally the studio's first attempt at a game with a combat system, which leads me to feel that beat 'em up is at least an unlikely outcome. Granted, that doesn't leave an abundance of optimism for the quality of the combat, but I guess we'll see.

Welp, expectations back to a 99% chance it's going to be shit (instead of 75%, after the announcement of a new dev team):

Just the gameplay clipped out of the promo from World of Darkness (supposedly, the main character is non-customizable):

The whole promo video:

But don't worry, they are taking inspiration from BG3, to try to deliver a similar experience...but have less than a year left before the realease date. I doubt Paradox is in the mood to give more time and money to this project.

Clicked on thread and been so long it took me to the first page. Started feeling hopeful before realizing it. Still, this could be good, right?

popsicledeath said:

Clicked on thread and been so long it took me to the first page. Started feeling hopeful before realizing it. Still, this could be good, right?

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playing as a non-binary lead shim doesn't really do anything for me narrative wise.

There's still time for that to change so it's not a pass for me yet. I assume they're going to come under a lot of pressure now to give a male/female option.

Interactions with female NPCs made up a good portion of the original game. They're trying to recreate that same vibe in the video, but it just doesn't work when your perspective character is a they/them and sexless. They should at least lean into the female side of the character to appeal to those guys that like to play women in video games.

This non-binary thing is dead on arrival. All the dialogue falls flat.

popsicledeath said:

Clicked on thread and been so long it took me to the first page. Started feeling hopeful before realizing it. Still, this could be good, right?

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Narrative is such a major part of the original that I don't think that's possible.

You can see in the video they are trying really hard to create the social tension between the main character, but nobody can relate in any way to a androgynous shim. I gave it a chance, trying to get into the perspective of the shim, but shut the video off after 2-3 exchanges. It just doesn't work well.

Like I said it's not set in stone and there will be pressure to change this. The character needs to lean female or male to meet them on the amount of tension they want during dialogue. They have to pick one. It can't be non-binary and ambiguous as to what sex the main character is.

The Chinese Room makes terrible walking simulators and they already turned one good IP (Amnesia) into complete shit when they tried to step outside that box. There's a 1000% chance of it happening again with something as beloved as VtM Bloodlines even if you ignore that all of the development prior to them taking over is a woke-infested abomination.

The fact the perspective main character is still a genderless non-binary unrelatable weirdo is evidence the game wasn't "de-woked" or "saved from the woke" like the media narrative made it out to be.