Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

I don't think Chris Avellone was involved in this game.

Mitsoda turned out to have been fired by Hardsuit labs so they could scapegoat the fact they were almost a year late and nowhere near done.

Then Paradox removed the game from them because, well, that cover could only last so long.

 

Chris was hired early in the writing process but they ended up not using any of his stuff in the game. It was removed even before the allegations against him came out.

 

I'm now imagining a vampire getting constantly taunted by Ulysses about the idea that Humanity, the Camarilla, and Sabbat are all lies and the only true path is nuking civilization.

 

Honestly this. There seems to be a personality cult around Avellone despite the fact that the majority of writing on games he's praised for was done by other people.

 

That, and Fallout was not Avallone's best contributions. He directed Fallout 2 after a good chunk of it was already in development and then in NV, not only did he not do that much outside of the DLCs(mostly Honest Hearts), many of his major ideas were rejected for being bad ideas.

 

the only two games he was full on lead was planescape torment and kotor 2.

for fallout he just wrote new reno in 2 and 3 of the 4 dlcs in nv.

 

He wrote a few companions in NV too if I remember correctly.

 

Nearly two years later, and i genuinely don't give a shit if the game gets released. In fact i hope it doesn't, i'd rather imagine what the game could have been instead of getting what is going to be released.

 

That's the spirit.

 

Funnily enough, I think New Reno might be his magnum opus. He seems to be best at writing non-verbal cues and mostly self-contained comical areas.

 

There's also Pillars of Eternity. The thing is that Planescape Torment and KOTOR 2 are basically the same game. So is Lonesome Road.

One long, "You suck, the world sucks, and you're better off dying."

New Reno is my favorite Fallout thing ever, though.

 

I feel like that's an unfair comparison. Sure you could make the comparison about the cynical undertones, but there's more to it than that:

Pillars of Eternity is about the idea of the sacred, and whether it's necessary. Thaos sees the world as an inherently hobbesian place, and sees the role of the Leaden Key and thus the creation of the Gods as a necessary part of keeping human society in line by forcing people to dedicate themselves to abstract ideals coded as absolute authorities, believing in this so much that he dedicates himself to Woedica and the order she represents even knowing full well that she's a false god created by humanity. The ultimate culmination is whether Thaos is right and the world needs that, or whether humanity can deal with the non-existence of God and create a more fleshed out morality based on rejecting the flase religious narratives of the past.

Planescape Torment is about making a faustian deal in rejecting damnation and whether it's worth it, and the consequences of living a life whereby you technically both live forever and avoid the consequences of your actions, but in a way that has you cycle through life after life of demi-god like power, in which you can't control the actions of previous and future lives no matter the harm they cause, and whereby your identity is effectively erased each time you start a new one.

KOTOR 2 is a take on the classic Star Wars idea of the Force and asking whether it's moral to allow religious devotion an abstract force of nature to determine people's lives

There are similarities, but they are ultimately different narratives with different culminating questions.

 

CT Phipps making retarded, reductive claims? And the sky is blue. Same person that claimed that New Vegas and Fallout 3 are basically the same game.

 

Avellone wrote an entertaining article about his involvement (he doesn't know though what exactly happened after he left).

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/what-the-fuck-happened-to-bloodlines-2-1ad557bf2284

 

I just remembered that this game got pre-order stuff and that was announced well over two years ago. Just yikes.

Also, apparently the CEO of Paradox considered just canning the whole thing when the previous dev team was fired from development, which would have been for the best.

 

I sure hope that means everyone gets a refund if that's the case.

 

Yeah. Since they didn't and he said the reason he didn't was the new dev team gave him a good pitch, the game is probably getting the Prey treatment. Completely new game from scratch now. No Brian Mitsoda story or characters. probably a complete rework. So my interest is basically gone now.

 

That's sad and disappointing. Though I didn't have high expectations for the game anyways.

 

Pretty sure they said people would get refunds. I can't imagine being able to take people's money on storefronts like GOG and Steam and then never deliver anything and being able to legally get away with that. Crowdfunding works a bit differently from what I understand.

 

Still sucks to pay upfront and the game still hasn't come out after two and a half years since its announcement.

Doesn't help that pre-order culture in general is trash and preys on FOMO hard.