Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2

Varik

Didn't know this but in 2018 Paradox bought 33% share in Hardsuit Labs.

Retr0gamer

Not surprised. This had ****show writen all over it from the start.

The White Wolf

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Paradox's website is down for "scheduled maintenance", but they released a statement reading;



Blimey. They've also stopped taking pre-orders.

Lol...the way they were accepting pre orders so early on suggested a confident project. What a mare for them.

Earthhorse

From what I read on the RPGCodex thread Hardsuit seems like a bit of a headless chicken with no real leadership capable of getting things done. It's hard to totally trust what I read there as they simultaneously seem very informed and very biased but they were quoting Glassdoor reviews so I'm inclined to believe it. Such a shame that all this messing around means we won't get to see a sequel; though maybe Paradox are more committed to the franchise than I'm giving them credit for.

Or maybe I should count my blessings.

Varik

From what I've read Brian Mitsoda was the main pitch and he's who Hardsuit labs driven by former lead Ka'ai Cluney used to approach Paradox with after Paradox got the rights, and then they got a few other who were former Troika Games.

He was narrative lead but wasn't the main writer for the game, and the lead writer didn't really have much to her name. She was a contractor here and there and worked as a games journalist/critic for the likes of RPS, Kotaku, and The Guardian. She left and then the Andromeda writer who is actually the wife of one of the remaining leads at Hardsuits got hired.

Hardsuits lab have done a lot of big ports and some original stuff, and they could easily be described as competent so at worst this game should have just been bland at worse. The firing may have been a mutual decision, but if I'd to bet I'd say the other owners of Hardsuit used Cluney & Mitsoda as scapegoats.

Azza

My money is that Paradox take the reigns themselves and go dark for a year, then release the game has Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2: A Hearts of Iron IV DLC pack.

Varik

Refunds for all physical games and option for digital with the caveat that there's changes. I doubt any of the digital stores would have rejected a refund request leading up to this in any case.

But game is still in development and stuff getting shown in September.

Zero-Cool

Absolute mess, I wonder what they have to show in September, surely a rebuild at this state? How about a remake of 1 maybe?

Mr Crispy

Do we even know what studio is working on it now?

Varik

People think it's the Chinese room, but no official word.

They put an unrelated video out a while ago and on a monitor there was a pause menu that looked like it could be it.

Potatoeman

What’s really odd is that they had a playable demo. The combat looked janky with the character phasing through enemies but the visuals looked ok. How hard could it be to fix? I’m guessing the content had to be redone as it was causing issues?

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120694671#Comment_120694671

To be fair, that sounds very true to the original release.

Varik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwhvfH-Ij8Q&ab_channel=WorldofDarkness

Still going to wait on this.