World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[conan_edw]

Not every writer can excel in different settings and themes. Maybe VTMB is his lucky charm, maybe he still got what it takes .

 

[bataille]

Seeing how Europe's unconscious's bubbling and burping all over the place, I can only hope for the edgiest VTM game possible. Give Sweden a chance, and it will outdo de Sade himself. You can't fool anyone when talking about fucking vampires.

 

[Delterius]

Brian Mitsoda has expressed couple of times that he's super down with a sequel and even had an idea of a spiritual successor at some point.
If Paradox really wanted to appeal to the VTMB crowd, it shouldn't be hard to get him on board. Also, it doesn't need to be big at all. Something in the scope of the The Outer Worlds or even smaller can be enough.

Please .

Dead State and his greenlighting of Panic at Whatever High make a strong case that the guy's over the hill and won't write anything decent. Oh sure, there was Oom from Numenera, but that wasn't exactly brilliant writing.

Bloodlines didn't excel at its writing, however. In fact its considered a bit of a cookie cutter campaign by the PnP people. Urban Fantasy's uniqueness combined with the troika approach to RPGs and the face animation/art direction is what carried the thing.

 

[Roguey]

Bloodlines didn't excel at its writing, however. In fact its considered a bit of a cookie cutter campaign by the PnP people. Urban Fantasy's uniqueness combined with the troika approach to RPGs and the face animation/art direction is what carried the thing.

It had good writing, which is certainly a step up from mediocre writing and obviously better than bad writing.

(additionally, Mitsoda wasn't responsible for the plot, that was all set by Boyarsky before he even joined Troika. Brian gets credit/blame for a great deal of the character writing)

 

[FreeKaner]

Play the game more, GTA V is very good. Just wish it had more RPG elements and customization as well as a created character. But it's a very high quality game, fuck what you heard. I played it for 80 hours and was highly impressed, the detail in the world itself is unmatched in any game I've ever played.

You chose GTAV for this, really? GTAIV has much better setting, atmosphere and overall drab feeling to it for a world of darkness game. GTAV is arcade as fuck.

Regardless, unless you are specifically looking to take advantage of open world, which mostly has to do with exploration, then there is no reason for game to be open world. A good WoD game would not benefit from open world at all and hubs and set piece environments done well would be much better. Like the Hotel and Dr. Grout's mansion. Or even sewers and 9th circle building if they were actually done well.

 

[Delterius]

Bloodlines didn't excel at its writing, however. In fact its considered a bit of a cookie cutter campaign by the PnP people. Urban Fantasy's uniqueness combined with the troika approach to RPGs and the face animation/art direction is what carried the thing.

It had good writing, which is certainly a step up from mediocre writing and obviously better than bad writing.

(additionally, Mitsoda wasn't responsible for the plot, that was all set by Boyarsky before he even joined Troika. Brian gets credit/blame for a great deal of the character writing)

Oh but its not just the plot. The characters themselves are quite cookie cutter and there's the occasional tone dissonance between the comic relief of the catholic hunter and the flesh eater. Such things have been discussed a lot. There are a lot of factors involved into making Bloodlines an exceptional game. The voice directing, the art design, the soundtrack, the relatively novel type of setting, the pre developed world, the expressiveness of the source facial animations and troika's RPG design. All of these things and more come together to more than make up for all of the game's shortcomings -- such as how it was unfinished in typical troika fashion, how combat really just a mediocre FPS with terrible melee mechanics, the bugginess of the release, how the entire ending hadn't been implemented and so on. The game is really the perfect example of how storytelling in games is much more than writing, plot, exposition and editing. And how an ok to good but mostly just ok script can be salvaged by all the other things in a game.

What I'm saying is that the project still has a chance as long as Josh Sawyer isn't in charge of editing the dialogue. Also, what shall be the real downfall of these games is just how crass White Wolf and Paradox act in transporting the 90s WoD to the edginess of the late 2010s culture-anime wars for the politically correct rights to be politely incorrect in videogame brexit politics.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

You chose GTAV for this, really? GTAIV has much better setting, atmosphere and overall drab feeling to it for a world of darkness game. GTAV is arcade as fuck.

Regardless, unless you are specifically looking to take advantage of open world, which mostly has to do with exploration, then there is no reason for game to be open world. A good WoD game would not benefit from open world at all and hubs and set piece environments done well would be much better. Like the Hotel and Dr. Grout's mansion. Or even sewers and 9th circle building if they were actually done well.

I swear u fucks don't even read the threads before responding. All those areas would be on the open world map. And GTA V was in terms of the details. Obviously a VTM setting would be darker and more ambient anda atmospheric. U fucks.

 

[DeepOcean]

Bloodlines didn't excel at its writing, however. In fact its considered a bit of a cookie cutter campaign by the PnP people. Urban Fantasy's uniqueness combined with the troika approach to RPGs and the face animation/art direction is what carried the thing.

The main story is pretty basic, people are fighting for mcguffin, chase the mcguffin, get the mcguffin, then plot twist, the end, nothing extraordinary but the dialogue is pretty well written, it isn't Shakespeare for sure but the dialogue understand the need to inject personality on the way the characters talk with each character having their way of talking and the writer understood the dialogue was to be voiced acted and actually written it for that purpose.

Writing is so fucking bad on video games that I can name an endless parade of games that fail even at basic things like this.

 

[FreeKaner]

I swear u fucks don't even read the threads before responding. All those areas would be on the open world map. And GTA V was in terms of the details. Obviously a VTM setting would be darker and more ambient anda atmospheric. U fucks.

If you have near infinite resources like rockstar, maybe. Even then probably not. Hub-based games are by necessity better detailed, simply because mathematically, the man hours spent on the game can be used to detail hubs and set piece "dungeons" rather than to make a huge world where you can idly roam in.

 

[Roguey]

The characters themselves are quite cookie cutter

Given how many Vampire: The Masquerade video games there are (one other than this one that hardly anyone ever talks about) that's not a bad thing.

What I'm saying is that the project still has a chance as long as Josh Sawyer isn't in charge of editing the dialogue.

V:TM is far too loud for the likes of Josh.

 

[Vincente]

Spoiler

What could it be?

 

[Drax]

We can always hope that they are waiting for Boyarsky to finish TOW to then move to this game, bringing Tim and MCA with him.
I know, it won't happen.

 

[Wesp5]

The characters themselves are quite cookie cutter and there's the occasional tone dissonance between the comic relief of the catholic hunter and the flesh eater.

Still, what surprised me most about Bloodlines were the sisters early on in Santa Monica. Maybe you got characters like these often in classic isometric RPGs, but for me coming from the FPS side to Bloodlines this was absolutely stunning! I would really like to know if this was Mitsoda's idea or one of Boyarsky or of someone else...

 

[Lacrymas]

Bloodlines' characters boil down to "what kind of kooky personality will we meet next?", which worked specifically for Bloodlines, usually I hate that kind of thing. Redemption's characters are sweetly sincere, much more in line with Bram Stoker's foray into the night.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

If you have near infinite resources like rockstar, maybe. Even then probably not. Hub-based games are by necessity better detailed, simply because mathematically, the man hours spent on the game can be used to detail hubs and set piece "dungeons" rather than to make a huge world where you can idly roam in.

And you still didn't read it u fuck. We already agreed they don't have the resources to do a huge GTA style game. And set piece "dungones" can still exist in an open world. U fuck.

 

[Life of the Party]

I've received a message supposedly from a Tender user which redirected me to this post.

I got that one too. The last part of the email leads to a pastebin address that has what we think is the next clue:

https://pastebin.com/nReWdFFq

We haven’t figured out what that is though. Maybe something that we need to know on the February 23 meeting the post talks about?

These are the names of runways at San Francisco International Airport.

All except for the 80 at the top of the string. I'm not sure what that is.

But the remaining numbers and R / L lettering definitely refers to SFO

EDIT: SFO has over 100 gates - the 80 could easily refer to a gate on Terminal 3 of the Airport.

Yes! That seems the case just now, but we don’t have more info to go on with. Some people says the 80 could refer to i-80 that goes from SFO to NYC (there’s supposed to be a drop on the 23rd in Manhattan) or maybe to gate 80.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedetectives/comments/aoo6ef/trust_no_more_new_post_today_20190208/

https://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Tender

https://www.trustnomore.com/

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I bet Tender will be on your cell phone in the game. Maybe you can meet your cattle through it. I think the game will be what I have always wished for - a GTA V style VtM game. You have a cell phone, contacts, explore an open world in the form of a modern city. How amazing would that be? Imagine GTA V on a smaller scope (they probably don't have money to do a huge GTA V world) in a VtM setting. Drooling at the thought broskis.

Not sure if you guys played GTA V but it was far from shallow and soulless. It had details galore, plenty of side quests and tons of areas to explore, with side activities like hunting, racing, doing flying cargo missions (which admittedly probably doesn't make sense in a VtM game, but they will find different side activities to do), tons of customization and just a great, atmospheric world to explore. I highly recommend you check out GTA V and then imagine it being a VtM setting. I've done exactly that and believe it would be a dream game if it ever came to fruition.

The missions were high quality too, which could work in a VtM setting.

The only reason I thought of GTA V was the Tender app. It would make perfect sense to have a cell phone in the game with Tender on it, and you use it to either find your ghouls or find victims. In GTA V you had a cell phone with "apps" and "websites" you could visit that impacted the actual game. So that made me think that maybe in the new VtM game you also had a cell phone.

Imagine you have a cell phone with Tender and find a girl, who you make a ghoul. Maybe you could create various ghouls to do your bidding - bring you money, ammunition, equipment, blood packs, etc.. But you would have to win them over over time with Tender, some maybe more tricky to get than others. You could have a legion of ghouls in the city bringing stuff to your apartment/hideout/headquarters. Like Mystic said this is probably extremely unlikely but I would probably bite someone's neck and suck their blood to get a game like this.

Play the game more, GTA V is very good. Just wish it had more RPG elements and customization as well as a created character. But it's a very high quality game, fuck what you heard. I played it for 80 hours and was highly impressed, the detail in the world itself is unmatched in any game I've ever played.

Well Paradox doesn't have the resources to do a GTA V, but a smaller-scoped, tighter city could be great. And listen, I don't know what you heard but GTA V is incredibly atmospheric. Imagine it with a darker, urban night setting where you had to scamper to safehouses during the daylight and then come out at night. Just imagine Santa Monica as the whole of LA to explore with handcrafted side quests, dialogue options, interesting characters, various shops around the city and more. Tell me that wouldn't be amazing if it had the proper resources behind it to pull it off.

You're not sacrificing anything it's GTA V-like. I'm telling you guys, go play the game and get back to me. Play for at least 50 hours. It's atmospheric, has great story-telling (unmatched almost) and incredible attention to detail that is 100% unmatched in a game world I've ever explored. It's not shallow at all. But I'm falling on deaf ears so I won't keep repeating myself.

Exactly! Vampyr is trash, I'm sorry. Give me a real VtM game, even if it's a larger open-world. It can still be tightly focused with great storytelling, just more stuff to see and do (nighttime so thugs may be in alleys, same as Downtown in VtM but on a larger scale.) Use your god-damned imagination here.

It feels like people here just hate on games they haven't played because of the name or hype surrounding them. Imagine all parts of VtM, all the hubs and special maps together in one large city you could explore. You wouldn't get Chinatown missions until you unlocked them, but you could still travel there and maybe take in the sights and visit a gun shop or two. Prostitutes everywhere, thugs, gangs, vampire hunters. Random encounters with various degrees of difficulty and things to do (you get jumped in an alley by a local gang, have to run the risk of fighting them off without violating the Masquerade, i.e. leave no witnesses) and so on. But the world would be wide open on a larger scale. You could use vehicles, have a few safehouses in the city, run a legion of ghouls from Tender, do special clan missions as well as mission for interesting characters to progress the story and much more. It would be Godly and you know it. Stop hating.

Generic? Another person who hasn't played GTA V. Why talk shit when you know nothing about what you're saying?

And why would it have to be generic? It could have just as much atmosphere and detail as Bloodlines, i.e. a gritty, nighttime urban setting with fantastic music and atmosphere. Just because it's a larger world doesn't mean it would be generic unless the devs utterly failed at making the game.

Ubisoft open worlds blow dick, GTA V does not. Do your homework.

Agreed that Paradox doesn't have the money to do it, but it would be nice to see an attempt. Make it the same amount of content as Bloodlines but spread it out throughout a fairly large LA or NY.

So that's an example of what we DON'T want. Now read through my posts and imagine what I'm suggesting here. Just a larger open-world that has all the maps and hubs of Bloodlines connected (of course it would be in NY or something so the areas are different.) Now add in some GTA elements on top of the deep RPG elements and you have an amazing game on your hands. But I'm dipping out of the thread now because I said enough that a sane person could read what I suggested and come to an honest conclusion about it.

Dude, GTA V has more minute detail than any game I've ever played. Period. It's incredible with details. And yeah I got a little out of control. But it's all good. Relaxing now.

 

[Viata]

For some reason I'm glad some of you people are never going to make a Vampire the Masquerade game.

 

[FreeKaner]

And set piece "dungones" can still exist in an open world. U fuck.

No. Theoretically it's possible but practically it never exists.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Who gives a fuck if it hasn't been done yet. Anyone who does the next open world can do it.

 

[Roguey]

Bloodlines' characters boil down to "what kind of kooky personality will we meet next?", which worked specifically for Bloodlines, usually I hate that kind of thing. Redemption's characters are sweetly sincere, much more in line with Bram Stoker's foray into the night.

Looking at V:tM's canon metaplot characters, it seems that's the exception rather than the norm.

 

[Viata]

Anyone who does the next open world can do it.

Fuck off with open world. Every game has to be open world now? Include Battle Royale and microtransactions while you are doing it.

 

[JDR13]

Someone please give Fluent a participation award.

He's trying so damn hard!

 

[frajaq]

Who gives a fuck if it hasn't been done yet. Anyone who does the next open world can do it.

We don't want more fucking open world games goddammit

 

[Cael]

Trudging around for hours, shooting Cliff Racers might be fun for some people, but it's not for me.