Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines sequel? Remake?

Vorph said:

At no point playing this did I ever feel like the main character was some super powerful centuries-old elder vampire.

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I think this is kind of a problem and yet again one of those fundamentally stupid ideas that should have never gotten off the ground. like the name Phyre"

It is nearly impossible to get you the player into the head space of an ancient old world vampire waking up in Seattle after 100 years. or so. is the actual age given?
at LEAST she was 1900 Cairo.

but you live and understand the modern world. think of that Captain america scene. 70 years. this only works because it comes at the end of the movie. so its technically not impossible. but even then the culture shock would wear off quick, as you the viewer/player will instantly get back into modern times you are familiar with. while the CHARACTER should be constantly going "WTF is going on?!"

Caliane said:

is the actual age given?

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Something like 400 years old. It doesn't really matter though, just like everything else. They removed all the gameplay mechanics that would be inconvenient to explain, like someone fresh out of torpor being able to hack computers or pick modern locks, the only cars in the game are parked because apparently Seattle in WoD has no ability to deal with even a minor snow storm and the whole city is basically shut down for the duration of the game's narrative, etc. Everything else Phyre might have culture shock from is hand-waved away because of the Johnny Silverhand ripoff in your head being there to explain things.

yeah, the jhonny silverhands acts as the exposition for Phyre, but thats not really my point. That is how you do it when You the player need exposition to make you fit into the world. A fantasy world, the past, the future. a character to explain things the character should know.. but you the player don't. (or give amnesia, etc so the character also doesn't know things they should.)

My point is, you the player know more about the world then the character does. its the opposite of 99% of storytelling. And its a terrible idea to make you play as that character because of it. its nearly impossible to make you identify with what the character is going through. This world is alien to Phyre. its not alien to you at all.

Vorph said:

I find it impossible to believe that Hardsuit's combat was worse than what these walking sim retards cooked up.

That said, Hardsuit had plenty of other problems and the game still would have ended up a woke shitshow because of people like Cara Ellison and having Paradox as the publisher. There was only ever one possible good outcome for VtMB2 and that was it being cancelled entirely.

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Recently learned it was The Chinese Room that scrapped the previous work done on the sequel. The lead designer at TCR said that they are starting from scratch because he prefers to write a new story than work on someone elses. Found a direct quote from TCR.

Paradox was so desperate to ship this game they let TCR do whatever they wanted as long as they shipped. Working on 10 different systems in the original Bloodlines 2 sequel is how you DON'T ship. So you can guess why every single feature was removed. TCR was not going to become the new HSL and get bogged down by mission creep and chaotic narrative with a hundred quests.

Mitsoda et al were fired by Paradox, but a common misconception is HSL/Paradox had something to do with completely throwing away 5 years of development. They didn't know before the firing that the next studio intended to remake the game from scratch. They just wanted Mitsoda and the lead director gone from HSL because Paradox blamed them for misleading and mission creep. Mitsoda promised a 25h game in 2015 to Paradox at the meeting. By 2020 they had 5-6h of MSQ ready to ship. They asked for another year. Paradox gave them another year and they blew that date too. Should have just cancelled it.

I still want the original MSQ and the 200 quests and original dialogue system to come out somehow-- but it likely never will. One of the decisions TCR made was to throw out anything with dialogue checks/stats. I don't see a future DLC bringing it back.

jayrebb said:

Recently learned it was The Chinese Room that scrapped the previous work done on the sequel. The lead designer at TCR said that they are starting from scratch because he prefers to write a new story than work on someone elses. Found a direct quote from TCR.

Paradox was so desperate to ship this game they let TCR do whatever they wanted as long as they shipped. Working on 10 different systems in the original Bloodlines 2 sequel is how you DON'T ship. So you can guess why every single feature was removed. TCR was not going to become the new HSL and get bogged down by mission creep and chaotic narrative with a hundred quests.

Mitsoda et al were fired by Paradox, but a common misconception is HSL/Paradox had something to do with completely throwing away 5 years of development. They didn't know before the firing that the next studio intended to remake the game from scratch. They just wanted Mitsoda and the lead director gone from HSL because Paradox blamed them for misleading and mission creep. Mitsoda promised a 25h game in 2015 to Paradox at the meeting. By 2020 they had 5-6h of MSQ ready to ship. They asked for another year. Paradox gave them another year and they blew that date too. Should have just cancelled it.

I still want the original MSQ and the 200 quests and original dialogue system to come out somehow-- but it likely never will. One of the decisions TCR made was to throw out anything with dialogue checks/stats. I don't see a future DLC bringing it back.

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I feel like Paradox must not have realized TCR was scrapping everything until the project was fairly far along to have allowed that to happen, which would be funny because it's Paradox's lack of oversight that let Hardsuit turn the original project into a trainwreck in the first place.

Death of a Game already:

Strong start to the in-game narrative. It falls off, and the twist was obviously designed to keep the story self-contained and small rather than spreading out with a bigger more interesting narrative with more characters. I had previously read about the letdowns in reviews before finding a free copy, and I was skeptical that it would affect the already mediocre whodunit narrative that much-- but after completing the game, both of the 2 story twists come off as cheap "wrap this shit up" shortcuts for different reasons that the reviews discussed.

The combat is atrocious to the degree that the difficulty in normal is truly hard due to how flipperhead everything is and how poorly designed it is. Actual hard mode just means even more of the same reptitive punching of enemies (since the parry system is atrocious and not designed for this type of combat). Parry is not reliable or effective in this game. Telekinetic throwing of items is one of the only ways to avoid the terribly basic punch-em-up combat. And there is not enough throwing items in most of the fights to avoid repetitive punch-em-up gameplay that starts at the beginning of the game and doesn't evolve or change at all at the end of the game. The abilities never change the weak punch-em gameplay due to requiring too many resources to use fluidly throughout fights. The abilities end up just being cosmetic tricks that do a little something contribution-wise, rather than a part of the actual combat experience. The game also throws 100's of enemies at you at times, making it ludicrous. The game also disables special abilities at times, forcing punch-em gameplay.

Reviewing it strictly as a walking-sim on-rails narrative driven game I'd give it a 5/10 for hardcore WOD lore fans that were desperate for a Bloodlines game. Otherwise 4/10 for rushed small narrative and really bad combat. It meets the 20 odd hours of gameplay or whatever Paradox wanted, but should never have shipped.

Primogen edition of VTM Swansong on 80% sale on xbx. Is it worth playing? Splat and violence, fun?

Izo said:

Primogen edition of VTM Swansong on 80% sale on xbx. Is it worth playing? Splat and violence, fun?

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I got near 40h out of it. Think a play on normal difficulty (I played on hard/expert difficulty and some bosses required several attempts) came in at 22h. You can change difficulty at any time if frustration with shit combat isn't your thing.

The main story length is there, especially if you drag it by "Roleplaying" as intended. Carefully considering every dialogue option-- even though they rarely have any impact on what happens (they have impact, just not as much as you'd expect. There are 6 different endings, whether they are underwhelming or not, your decisions do matter toward that end) enough game was there to ship. I stand by final rating of 5/10 for fans of the WoD IP. Could have been so much better, but they did deliver a 20h story if you need a game to kill some time for 80% off the box price.

Should be noted in the post-mortem that the lead developer at TCR who made the decision to throw out the original VTM 2 game story and quests, had quit the gaming industry forever before VTM 2 even came out. He stated he lost interest in making AAA games. How convenient he burns Paradox IP and empties their pockets then says fuck you guys I'm going home, never having to face any accountability or try to get a new job somewhere else. Just "I'm tired of game development I'm gonna do something else". At least this wasn't a scenario where someone "Fails upward" or gets a side promotion to another company ruining another franchise or game. He's gone for good. Paradox must have pulled some strings on that I figure.

jayrebb said:

I got near 40h out of it. Think a play on normal difficulty (I played on hard/expert difficulty and some bosses required several attempts) came in at 22h. You can change difficulty at any time if frustration with shit combat isn't your thing.

The main story length is there, especially if you drag it by "Roleplaying" as intended. Carefully considering every dialogue option-- even though they rarely have any impact on what happens (they have impact, just not as much as you'd expect. There are 6 different endings, whether they are underwhelming or not, your decisions do matter toward that end) enough game was there to ship. I stand by final rating of 5/10 for fans of the WoD IP. Could have been so much better, but they did deliver a 20h story if you need a game to kill some time for 80% off the box price.

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He was asking about Swansong not VTMB2. Swansong has no difficulty setting and is a small step up in gameplay from the visual novels by Draw Distance (Coteries/Shadows/Reckoning of NY). There's a 3D environment you can walk around in third person to explore, but the actual gameplay is still entirely dialogue based. There is no combat at all.

Izo It's got a decent story that's dragged down by ugly character models, terrible voice acting (with no way to skip dialogue or cutscenes), and many bugs even after several patches over the years. The game autosaves constantly so you can easily make a small mistake that's impossible to correct without starting over from the beginning, because chapter select/restart being broken is one of the worst bugs that they never fixed. I'd say it's worth the $6 if you really like VTM, but be prepared to need to (re)play it following a guide if you want to get through it without fucking up most of the dialogue checks.

Vorph said:

He was asking about Swansong not VTMB2.

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I just assumed it was some weird DLC bundle since both DLC updates are out, in a desperate attempt to market the game. "Swansong" sounded about right. Good laugh.

In other news CRPG lore heavy game was announced

So Paradox hasn't given up on video games and the rumor they would try a CRPG was accurate.

Disco Elysium knockoff is actually a perfect fit for VtM, but unknown studio and Kwalee as the publisher does not inspire confidence. Can't be worse than Paradox though, I suppose.