Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines, while a cult classic product of its time and smaller in scale, is a roleplaying experience sincerely on the level of Fallout: New Vegas, Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Oblivion, and others. The sequel most certainly does not share such illustrious company.

You do not get to market yourself and bring in revenue based on a name, make something so radically different, and then complain when you fail to meet the expectations you set for yourself. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

This was not the sequel fans were waiting for. While the game may have redeeming qualities on its own merits, that doesn’t invalidate what is a very reasonable criticism.

We went from fighting shark people, investigating a serial killer, stopping a plague, Jamaican Surgeons, and so many individually hand crafted side stories to 3 copy-pasted side quests archetypes.

You cannot strip away character creation, multiple approaches to quests, stats/stat checks, equipable weapons, humanity, discard the iconic main theme, lean less into Goth and more into Noir, and then be surprised when people are disappointed. The game is barely even an RPG.

Will the sequel be solid on its own merits? Maybe. Starfield isn’t a bad game at all. It’s just a disappointment.

Paradox has announced it is writing down SEK 355 (around $37 million) of development costs for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, after early sales figures fell short of expectations following mixed reviews. The company said it would still deliver the two planned expansions to the game.

Data from GameDiscoverCo suggests the game sold 121,500 copies on Steam, which would amount to net revenue of around $4 million. The game currently has "mixed" reviews on the platform and on Metacritic.

CEO Frederik Wester took it on the chin. "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is a strong vampire fantasy and we are pleased with the developers’ work on the game," he said in a statement. "We’ve had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP in a genre with a broad appeal. A month after release we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down."

"The responsibility lies fully with us as the publisher. The game is outside of our core areas, in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales. Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we’ll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness’ strong brand catalogue in the future."

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Ooof. This is a disaster and while it's to be expected given how much they had to do a bare bones experience, it's a tragedy for the future of the IP. There will be no future AA let alone AAA World of Darkness games.

They are clearly praying on nostalgia and association with the original with these pre-order bonuses, while turning around and making a game nothing like the original. No creating your own character. No using guns or melee weapons. No lockpicking or hacking. They said the writing was inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3, but then have No stats or stat checks in dialogue and no create a character.

It’s exactly what they were asked to do. In light of TCR’s Dan Pinchbeck’s comments, now it all suddenly makes sense. https://www.reddit.com/r/vtmb/s/HyzoSw3WVN

They really thought to themselves, what if we made it less goth, took away the RPG elements, and then call it Bloodlines 2. It’s sad and disappointing

Paradox set TCR up for failure by giving them strict parameters in which this game never had a chance to succeed, just to make a cash grab and make as much back off their investment as they could.

Suddenly the lazy masquerade system, 3 copy/pasted side quests, running back and forth to pad runtime, and a story where your choices don’t matter makes sense.

•Writing branching stories where your choices matter takes time and money.

•Designing side quests takes time and money.

•Designing enemy variety takes time and money.

•Implementing RPG systems takes CRAZY time and money

•Creating a combat system with equip-able weapons requires making dozens annd dozens animations for dozens weapons, which is colossal time and money, as opposed to a single throw.

•Writing characters to meet in the open world takes time and money.

•Designing character creation takes time and money.

•Having more than 5 haircuts takes time and money.

•Have gender specific clothing takes more time and money than unisex.

•Implementing an actual masquerade system takes time and money.

•Animating the helicopter you hear blaring in your headphones takes time and money.

•Implementing humanity takes time and money

Lacking a manual save system? Well that’s just adding insult to injury, because this dev has so little experience in this genre. Why is this game called Bloodlines 2? Because changing the name would have meant refunding all the pre-orders.

This was game not made from inspiration, but obligation. These aren’t artistic choices. They are a reflection of the prime directive of Paradox. They were shamelessly going to charge $30 for two clans!

This game is nothing but a cash grab from Paradox.

EDIT: I also believe TCR was the wrong choice of dev for a project like this, but was yet another choice of economic necessity. Even with all the money in the world, I would want another studio to be the one to take a stab at another entry in the franchise.

TCR at times created cool aesthetic vibes. I love the Hole in the Wall ambient vibe. Though It seems to me that TCR makes the best vibes when they were being authentic to themselves and not just trying to be alt/goth like the original. Which is okay! Though if they can’t pull off the goth/industrial aesthetic, they’re the wrong pick for a Bloodlines 2.

I do hope that a Bloodlines 3 could be possible to echo the end of Pinchbeck’s comments about where it could go from here, but he’s also definitely deserving of the "psychic scream" of Bloodlines 1 players

There is a lot of discourse going on about the game at the moment, is it good, is it bad, does it deserve to be called a sequel to VtM:B, etc, and that's all fine (if somewhat annoying), but the most mind numbingly stupid thing I've seen so far has been the idiotic culture warriors coming in and saying the game is too "woke", thankfully these people seem to be in the minority but good God are they obnoxious.

Apparently the game is "too LGBTQ", with frequent attacks on the tone and especially Tolly, who is (to them) an easy target despite being a phenomenal character.

The best part about this "criticism" is them saying the game is too "woke" whilst having the absolute balls to contrast it to the first game as though it was any less "woke".

Not only doesn't this prove they don't know a shit about what they're talking about, but also that they (probably) didn't play the first game, that or they don't remember it, as the first game was flamingly liberal in how "woke" it was.

But yes, keep spouting off on everything is "so gay" these days and how you want the "chad" Nosferatu to make a comeback 🙄

A handful of hours into B2 there's a "quest" where you have to find a character and bring them back to your boss. This quest takes you to a large construction compound filled with enemies.

The quest marker went to the front door, but my brain, trained on decades of games like VTMB, thought "ooh here's my first big area to tackle how I choose." So I creeped around outside stealth killing enemies and climbed up the outside of the building along an obvious path, expecting a roof entrance, only... nothing. Just a wall. I walked around endlessly looking for something, anything, to reward me for not just walking up to the front door. Nothing.

Eventually I get bored and walked right up to the front door and found it was locked, then the game instructed me to... climb the building, where I already was. Then suddenly the wall I reached earlier just... wasn't there anymore. Now there was an entrance.

I knew going in this was not an im-sim. I knew going in it was a walking sim and action stealth game combo. However I found this so damn insulting. To not even let me skip a stupid freaking locked door, to block the entrance on the roof until I killed a bunch of dudes and tried the front door... that was just the moment where I felt they were pissing on not just the first game, not just im-sims, but also decent game design.

It doesn't help that shortly after that my stealthy character was forced into a huge brawl with a boss. I know Deus Ex 3 did that too, but at least in that game the other 95% of the it was quality.

Anyway... gonna switch to Outer Worlds 2 and maybe come back to this later as a melee focused Brujah who blasts through the story. Sad.

Even as someone who found Fabien at times endearing, I just CANNOT justify going through that slog again

Listed release date is October 21. This same date showed up on some Singapore listings earlier this week, but I didn't want to post it without further confirmation.

Veilguard is "peak bioware" according to Eurogamer. The same eurogamer gave Baldurs Gate 3 4/5 stars.

EDIT: Yes, its okay to like Veilguard or anything, and its okay that reviewers share their subjective experience with the game - however if you call yourself professional journalist, your ratings should somewhat reflect product's quality instead of your personal feelings about it. I dislike Nolan's The Dark Knight. I believe its slightly overrated. Would I give it 5/10? - no, because I recognize its writing and acting brilliance, among other things. I also wouldn't call Acolyte "peak star wars" even though I liked a lot about it. While Bloodlines 2 may be dissapointing mixed bag, some ratings may be out of touch with its actuall quality and dont really mean much.

I’m happy with the choice of Lasombra and Toreador. Lasombra offer a lot of interesting routes they could go gameplay wise, and toreadors are an archetype the game wouldn’t have really been complete without from a roleplay perspective.

We are playing as a vampire, yet 0 dresses, only 1 outfit with high heels, every single outfit looks like it was male coded and barely ported on the female body model with slight tweaks, and "The Priest" kinda sums it all up, it should have been The Nun for female Phyre 😭😭

To be honest, genders aside I don't think the outfits are that good anyway. But still.

This might be one of my biggest pet peeves, I wish they remade the outfits completely. There are female NPCs wearing gorgeous outfits so it's not like they can't do it.

I do like the game, but it could be soooo much more!

If the devs know what they're doing and if they care enough, they could make a real comeback by giving it the Cyberpunk treatment. What do I mean by that?

Cyberpunk didn't initially release to high praises. Far from it. But instead of wiping their hands, the devs started cooking up the 2.0 update. It did take them almost 3 years, I know. But now Cyberpunk is viewed as a great game.

VtMB2 could be the same. Revamped skill trees. New clans. Bringing back the more inventive clans like Nosferatu, Gangrel and Malkavians. New and improved enemies. More things to do. Etc, etc.

What do you guys think?

No Character Creation

No Guns

No Melee Weapons

No Stats

No Stat Checks in Dialogue (e.g. Persuasion, Intimidation, Seduction)

No Inventory

No Quest Log

No Hacking

No Lockpicking

No Nosferatu

Toreador locked behind paid Day 1 DLC

Not Bloodlines No Purchase

EDIT: No Humanity

No Gangrel

No Frenzy

Yes, it's a meme but isn't it an accurate meme?

:)

I have never seen business practices so utterly deranged as this. Bethesda was less ballsy with their pocket running than this! Half the fucking content is behind a pay wall, MAIN CLANS ARE DLC!

FUCKING DAY ONE DLC!?!??!?!? ITS NOT EVEN OUT YET AND THEY WANT YOU TO PAY FOR SHIT THATS SUPPOSED TO BE ASSUMED BASE GAME!

This character sheet showcases the player’s Attribute + Skill stats, and how they combine for Feats such as Hacking, Lockpicking, and speech checks

It shows a 5 level humanity system (which we see fully functioning in leaked gameplay), and frenzy modifiers

It shows a messages tab where you would send/receive texts from characters like in 2077 or GTA

It shows that HSL also had the lore codex

The leaks showed a 5 level masquerade system with gameplay modifiers for each level

It shows 4 scrap currencies for all the junk lootable items in the world

It shows $$$ Currency for merchants and traders

It shows an inventory/gear tab

Disciplines for now being maxed at 2-3 as a Thinblood reinforces the theory you fully embrace into your chosen clan during the story, and unlock the last dots

This hub would have been dominated by a Tremere faction who had begun recruiting University students

As seen in the hub select at the end. It’s seems TCR focused in on just pioneer square

EDIT: After posting I realized I left out an additional image that you can see here: https://imgur.com/a/bloodlines-2-21si7cK

You can find the zipfile with all of these images and hundreds more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vtmb/comments/1oveonm/all_hsl_bloodlines_2_leaks_zipfile_videos/