I don't think he's gonna tell you anything since his sister works there allegedly. Would get her in trouble.
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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 announced (2020 Q2 or later), PS4, X1, Steam/GOG/EGS, Paradox + Hardsuit Labs)
- Thread starter vestan
- Start date
Sigh. I'd actually been considering cancelling my preorder this past weekend, and now I think I will. It's not that I don't think it'll be a great game, there's just a lot of unknowns about it in the midst of several other games coming apparently much sooner. Will keep tabs on it though.
Absent any new evidence, I'll take Mitsoda at his word that the writing wasn't holding up the project and that he wasn't party to the decisions to delay the game, so I reckon there's two likely reasons behind it (and they may not be mutually exclusive):
- Paradox is unhappy with the management and direction of Hardsuit Labs, and fired Mitsoda and Cluney out of perception they were part of the problem or standing in the way of change.
- Paradox elected to delay the game and aim for AAA production values (competing with Cyberpunk and Arkane's work, perhaps), which would necessitate either a massive hiring boom for Hardsuit Labs or taking on support studios to handle a lot of the new, higher-quality assets and all the additional testing required. The former could have disrupted the company culture, and the latter might come across as taking away Hardsuit's baby.
I don't have acess to the inside info but i think the game would get better attention if the PR was more "transparent" Like showing some abilities or something that is borderline playable would go a long way to show they are comitted.
CA does this a lot and ,IMO, it heavily benefits the game as long as the info is small in amount and regularly given (every few months)
- sequel to cult game is announced with few details
- hype skyrockets as dudes wank themselves over who can be the most ridiculous stan
- obvious questions go unasked (in this case, "has this team actually done an RPG in its 25-ish year history?")
- nothing much is heard for a while, insta-GOAT status remains priced in
- years later, assumptions are steamrolled by reality
See also: Underworld Ascendant, System Shock 3, etc.
Yeah, given the state of development the game should be in, most narrative tasks should have been locked on for a few months now. So i don't really think the firing of Mitsoda will have much impact on the story if at all.
Still doesn't change the fact it seem rather shitty to fire him like that. But maybe there's a good reason, maybe he was a bothering people in the studio for some reason and they felt it was safer to remove him. Things happen. I mean, i think Ubisoft more or less did the same thing to the creator of For Honor, ditching him a few months before release. The game still was fine in the end.
Still doesn't change the fact it seem rather shitty to fire him like that. But maybe there's a good reason, maybe he was a bothering people in the studio for some reason and they felt it was safer to remove him. Things happen. I mean, i think Ubisoft more or less did the same thing to the creator of For Honor, ditching him a few months before release. The game still was fine in the end.
Any updates? Insider leaks? Anything? Want my VtM!
....about ready to play Bloodlines 1 again for the zillionth time.
....about ready to play Bloodlines 1 again for the zillionth time.
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That is one huge red flag for the project and vote of no confidence towards studio :/
Good games we come to expect to play immediately sometimes usually ends up in certain situations, strangely!
So, debating whether to refund my Steam pre-order or not. Probably will, but bought in Malaysia, where the regional pricing was actually pretty damn good (£30 for the Blood Moon edition). Had a chuckle at this pre-order extra, though:
Yeahhhhh, that's gonna be something all right. Unless they decide against it, of course. :p
Yeahhhhh, that's gonna be something all right. Unless they decide against it, of course. :p
Good grief. And all this after a number of people claimed the game was nearly ready to ship.
How much of a mess is it?
How much of a mess is it?
Mitsoda's comments on finishing Bloodlines 1 come to mind, something to the effect of, 'arguably we didn't'.
I know that some people will interpret "receiving everything HSL has done so far" as a good sign, but that isn't actually saying much and Outstar has a past history of doing damage control whenever things are on fire.
Usually when a new developer takes over an existing project, a lot of stuff gets scrapped and it's sometimes easier to just build a new game than reusing someone else's code. But assets are likely much easier to re-use, so that can be something.
They are obviously trying to sugarcoat it, but reading between the lines the message "The studio fucked up and it turned out it wasn't really up to the task" doesn't really more explicit than this, when it comes to PR speech.
As if the last few months of Glassdoor reviews with all the Hardusit Labs employees saying "No one here has any idea of what he's doing" weren't alarming enough.
As if the last few months of Glassdoor reviews with all the Hardusit Labs employees saying "No one here has any idea of what he's doing" weren't alarming enough.
oof, very unfortunate. Simultaneously, this truly is a sequel to Bloodlines in every way huh, lol.
50/50 chance it comes out, even less that it is any good now. I was worried that Bloodlines 2 might have been a monkeys paw wish and it looked like that is the case.
Wow they straight up sacked the studio? Is there an example of a game that actually turned out really good doing this after years of development? I guess some people would say FFVII:R but I think you can easily tell how much the scope of that game got cut because of it. I have no confidence that this will turn out to be a good game if it ever releases.
Frankly if those were the only options I'd take "Not getting this game at all" over "Getting a terrible one".
At least the brand wouldn't be irredeemably tarnished for future uses and could be recycled in the near future.
Sort of off topic, but I followed Outstar's YouTube channel way before she got the job. I mostly watched some of her Bloodlines LP for the most part.
I just stopped watching her for some reason one day. I admit I am a huge fan of Bloodlines, and this makes me sad. I wish for the best for the game! As far as Outstar and the damage control stuff...? I can get why she reacts the way she does. She's such a huge fan of the series and wants to see a Bloodlines 2. I think the only reason she got the job was due to her channel on YouTube and covering WoD/Bloodlines stuff. I love people who are fans of the product actually being chosen for a job/role.
Besides that, I've not kept up on if there was behind the scenes issues with this game or any drama.
I just stopped watching her for some reason one day. I admit I am a huge fan of Bloodlines, and this makes me sad. I wish for the best for the game! As far as Outstar and the damage control stuff...? I can get why she reacts the way she does. She's such a huge fan of the series and wants to see a Bloodlines 2. I think the only reason she got the job was due to her channel on YouTube and covering WoD/Bloodlines stuff. I love people who are fans of the product actually being chosen for a job/role.
Besides that, I've not kept up on if there was behind the scenes issues with this game or any drama.
Are they going to say anything else...?
I can't imagine how people who pre-ordered feel right now.
I can't imagine how people who pre-ordered feel right now.
They learned well from Cyberpunk 2077! Hopefully, we'll stop falling for these premature marketing blitzes.
This may mean squat, but this year's PDXCon has "a new game from Paradox Development Studio" and *also* a secret event.
pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com
It's worth noting that we still don't know who the hell is developing Bloodlines 2 after Hardsuit got the boot.
PDXCON 2022 - Paradox Interactive
Paradox Interactive is a world leading PC games publisher known for games such as Cities: Skylines, Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings.
pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com
It's worth noting that we still don't know who the hell is developing Bloodlines 2 after Hardsuit got the boot.
PDS is usually the strategy studio located here in Stockholm... or at least that is what they referred to with that name a while ago. Things may have changed.
Someone mentioned Bloodlines the other day, and while I felt the usual itch to reinstall it I now also feel deep sadness because of this ordeal..
I'm guessing they are not behind Bloodlines 2 since it's "a new game", but I wouldn't be shocked if it were WoD related.
I don't think I've seen a fandom go from tears of happiness to mockery and rock bottom expectations in my entire life, and this is the industry that gave us Sonic.
This may mean squat, but this year's PDXCon has "a new game from Paradox Development Studio" and *also* a secret event.
PDXCON 2022 - Paradox Interactive
Paradox Interactive is a world leading PC games publisher known for games such as Cities: Skylines, Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings.
It's worth noting that we still don't know who the hell is developing Bloodlines 2 after Hardsuit got the boot.
PDS usually means mainline strategy titles. Either a new IP or the long requested Victoria 3 perhaps? Unsure.
I would like there to be Bloodlines 2 news, certainly.
There were prior announcemenents that Hare Brained Schemes (the Shadowrun and Battletech devs) were working on 2 new IPs.
This was a while before the Hard Suit Labs fiasco started; so maybe HBS were the ones asked to take over; or maybe they've got their own games to present.
For what is worth, one source close to the publisher told me that Paradox itself confirmed that the game is being redone from scratches, nothing of the current writing is being salvaged and they don't expect the new Bloodlines before 2023 (best case scenario).
JFC, that's terrible.
If they end up confirming this, then I'm gonna cancel my pre-order (prolly should've done that a while ago, but I wanted to be optimistic)
Welp, if this is true and the game has been wholly rebooted, then that's more than a little dire. At least I got my money back from my preorder, but sheesh.
This sucks but also at the same time after how much I got burned with cyberpunk I just... Lost all capacity for blind hype? Between that game releasing and this game with no info and then bad news I realized I'm just burnt out with putting too much feeling into it.
If this is true, then I'm probably out, the writing of Mitsoda and co still being present was the one thing holding together my hype for the project.
