Vampire: Bloodlines

Double post,but at least we have the Werewolf games to look forward to

Didn’t Earthblood just come out and was terrible?

I didn't even know it was released to be honest

It was, and it's profoundly mediocre.

With Bloodline 2's inevitable failure I'd say the Wo D's presence in the video game industry is going to take a critical hit. The only positive light is that 2 attracted a lot of interest and thus its failure may not cause too much damage.

What? It looked cool.

Yes, but it having to be indefinitely delayed and given to a new developer does not really stoke hopes for a timely release. Look at Dead Island 2, it's been swapped around between multiple studios, apparently, and got announced like, six or seven years ago.

Counhterpoint: Metal Gear Rising swapped developers and was fucking awesome. Final Fantasy XIV had a disastrous launch, had to shutdown and switch directors, then came back as Square Enix's greatest success in history. Hell Resident Evil 4 went through 4 completely different iterations before the final product and is considered by sum to be the greatest game in the franchise, and one of those four iterations was given to another team and became Devil May Cry. Given that we don't know who the new developer is or why Paradox decided to go that route instead of releasing it as is and blaming it on Hardsuit or cancelling it outright making any assumptions one day after an announcement is premature at best.

One, it's failure is not inevitable so knock that off. Two, at this point we've had six other World of Darkness games released with another five on the way, along with two board games released with another two on the way, Bloodlines 2 is not going to break the entire IP. Please stop being so hyperbolic.

Edited by Shaoken on Feb 25th 2021 at 7:33:35 AM

I do remember people saying the bulk of the game was done when a lot of these problems started, the delays and dev change could be to fix/add to a part of the game that was lacking.

Hopefully we get some news and progress reports from them at some point that show where they are actually at.

Just because exceptions exist does not mean that the odds are in 2's favor.

Furthermore, the only thing that's relevant to this situation is MGR. Having a shitty launch or going through several iterations isn't comparable to the dev studio getting fired.

I think your position is excessively optimistic, we know it was a mess enough to delay multiple times. We know that Paradox saw fit to fire the lead developers, and we know that the studio making the game was removed from the project.

Individually that would be concerning, together it paints a far worse picture. It's not premature to recognize that.

My inclinations from everything I've heard and read is that basically Paradox wants this to be a bigger and better game than Hardsuit Labs was capable of delivering.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 24th 2021 at 8:17:42 AM

I wouldn't be surprised if unrealistic expectations are a problem, though I'm not sure Paradox is at fault. After all, HSL is the one that originally approached them. It wouldn't be surprising if they sold a vision that wildly exceeded their actual capabilities.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 24th 2021 at 9:04:17 AM

Ok, I somewhat walk back what I said before. I couldn't get the link to work so I thought they were changing out, like, development leads. A face of production staff or something. Not an entire studio. That's a bigger deal.

I'm kinda curious what the actual problem is if it's big enough that they need to switch studio leads... yet small enough that they're only switching studio leads and still giving the project a year.

Like... how is this a problem that couldn't be fixed with just... having a stronger hand and finishing it out at that studio??? Especially if the game is months away from being complete.

With the Resident Evil 4 example two of the cancelled iterations were given to different teams and became Devil May Cry and Haunting Ground. The comparison being that dev teams were completely replaced and still produced a good end result, as a counter to the argument that bloodlines 2 is now an inevitable failure.

Edited by Shaoken on Feb 25th 2021 at 7:50:52 AM

Ah, fair enough. Then that is relevant.

Still, that just proves that it's not completely inevitable. Not that there is reasonable cause to feel like success is plausible. All evidence points to a game that will either be canceled eventually or will be poor on release.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 24th 2021 at 1:16:04 AM

The evidence being slim and vague. We don't know what state the game is in or whose taking over. World of difference between the games code needs bug testing but everything else is done and will done by Obsedian, versus most of the game assets are incomplete and they get an indie studio to work on it.

Yes, if you ignore the serious red flags then it could be called "slim and vague" but that would be a mistake. Just because we don't know a lot of what's happening behind the scenes doesn't change the fact that what we do know is deeply concerning.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 24th 2021 at 5:40:21 AM

I'm really only pointing out the oddities in what we do know anyway.

Higher ups seem to think that, whatever the problem is, it can be solved and shippable in a year (ish, we don't know when in 2022 they intend to release). It is not a sunk ship (to them anyway) and totally fixable on its current track of work complete.

However, the problems are also enough that they've stripped the head studio of leadership responsibilities and are handing that off elsewhere, which seems... REALLY big imo. I don't think I've heard of that happening very often. Resident Evil or a Metal Gear game, sure, but those are the only two so I think it's pretty rare. And Resident Evil at least seemed more 'Make the game, but not as a Resident Evil title'.

Further, this game was pretty late into development seemingly. We had a good marketing push for awhile and they seemed to be genuinely building to a release. Then radio silence. They wanted to release in 2020 in the first place, then it was assumed early 2021.

Was the game was a train wreck in some really basic way that will take A LOT of sorting out to do (i.e. some internal code problem that is just banal but no less frustrating to untangle. The OG RDR being a game that comes to mind)? Or... are they possibly getting some mechanic or aspect of the game forced in all of a sudden that would require a pretty big restructuring? Which could be good or bad depending on what it is.

Edited by InkDagger on Feb 24th 2021 at 7:21:11 AM

Could be as simple as they want to avoid a buggy release version after all the noise regarding cyberpunk. Or that Hardsuit labs kept giving them release dates and then needing extensions and Paradox losing faith in their ability to deliver in a timely manner.

I guess? But you're going to have months of the old team transitioning and catching the new team up on all the work they were doing and project goals and other things. That's A LOT of work to do, even when it's just a director stepping down and catching up another director. This is an entire team swapping out.

Given that they've written the game off for 2021 Paradox is definitely expecting this to take time.

Real issue in terms of discussing it, in my opinion, is that we really have no firm idea where they were in development.

So all we can do guess and theorize.

I'm gonna point out. while Earthblood was mediocre, Night Road, Heart of the Forest, and Shadows of New York were all pretty dang good and the upcoming Swansong looks good as well. Wo D just lends itself better to narrative heavy story games over big blockbuster games.

I honestly wish theyd give those games more fanfare

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Feb 24th 2021 at 11:16:34 AM

Which is inevitably all we have to discuss rn anyway. Not like there's *too* much else going on with the property.

What games?

Oh yeah, Night Road I really enjoyed.

It's from the Choice of... people.