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

Wesp5

Wesp5

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
1,953
The President said:
I did operate on the assumption that the code and technical aspects were so bad that they just had to be scrapped or were deemed too difficult to move forward.
Click to expand...

I can't really believe that as the game used the Unreal 4/5 engine so the technical aspects coudn't have been completely broken. Also some gameplay videos leaked from the HSL version and while they might not have looked great, they looked okay. And much more like the original Bloodlines compared to what we have seen from the TCR version...
 
S.torch

S.torch

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 4, 2019
Messages
1,120
Vulpes said:
What little information has been released so far makes it sound like it was scrapped because their code was a broken, unsalvageable mess and the game was still far from finished. Most of the grunt work was done by inexperienced college graduates who were overworked to the point that they usually quit within a few months or even weeks, which resulted in a lot of poorly-written code being built on top of one another that no one could make any sense of. Why didn't Hardsuit's management do anything to about that? Probably because a lot of the senior staff were nepotistic hires who also had very little idea of what they're doing, with the best-known example being Cara Ellison. A former game journalist who Brian Mitsoda hired as his second-in-command on the writing team just because she was friends with his wife.
Click to expand...
So we have two competing theories here:

1) Paradox known for the careful management of their projects and after taking a look at whatever Hardsuit Labs had produced until that moment decided it wasn't up to their high standards. On top were their questionable business practices such as overworking their employes and doing nepotism, which Paradox has never ever taken part of or permitted before, leading to the scrapping of the whole thing and restart from scratch. Lest not their reputation and gamer cred be tainted.
Or:
2) A suit with more ego than brain came in one day, checked the game, decided it wasn't Hollywood enough and told everyone to get lost. Took all the assets, code and animations and gave it to these other guys who are known for actual Hollywood stuff.

First option sounds attractive if you're 12 years old and like to consume Copium Premium. Second option sounds business as usual in the gaming industry. Supported by little details like the new guys maintaining the Seattle location, despite them completely remaking the whole story and their main character being from the Balkans. Suddenly doesn't sound so strange if they're working on top of the previous assets which were supposedly discarded. 'It was buggy' in this case being just a convenient excuse for a creative purge.
 
sosmoflux

sosmoflux

Educated
Joined
Apr 16, 2022
Messages
353
Another running theory is that Mitsoda fingerglove banged enough women there that Paradox couldn't afford to keep up the HR bills. Classic Mitsoda shit.
 

The President

Educated
Joined
Oct 18, 2022
Messages
188
Wesp5 said:
I can't really believe that as the game used the Unreal 4/5 engine so the technical aspects coudn't have been completely broken. Also some gameplay videos leaked from the HSL version and while they might not have looked great, they looked okay. And much more like the original Bloodlines compared to what we have seen from the TCR version...
Click to expand...
I do agree 100% with the last part which is why I think the HSL version had a higher ceiling. To me it just had a more similar feel to the original one that the current iteration in neo noir just seems to lack big time.

Perhaps being broken is too strong a term, but having been told that HSL didn’t have enough talent in house for the technical aspects of the game, it’s possible paradox didn’t want to retool them or have to recruit more, and then take the time for the team to sort through the code, and then finally finish it. It could be something as even mundane as them feeling they couldn’t control a studio so far away as Seattle was during Covid. I’m starting to suspect more and more though especially recently, Paradox didn’t just like what they saw and judging by how they don’t seem to get RPG’s, that they may have cut the cord too soon.

I so hope a leak happens eventually though because I can’t imagine the game not being at least mostly playable five years into major development.
 
Vincente

Vincente

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 16, 2018
Messages
799
Location
Location
Upcoming_DD_15-17.png
 
Vulpes

Vulpes

Scholar
Joined
Oct 12, 2018
Messages
416
Location
Fourth Rome
S.torch said:
So we have two competing theories here:

1) Paradox known for the careful management of their projects and after taking a look at whatever Hardsuit Labs had produced until that moment decided it wasn't up to their high standards. On top were their questionable business practices such as overworking their employes and doing nepotism, which Paradox has never ever taken part of or permitted before, leading to the scrapping of the whole thing and restart from scratch. Lest not their reputation and gamer cred be tainted.
Or:
2) A suit with more ego than brain came in one day, checked the game, decided it wasn't Hollywood enough and told everyone to get lost. Took all the assets, code and animations and gave it to these other guys who are known for actual Hollywood stuff.

First option sounds attractive if you're 12 years old and like to consume Copium Premium. Second option sounds business as usual in the gaming industry. Supported by little details like the new guys maintaining the Seattle location, despite them completely remaking the whole story and their main character being from the Balkans. Suddenly doesn't sound so strange if they're working on top of the previous assets which were supposedly discarded. 'It was buggy' in this case being just a convenient excuse for a creative purge.
Click to expand...
"it wasn't Hollywood enough"? Yeah, because Paradox is well-known for mostly publishing action-packed games, right? Like Magicka and... Magicka 2???
Assuming what you're saying is true, why would've Paradox waited so long to scrap the game if there was something fundamentally wrong with it's direction from the very beginning? Why was Hardsuit even allowed to postpone the launch date not once, but TWICE? It was supposed to initially come out in March 2020, only to get pushed back to late 2020 and then again to early 2021.
 

scytheavatar

Scholar
Joined
Sep 22, 2016
Messages
691
Wesp5 said:
The President said:
I did operate on the assumption that the code and technical aspects were so bad that they just had to be scrapped or were deemed too difficult to move forward.
Click to expand...

I can't really believe that as the game used the Unreal 4/5 engine so the technical aspects coudn't have been completely broken. Also some gameplay videos leaked from the HSL version and while they might not have looked great, they looked okay. And much more like the original Bloodlines compared to what we have seen from the TCR version...
Click to expand...

A game engine is but a tool, saying that you can't make a broken game with Unreal is like saying a chef can't make bad dishes if he is using Japanese knives. I don't think I need to remind you the existence of games like Redfall which was made in Unreal.
 
Herumor

Herumor

Scholar
Joined
May 1, 2018
Messages
649
Wasn't this supposed to release in the fall season of 2024? Them going on with these retarded diaries well into September doesn't really inspire confidence - not that anything about the shitshow has done that to begin with.
 
S.torch

S.torch

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 4, 2019
Messages
1,120
Vulpes said:
Yeah, because Paradox is well-known for mostly publishing action-packed games, right?
Click to expand...
They're well-known for being incompetent managers. Their last project failed so hard they lost 20 million and had to throw out the whole studio.

And if you've been following the developer diaries these TCR guys have been mentioning American TV series as the main source of inspiration for making this game. No vampire fiction, no RPGs. Everything they've shown so far shows a clear pretention to ape cinematic and movie centric media. Is just putting two and two together.
 
Tyranicon

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
7,840
We'll get concept art gifs right up until launch at this point.

TBH, it might be a matter of the dev team just gritting their teeth and getting through this. They're clearly not spending too many marketing dollars.

You can always tell how confidant a corp is with their product by the marketing.
 
Vincente

Vincente

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 16, 2018
Messages
799
Location
Location
Herumor said:
Wasn't this supposed to release in the fall season of 2024? Them going on with these retarded diaries well into September doesn't really inspire confidence - not that anything about the shitshow has done that to begin with.
Click to expand...
December 21st is when winter season starts, so they have time until 20th. :M
 
Skinwalker

Skinwalker

*meows in an empty room*
Patron
Village Idiot
Joined
Aug 20, 2021
Messages
12,737
Location
Yessex
Has this shit been canned yet? I can't cope with a world where Bloodlines 2 exists, and is a giant pile of shit.
 

The President

Educated
Joined
Oct 18, 2022
Messages
188
They’re definitely hearing the noise of the complaints people are making about the dialogue to make a whole dev diary about it, especially in between what seems like more lore drops in the following diaries.

This is almost certainly me being hopelessly optimistic, but maybe the warehouse dialogue is just dialogue structure for cutscenes or occasions similar to the Horizon series where Aloy has that weird heart, fist, brain thing and normal encounters have a different structure.
 
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