Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Risewild said:
I get plenty of enjoyment out of RPGs. In particular VtM and World of Darkness.
What I don't get plenty of enjoyment out is of Action, cinematic, melee bashing, gun discarding games.

I also don't get enjoyment from game series that are pure RPG and then a "sequel" is turned into action games (Fallout anyone?).

So, no. It is not time for me to find a new hobbie, it's time for companies to stop changing pure RPG series into boring cinematic action just to attract people who don't like pure RPGs. :V
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That's all well and good except the first Bloodlines isn't a "pure rpg", it's an immersive sim that features more role playing opportunities than almost any other game in the genre, but it was still very much an action game with incredibly dodgy melee combat. How guns are allegedly handled seems like a half-assed way to combat the weak melee builds of the previous game. Hopefully they'll figure out a better solution in the end.

I understand avoiding the hype train, but folks aee excited for thing because it's a fucking miracle were getting a sequel at all. Again, unfinished commercial failures from 15 years ago don't normally get sequels. The constant updates of unofficial patch are turned this thing into a cult hit and luckily for paradox, this seems to be paying off already.
 
The company working on the game has barely released any major games (or games at all) and they got the right to the World of Darkness to make games out of it. This seems more like an attempt to revive a cult classic series based on name recognition to generate hype more than they thought that it deserved a sequel in the first place. Because the first Bloodlines is one of the most famous RPGs ever, at least in the RPG circles.

This might be cynical, but this does make sense to me. Revive a cult series, generate hype and get your foot in the mainstream.
 
joevonzombie said:
That's all well and good except the first Bloodlines isn't a "pure rpg", it's an immersive sim that features more role playing opportunities than almost any other game in the genre, but it was still very much an action game with incredibly dodgy melee combat. How guns are allegedly handled seems like a half-assed way to combat the weak melee builds of the previous game. Hopefully they'll figure out a better solution in the end.
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I meant pure RPG as using the actual P&P Rules. Which the first game does, The second game already deviates from that by not allowing to keep guns and instead discard them after use. It's already changing a lot, specially in terms of combat, to force melee with "cool" action scenes.

Your own words already betray what I fear might happen. The first one had dodgy combat, now this one will have melee focused, cinematic combat... This is already a deviation of the Bloodlines "play style". This worries me that they are focusing their efforts in the combat.

While they said there will be ways of avoiding combat, I worry that these ways will be just a shallow bypass of the combat (you have this power? Then you can skip this battle), with little effort put into it. Or it will make the whole skip the battle also a "cool cinematic" thing too (show the character doing parkour over the enemies head, with "cool" ninja-like movements).

The original game had shoddy combat, but the focus was on the story, characters and interesting locations and quests. While from the info we got, the focus of the second game seems to be cinematic action and flashy powers. This worries me (like I said a few times already).
joevonzombie said:
I understand avoiding the hype train, but folks aee excited for thing because it's a fucking miracle were getting a sequel at all. Again, unfinished commercial failures from 15 years ago don't normally get sequels. The constant updates of unofficial patch are turned this thing into a cult hit and luckily for paradox, this seems to be paying off already.
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VtM: Bloodlines has been a cult classic since almost the beginning. The only thing that kept some players from it when it was released, was the bugs. But I still remember that any RPG fan loved VtM: Bloodlines for years and years now.
The game got 80 on Metacritic back then, it got several gaming magazines/sites "2004's RPG of the Year" awards, Gaming journos and players both praised the game and said it was excellent despite the bugs and feeling unfinished. Of course one day some company would want to profit from that.

You want to know why this "miracle" is happening? It's because gaming companies are in a golden age of "Nostalgia" profiting. In the last 5 or so years they've been hitting strong on any classic game that was popular and/or has a cult following.
And they rake tons of profit. This is the only reason why this "miracle" is happening.
 
I mean, it has paid off to revive this series. It's already a best seller in Steam from preorders alone.

And beneath all the skepticism and worries for this game that i have, i have a shred of hope that it comes out decent at least.
 
Risewild said:
I meant pure RPG as using the actual P&P Rules. Which the first game does, The second game already deviates from that by not allowing to keep guns and instead discard them after use. It's already changing a lot, specially in terms of combat, to force melee with "cool" action scenes.

Your own words already betray what I fear might happen. The first one had dodgy combat, now this one will have melee focused, cinematic combat... This is already a deviation of the Bloodlines "play style". This worries me that they are focusing their efforts in the combat.

While they said there will be ways of avoiding combat, I worry that these ways will be just a shallow bypass of the combat (you have this power? Then you can skip this battle), with little effort put into it. Or it will make the whole skip the battle also a "cool cinematic" thing too (show the character doing parkour over the enemies head, with "cool" ninja-like movements).

The original game had shoddy combat, but the focus was on the story, characters and interesting locations and quests. While from the info we got, the focus of the second game seems to be cinematic action and flashy powers. This worries me (like I said a few times already).

VtM: Bloodlines has been a cult classic since almost the beginning. The only thing that kept some players from it when it was released, was the bugs. But I still remember that any RPG fan loved VtM: Bloodlines for years and years now.
The game got 80 on Metacritic back then, it got several gaming magazines/sites "2004's RPG of the Year" awards, Gaming journos and players both praised the game and said it was excellent despite the bugs and feeling unfinished. Of course one day some company would want to profit from that.

You want to know why this "miracle" is happening? It's because gaming companies are in a golden age of "Nostalgia" profiting. In the last 5 or so years they've been hitting strong on any classic game that was popular and/or has a cult following.
And they rake tons of profit. This is the only reason why this "miracle" is happening.
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Outside of Nintendo and Bethesda, who's actually raking in the cash with this stuff? Projects like Torment, Underworld Ascendant, and Mighty Number 9 all died miserable deaths shortly after release. They cared enough to get the original writer back which they didn't have to do. If the story about Wesp is true, they didn't have to do that either.
 
There's the Pillars of Eternity series trying to replicate the sucess of Baldur's Gate by basically doing the same thing. Bloodstained Ritual of Night trying to emulate Symphony of the Night and giving the fans of the Metroidvanias a game because Konami refuses to make another. Yooka-Laylee trying to pander to the Banjo and Kazooie fans.

A large chunk of games these days are kickstarted games or sequels to 15 years old games that try to pander to people that want a pseudo sequel to a game that they played in their childhood or teenage years.
 
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CerberusGate said:
Cool, hope he shares his un-editted and un-biased opinion on it. If it is a good opinion, it may be worth keeping an eye out.
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His post on Codex
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joevonzombie said:
Outside of Nintendo and Bethesda, who's actually raking in the cash with this stuff? Projects like Torment, Underworld Ascendant, and Mighty Number 9 all died miserable deaths shortly after release. They cared enough to get the original writer back which they didn't have to do. If the story about Wesp is true, they didn't have to do that either.
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I will mention some of the sequels that are in the works and that I can remember:

Psychonauts 2 is supposed to be released this year. After a successful Kickstarter campaign that ended in 2016.

Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3. No need to talk about these ones, I assume everyone around here knows about them.

There was an announcement about Bayonetta 3 a while ago.

Serious Sam 4 was announced too, IIRC.

Beyond Good and Evil 2.

Evil Genius 2 was announced too.

There's Mount and Blade 2.

System Shock 3, someone posted a video about it recently IIRC.

Underworld Ascendant. A sequel or spiritual sequel to Ultima Underworld.

Then we have the remakes and remasters, which actually got quite a good profit:

Look at Beamdog, releasing "Enhanced Editions" of old Dungeons and Dragons games: Baldur's Gate 1 (original released in 1998, EE released 2012) and 2 (original released in 2000, EE released 2013), Icewind Dale 1 (original released in 2002, EE released 2014), Planescape: Torment (original released in 1999, EE released 2017) and Neverwinter Nights (original released in 2002, EE released 2018). And then in 2016 they made an expansion for Baldur's Gate EE.
You know what was funny about Beamdog? Chris Avellone only accepted to work on the EE edition if Beamdog did not add anything new to the game (as in any additional content or Expansions/DLCs), this is how bad they are.

Age of Empires got a remaster last year (Age of Empires: Definitive Edition).

Age of Empires 2, has a HD remaster that got the first of 3 totally new expansions released almost 15 years (2013) after Age of Empires 2 was released (1999), the second expansion released in 2015 and the third was released just a few months short of being only 2 years ago (December of 2016).

Age of Mythology got a remaster in 2014 and a new expansion was released for it in 2016.

Another World. A game released in 1991, got a remaster made and released for pretty much every platform possible, those were released in 2011-2012-2013-2014 and even 2018.

I can keep naming games all night. This Nostalgia era we're having is all about releasing remakes, remasters, sequels and old games being made playable in modern consoles (like the Playstation Store with classic games from previous Gens Playstation).

Another example is the recent trend of the overpriced official "mini classic consoles". Where it is a small version of a classic console (the ones I can remember from the top of my head are C64, Mega Drive/Genesis, PSX, NES, SNES and NeoGeo), with an emulator inside and a few prepacked games in it. They are cool, I give you that but it is another of the modern trend on filling the gaming companies pockets.

It's the golden age of Nostalgia for gaming companies, and it's (obviously) all around us (gamers).
I could mention more games but it's 3:45am and I was supposed to be following a sleep schedule as to contain my sleep disorder... I am late already.
 
Risewild said:
The second game already deviates from that by not allowing to keep guns and instead discard them after use.
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What this might mean, is them copying the first Mirror's Edge; where Faith could use guns, but it interfered with her special abilities. The player could use them as long as they wanted, but would discard them when they became inconvenient.

That doesn't excuse it of course, but [to me at least] it might suggest that they chose to heavy-handedly encourage the use of vampire abilities over conventional hardware... Implying an attitude of the embraced, akin to the way that a fantasy wizard might scoff at using a club instead of a fireball; or of a werewolf using gadgets instead of tooth & claw.

I will reserve judgment [this time] and see if it seems fitting that a feral or bestial supernatural predator eschews mechanical contraptions, except when very opportune.

*But it's true that it seems that gun builds are out—and this seems deliberate.

**I say expect the worst aspects of Blade Trinity to be obvious influences [sans guns apparently]... And if they are copying Mirrors Edge at all, then expect this in more ways than just with the guns.

FearMonkey said:
Well, they're fans of the Fallout IP. They don't seem to be fans of Fallout itself though. :P
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I don't believe a word of it from them (not individually or as a whole). They admitted having devs assigned who had never heard of the IP; and others who knew of it, but had never played it.

Can you imagine Todd, Pete, or Emil ever saying publicly that they (and their studio) were not fans? Of course they would say they were fans, whether truth or not; but the truth is seen in their actions. Their actions tell me that the never gave a damn about anything but TES, and that they re-skinned TES using the most recognizable, cherry picked, trappings of the Fallout IP that they could harmlessly dress it up with.
 
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Vampires discarding firearms makes no sense in the World of Darkness when they fully aware how powerful and useful they are. Smiling Jack even comments on how powerful shotguns are against vampires, so going up close against anyone with a shotgun is not really advised if a vampire wants to stay alive.

This is an huge turn off to me honestly, specially when it's first person only. And i have no clue why they even decided to make this, it's so backwards and unnecessary.
 
I agree.

Norzan said:
And i have no clue why they even decided to make this, it's so backwards and unnecessary.
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I suspect it is a harbinger of a deeper set of issues. We will see it all in the first week after release; but I am not bothering with it until the player reviews come in.
 
Nice contribution to the thread. Really added a lot.

Guns really didn't upstaged or outright took the place of vampire abilities, because several vampire abilities were powerful or outright broken. Celerity for example was ridiculous on how it broke the game.
 


Gotta say, the more I hear about their political leaning the less I'm liking it as they are actively going to design the game around it.

Oh and take Razorfish with a scoop of salt, and I mean that in both ways.
 
Risewild said:
I will mention some of the sequels that are in the works and that I can remember:

Psychonauts 2 is supposed to be released this year. After a successful Kickstarter campaign that ended in 2016.

Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3. No need to talk about these ones, I assume everyone around here knows about them.

There was an announcement about Bayonetta 3 a while ago.

Serious Sam 4 was announced too, IIRC.

Beyond Good and Evil 2.

Evil Genius 2 was announced too.

There's Mount and Blade 2.

System Shock 3, someone posted a video about it recently IIRC.

Underworld Ascendant. A sequel or spiritual sequel to Ultima Underworld.

Then we have the remakes and remasters, which actually got quite a good profit:

Look at Beamdog, releasing "Enhanced Editions" of old Dungeons and Dragons games: Baldur's Gate 1 (original released in 1998, EE released 2012) and 2 (original released in 2000, EE released 2013), Icewind Dale 1 (original released in 2002, EE released 2014), Planescape: Torment (original released in 1999, EE released 2017) and Neverwinter Nights (original released in 2002, EE released 2018). And then in 2016 they made an expansion for Baldur's Gate EE.
You know what was funny about Beamdog? Chris Avellone only accepted to work on the EE edition if Beamdog did not add anything new to the game (as in any additional content or Expansions/DLCs), this is how bad they are.

Age of Empires got a remaster last year (Age of Empires: Definitive Edition).

Age of Empires 2, has a HD remaster that got the first of 3 totally new expansions released almost 15 years (2013) after Age of Empires 2 was released (1999), the second expansion released in 2015 and the third was released just a few months short of being only 2 years ago (December of 2016).

Age of Mythology got a remaster in 2014 and a new expansion was released for it in 2016.

Another World. A game released in 1991, got a remaster made and released for pretty much every platform possible, those were released in 2011-2012-2013-2014 and even 2018.

I can keep naming games all night. This Nostalgia era we're having is all about releasing remakes, remasters, sequels and old games being made playable in modern consoles (like the Playstation Store with classic games from previous Gens Playstation).

Another example is the recent trend of the overpriced official "mini classic consoles". Where it is a small version of a classic console (the ones I can remember from the top of my head are C64, Mega Drive/Genesis, PSX, NES, SNES and NeoGeo), with an emulator inside and a few prepacked games in it. They are cool, I give you that but it is another of the modern trend on filling the gaming companies pockets.

It's the golden age of Nostalgia for gaming companies, and it's (obviously) all around us (gamers).
I could mention more games but it's 3:45am and I was supposed to be following a sleep schedule as to contain my sleep disorder... I am late already.
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Again, outside of Nintendo. How much of this stuff is actually turning a profit? Obsidian and inXile limped their way to a Microsoft acquisition, Underworld Ascendant failed miserably to the point where I'm surprised that anyone is actually excited for another game from that studio, yooka laylee failed, etc. The Kickstarter nostalgia bait and switch has been largely over for awhile now due to broken promises and sub par releases. I get what you're saying, but it's not like this thing popped up on Kickstarter or Fig and it isn't coming from Activision or EA.

I just want to see some proper fucking gameplay footage already.
 
Even Tyranny had a gameplay showcase faster. It also means that it will come out near the end of the year.

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