I'm not fully on board with the macro level analysis being done as to what World of Darkness games are feasible and what are not. I don't think any of this is any real indication on the "license" at all -- it's a lot simpler to just look at the developers involved and their track records than to go beyond that and say it's a macro level problem with the license.
Bloodlines 1 killed Troika. I loved Troika, but Troika's entire legacy was releasing buggy but ambitious games. They never really found a super solid footing with any of their games, and by the time Bloodlines 1 came out they were a PC only developer in an environment that was not friendly to that. They weren't killed by just Bloodlines -- they needed Bloodlines to perform extra well to stay afloat. Brian Mitsoda once gave a post-portem interview to a VTMB fansite, and when they asked him what he would have done differently he just said "Make an Xbox version". It hurt me to read at the time, because PC gaming was getting the short end of the stick in the crossplatform wars around 2004 (it's muuuuch better now). But given the climate of PC games at the time, it was a solid point. Troika also made a steampunk game, Arcanum, and it didn't sell particularly well. They then made a D&D game, Temple of Elemental Evil, and it sold even worse. It looks a lot like Baldur's Gate 2 (plays differently), and shockingly, it sold drastically worse than that other D&D game. That was never a signal to "stop making D&D games" -- it was a signal that Troika wasn't hitting the mark. BG3 seems to be doing pretty well I hear.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse -- Earthblood is a bad game. It is a bad game made by a studio notorious for making very janky, and sometimes just straight up bad games. The license did not make the game janky -- Cyanide Studios very clearly is responsible for making that game janky and bad. Go look at the thread on these forums for that game -- virtually no one had any real expectations for it. It looked like it was going to be probably bad from the very beginning, and it was.
Bloodlines 2 is a mess that requires a documentary post-portem to understand what the hell is going on. Maybe putting Brian Mitsoda as a lead was a mistake, given his history at Troika. I loved that he was involved because the writing is what made the first game great, but ya know, he was very directly involved with Bloodlines 1 and all of Troika's under performing games. Hardsuit Labs was also always a potential fly in the ointment -- they're making the entire game, and their track record isn't much. They made a generic looking FPS thing for PS4 and PC in 2012. It was unremarkable but appeared technically solid from a distance, and so a lot of us were cautiously optimistic that they could pull it off with Mitsoda and co. handling the writing stuff. That clearly was wrong. Whatever the hell is going on, Hardsuit Labs clearly messed something up.
This is all just completely egregious project mismanagement stuff. If Paradox learned anything from Earthblood, it was probably "releasing a shitty game in this state and banking on a cult hit is probably a bad idea". If their plan was to release Bloodlines 2 in a shitty state and expect for a cult hit....that's an incredibly stupid plan! I feel like that was not their plan, and this has turned into a stupid mess. They didn't need Cyberpunk to teach them that (which is a uniquely completely broken game on some platforms), and I would strongly question their entire management philosophy if they needed Earthblood to teach them that.
Rebooting a commercially failed cult hit was always a risky and ambitious plan! I don't think the "Vampire" part was the risky part; everything else was.
If Paradox was interested in making a quick buck they would have them cut tons of content ala KOTOR 2 and have them polish what's finished enough into a shippable state for a set release date.
That they're taking such drastic measures and removing any speculative release date tells me that they are interested in making sure the game is actually up to snuff before getting it out there.
If Paradox was interested in making a quick buck they would have them cut tons of content ala KOTOR 2 and have them polish what's finished enough into a shippable state for a set release date.
That they're taking such drastic measures and removing any speculative release date tells me that they are interested in making sure the game is actually up to snuff before getting it out there.
Yeah, like, it's important to draw this distinction because I have a feeling it will get lost in the discourse. Whatever nonsense and bad decisions and mismanagement led up to this place, Paradox's decision to pull the game from these devs entirely and indefinitely postpone release absolutely seems like the right call (or at least a justifiable call) from the outside. Someone there is clearly thinking about the long-term health of the brand.
I submitted my preorder cancel to Steam this morning, we'll see if they honor it since it's almost two years after I preordered.
I'll continue to follow the development just because it's so fascinating of a timeline, but yeah. All hope has sailed on this one for me. I'll probably purchase if it's ever released, but this has been some batshit developments.
Any preorders are insta-approved for refunds, it's 2 weeks in library/2 hours played after it's out that has issues.
Someone I gifted it to requested a refund and I got the refund in under a couple hours--forgot to have it go back to my credit card but you know me, I'll probably just gift again.
Bloodlines 1 killed Troika. I loved Troika, but Troika's entire legacy was releasing buggy but ambitious games. They never really found a super solid footing with any of their games, and by the time Bloodlines 1 came out they were a PC only developer in an environment that was not friendly to that. They weren't killed by just Bloodlines -- they needed Bloodlines to perform extra well to stay afloat. Brian Mitsoda once gave a post-portem interview to a VTMB fansite, and when they asked him what he would have done differently he just said "Make an Xbox version". It hurt me to read at the time, because PC gaming was getting the short end of the stick in the crossplatform wars around 2004 (it's muuuuch better now). But given the climate of PC games at the time, it was a solid point. Troika also made a steampunk game, Arcanum, and it didn't sell particularly well. They then made a D&D game, Temple of Elemental Evil, and it sold even worse. It looks a lot like Baldur's Gate 2 (plays differently), and shockingly, it sold drastically worse than that other D&D game. That was never a signal to "stop making D&D games" -- it was a signal that Troika wasn't hitting the mark. BG3 seems to be doing pretty well I hear.
Troika's persistent issue was a severe mismatch between their ambitious design ideas and their capability to polish games and fix bugs. By all logic Temple of Elemental Evil should have been a more feasible project but even that released in a rough state and a short, one dungeon focused adventure was not an easy sell to gamers at the time.
Had the indie game boom hit earlier, I think Troika could have been a good fit for making more focused 2D RPGs with interesting ideas and writing in Unity or RPG maker. Game engines of the time felt like an Achilles Heel for them.
Totally! There just wasn't really the space between AAA games and "complete shoestring indie games" at that time, like there is today. Calling any WoD game that has been released so far "AAA-ish" is completely overselling the amount of budgets that these games have been allocated. Troika was sort of trying to make a AAA game with Bloodlines 1, but it just wasn't feasible and the financial/technical results speak for themselves.
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
To elaborate a bit: unless I'm mistaken, what they are squatting on is the rights to Robotech, from a deal with Tatsunoko Productions, adapted from three contemporaneous shows, the original SDF Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEDA. Macross, as an actual franchise, is owned principally by its producers Studio Nue (who Tatsunoko co-produced the original SDFM with, alongside those other shows), cooperating with various Japanese networks like MBS. This is why, for example, there existed a completely regular complete DVD release of the original Macross (7 discs), which I own, for English audiences, and why Studio Nue has continued to produce entries in the franchise, most recently Macross Delta). Japanese courts have mostly ruled Tatsunoko, the only company Harmony Gold had an agreement with, has a partner's stake over the franchise that begins and ends with the original entry (including the film Do You Remember Love?, which is a fun romp, go watch it), aside from other shows they contributed to (like Evangelion), which is still relevant admittedly, particularly for video game production.
Harmony Gold, as far as I know, only controls the rights to what became Robotech in the regions they broadcasted in. This is why a completely different company licensed Amazon to stream SDF Macross (you can watch it if you have a Prime subscription), and why Harmony Gold presumably had a role in the distinct Robotech franchise video games that came out about two decades ago on Xbox, PS2, etc., but zero role in any of the dozens of Macross video games published in Japan. But what FASA bought was, I presume, what they were familiar with in Robotech, ergo property of Harmony Gold. FASA wasn't the only American company to do this (Hasbro did it too, apparently), and presumably realized they should probably just make their own designs. Macross, as a modern franchise produced by Studio Nue, hasn't received a new entry since the movie adaptations of Macross Delta (the hugely successful Macross Frontier got the same treatments), but, I have to imagine, is huge compared to something like FASA's BattleTech.
The various other non-Tatsunoko franchises FASA ripped-off excuse me, "borrowed via a licensing deal" are subject to their own hilariously labyrinthine terms I assume.
EDIT: Completely thought this was the BattleTech thread for a moment,
Synthesis on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
HG's strangle hold on it all ends this year or next, IIRC? The last time they went to court the Judge was apparently tired of their shit.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I mean, it's tied to their role production of Robotech, which, they did, well, produce (from three different shows no less), so I don't see why it would go away. They don't control Macross as a franchise, but it doesn't sound like FASA bought designs from Macross--they bought them from what they knew/saw, and what they saw was Robotech.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
Spoilered for off-topic, but I'm confused.
What's the benefit in squatting over the rights? It's not like the IP accrues value over time—in fact, the longer it's out of the public consciousness, the less it's worth. So what's their gameplan?
I have a Bloodlines-ey question for the Vampire The Masquerade lore nerds around here. I'll put it in spoilers since hey maybe this mess will make some lucky soul play Bloodlines 1 for the first time:
I remember reading lots of discussion here about the cab driver (implied to be Caine in the game) is actually probably just an elder super strong Malkavian? I remember several people mentioning that the PnP source material specifically says that Smiling Jack has been running around with an elder Malkavian pretending to be Caine in the Final Nights. Is this true? Where's it from if so? I can't find it anywhere from the wiki or searching google, and am wondering where it came from.
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
Spoilered for off-topic, but I'm confused.
What's the benefit in squatting over the rights? It's not like the IP accrues value over time—in fact, the longer it's out of the public consciousness, the less it's worth. So what's their gameplan?
You sue anyone trying to do anything with them.
Hope they don't toss out everything 2 had going already and are just polishing it up while adding and tweaking what they need to get it up to snuff.
I have a Bloodlines-ey question for the Vampire The Masquerade lore nerds around here. I'll put it in spoilers since hey maybe this mess will make some lucky soul play Bloodlines 1 for the first time:
I remember reading lots of discussion here about the cab driver (implied to be Caine in the game) is actually probably just an elder super strong Malkavian? I remember several people mentioning that the PnP source material specifically says that Smiling Jack has been running around with an elder Malkavian pretending to be Caine in the Final Nights. Is this true? Where's it from if so? I can't find it anywhere from the wiki or searching google, and am wondering where it came from.
IIRC his audio files were named like caine1, caine2, etc, but I think it was more a coy easter egg than an outright story element.
Also if I remember correctly, in the Gehenna novel Beckett found Caine asleep in a cave in the middle east and cavorted with him through the final nights. Unfortunately, Jack was a bit of a letdown in the novel.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I mean, I don't think any VtM material outside of special cases like the Gehenna stuff is ever going to definitely be like
"yo, this dude in this story is definitely 100% Caine and here are his receipts"
because like, why. That just nails it down and closes the door to any future possibilities and introduces canon issues and all that other boring stuff. It's more fun to just hint and imply that a character might be Caine, maybe.
So in that sense, the cabbie is as much Caine as any other future portrayal is gonna be. It'll always be a "ooh, maybe."
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I feel like the
cab driver being Cain
is one of those things that’s almost 100% certain right up until a future storyline says it wasn’t.
Caine both is and isn’t the driver. Because Caine is not an actual person within any story but rather an aspect of the narrative.
Is the driver Caine? Absolutely 100%. Is Caine also that guy in the cave that jack hides with during the end times? 100% absolutely. Is Caine all those other hints in all the other games? 100% absolutely.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
God damn Bloodlines is a good game, they should make a sequel
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
To elaborate a bit: unless I'm mistaken, what they are squatting on is the rights to Robotech, from a deal with Tatsunoko Productions, adapted from three contemporaneous shows, the original SDF Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEDA. Macross, as an actual franchise, is owned principally by its producers Studio Nue (who Tatsunoko co-produced the original SDFM with, alongside those other shows), cooperating with various Japanese networks like MBS. This is why, for example, there existed a completely regular complete DVD release of the original Macross (7 discs), which I own, for English audiences, and why Studio Nue has continued to produce entries in the franchise, most recently Macross Delta). Japanese courts have mostly ruled Tatsunoko, the only company Harmony Gold had an agreement with, has a partner's stake over the franchise that begins and ends with the original entry (including the film Do You Remember Love?, which is a fun romp, go watch it), aside from other shows they contributed to (like Evangelion), which is still relevant admittedly, particularly for video game production.
Harmony Gold, as far as I know, only controls the rights to what became Robotech in the regions they broadcasted in. This is why a completely different company licensed Amazon to stream SDF Macross (you can watch it if you have a Prime subscription), and why Harmony Gold presumably had a role in the distinct Robotech franchise video games that came out about two decades ago on Xbox, PS2, etc., but zero role in any of the dozens of Macross video games published in Japan. But what FASA bought was, I presume, what they were familiar with in Robotech, ergo property of Harmony Gold. FASA wasn't the only American company to do this (Hasbro did it too, apparently), and presumably realized they should probably just make their own designs. Macross, as a modern franchise produced by Studio Nue, hasn't received a new entry since the movie adaptations of Macross Delta (the hugely successful Macross Frontier got the same treatments), but, I have to imagine, is huge compared to something like FASA's BattleTech.
The various other non-Tatsunoko franchises FASA ripped-off excuse me, "borrowed via a licensing deal" are subject to their own hilariously labyrinthine terms I assume.
EDIT: Completely thought this was the BattleTech thread for a moment,
Yes, I was vastly simplifying the situation Robotech is my first love, but I do like Macross, mainly Macross Plus.
Anyways, back on track. I was heavily bummed to hear this is delayed past 2021. I feel this period of time has been a big let down in the big games I've been waiting ages for. I hope BG3 isn't more of the same.
(super short version, in spoilers cuz it's hells of off topic):
Back in the 80s, when Battletech was being developed, FASA licensed some of their original slate of mech designs (the Warhammer, the Marauder, the Rifleman, others) from various anime (Macross, Crusher Joe, and a third) through an Asian licensing conglomerate. A third party, not the original anime studios.
Harmony Gold, of course, had licensed some of the actual anime shows, particularly Macross, to produce Robotech.
Nothing happened with this for years and years but in the 90s, Harmony Gold kind of randomly decided to sue over this, claiming that they had exclusive rights to the visual representation of those designs in the NA market. FASA, looking at the documents, realized the licensing firm might not have actually have had the right to license those designs so settled or cut a deal out of court and agreed to no longer use those designs in visual media. Those mechs, many of which were iconic in the various Battletech books and art, became "unseen." They could be mentioned and talked about, their game stats were unchanged, but they could no longer depict them visually.
In the 2010s, Catalyst Game Labs, the part owners of the Battletech property and publishers of the TTRPG/wargame material, announced that they were moving forward with a retcon, a visual redesign of all the Unseen mechs that would take them out of legally dicey waters.
HBS announced when the Battletech game was Kickstarted that the game would be incorporating those redesigns. However, HG decided to sue anyway, and included Catalyst and also Piranha Games (the MWO dudes) in the mix. But Harmony Gold's own licensing status turns out to have been way shakier than previously thought (in the interim they'd fought some legal battles against the actual anime studios, IIRC to try and prevent the unedited Macross and Genesis Climber from being distributed in NA) and the court settled the issue with prejudice against the plaintiff, so they can't raise the issue in court anymore.
They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
To elaborate a bit: unless I'm mistaken, what they are squatting on is the rights to Robotech, from a deal with Tatsunoko Productions, adapted from three contemporaneous shows, the original SDF Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEDA. Macross, as an actual franchise, is owned principally by its producers Studio Nue (who Tatsunoko co-produced the original SDFM with, alongside those other shows), cooperating with various Japanese networks like MBS. This is why, for example, there existed a completely regular complete DVD release of the original Macross (7 discs), which I own, for English audiences, and why Studio Nue has continued to produce entries in the franchise, most recently Macross Delta). Japanese courts have mostly ruled Tatsunoko, the only company Harmony Gold had an agreement with, has a partner's stake over the franchise that begins and ends with the original entry (including the film Do You Remember Love?, which is a fun romp, go watch it), aside from other shows they contributed to (like Evangelion), which is still relevant admittedly, particularly for video game production.
Harmony Gold, as far as I know, only controls the rights to what became Robotech in the regions they broadcasted in. This is why a completely different company licensed Amazon to stream SDF Macross (you can watch it if you have a Prime subscription), and why Harmony Gold presumably had a role in the distinct Robotech franchise video games that came out about two decades ago on Xbox, PS2, etc., but zero role in any of the dozens of Macross video games published in Japan. But what FASA bought was, I presume, what they were familiar with in Robotech, ergo property of Harmony Gold. FASA wasn't the only American company to do this (Hasbro did it too, apparently), and presumably realized they should probably just make their own designs. Macross, as a modern franchise produced by Studio Nue, hasn't received a new entry since the movie adaptations of Macross Delta (the hugely successful Macross Frontier got the same treatments), but, I have to imagine, is huge compared to something like FASA's BattleTech.
The various other non-Tatsunoko franchises FASA ripped-off excuse me, "borrowed via a licensing deal" are subject to their own hilariously labyrinthine terms I assume.
EDIT: Completely thought this was the BattleTech thread for a moment,
Yes, I was vastly simplifying the situation Robotech is my first love, but I do like Macross, mainly Macross Plus.
Anyways, back on track. I was heavily bummed to hear this is delayed past 2021. I feel this period of time has been a big let down in the big games I've been waiting ages for. I hope BG3 isn't more of the same.
I apologize for furthering that tangent, but the whole thing seems like a hilarious example in what would probably be described today as "American weeb stupidity", of a "Well, we're creating a fictional narrative franchise for a game series we own in its entirety, but goddamn do I want those anime mecha in my not-anime gimme gimme gimme."
The Sarna.net wiki, which I have no reason to disbelief, seems to suggest that FASA, with all the caution and forethought of Gollum if he were in charge of a fictional franchise, approached "Twentieth Century Imports" for the rights to make their precious designs their own, something that was probably only plausible in an age where a Japanese television program's only chance of coming to English-speaking North America was to be completely remade, rewritten and redapted, or altered effectively beyond recognition (see: the American pilot of the aborted Sailor Moon cartoon, the program Starblazers, and Robotech respectively). And that was still considered to be "pushing their luck." FASA drooled similarly over designs from Crusher Joe and Dougram. As it was 1984, around or slightly before Robotech was even broadcast in the US, they probably thought they had struck while the iron was hot and were just masterfully performing some Art-of-the-Deal jujitsu.
In fact, it's not even clear TCI had the rights to sell FASA anything after three decades of periodic litigation. What is clear is that, unlike FASA via some dude outside their office in a trench coat with bootleg Japanese video cassette, Harmony Gold USA, media company-turned-west-coast-realtor, actually secured the rights to distribute their Frankensteinian amalgamation of three anime that Tatsunoko Productions had a controlling stake in, 'cuz if you wanted to sell you anime in the U.S. and Canada back then, that's how you did it. Which, as far as I can tell, is why the hilariously sketchy Harmony Gold, and their partners, has consistently won against FASA, and their defense of "But he said he was totally good for it! He had business cards and everything! I want my mecha gimme gimme!" in U.S. courts over the last few decades.
Sure, we can be as uncharitable to Harmony Gold as possible as say they're not doing shit with it (they actually put out two Robotech video games on Xbox and Playstation 2, and a mobile phone game as "recently" as 2007, aside from a bunch of vaporware projects), but it doesn't change the fact that they actually, you know, acted competently as oppose to FASA, who apparently pursued a "spit in palm and handshake" approach and thought they were good. No wonder FASA had to, you know, get their own artists and design new shit, something they're entirely capable of, when they realized they couldn't actually make money off someone else's anime. And at least some f the designs were ultimately ruled as "sufficiently original" that even their old designs were permissible which just kind of leaves me wondering why FASA even bothered in the first place. Then again, this is the company that originally started with the name Battledroids before LucasFilm probably threatened to break their kneecaps. "I'm going to create an entirely new science fiction franchise from scratch. Who can I pay to get the rights to the X-Wings and TIE Fighters from Star Wars?"
I once again apologize for the tangent but, even as someone who grew up with the MechWarrior games (that might as well have been totally devoid of but my unseen precccsssious), the more I read about this the more hilarious FASA's wide-eyed incompetence and Harmony Gold's trolling looks.
I thiiink I need to be a bit more specific with my question, so I'll rephrase:
I'm not asking whether Bloodlines wants you to think the cab driver is Caine or not. The game 100% implies, in more than one way, that he is (Malkavian dialogue with the cab driver, auspex, the dialogue files). They don't overtly state it for all of the reasons everyone just listed. Whether Bloodlines is saying he is Caine or not is not my question.
Specifically I was asking if someone could confirm the stuff with Jack hanging out with a super power Malkavian elder pretending to be Caine in the PnP source material. Ignore Bloodlines entirely for this please! I thiiiink Goumindong hit on what I'm asking with the "jack hanging out with a crazy guy in a cave" in end times thing. But I'm wondering if people were presenting the "elder Malkavian" thing as fact in the past, when it was more of a possible theory because Caine is always a "who knowwwws?" thing in the universe. Or does the source material specifically mention "malkavian elder pretending to be Caine hanging out with Jack" at some point?
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
i am increasingly of the mind this could be a good thing: it seems obvious the game was in some kind of dire state, between the leaving of mitsoda et al and them going quiet. taking a step back and saying "we need to do this entirely differently" is, resources depending, possibly the only sensible out
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Bloodlines 1 killed Troika. I loved Troika, but Troika's entire legacy was releasing buggy but ambitious games. They never really found a super solid footing with any of their games, and by the time Bloodlines 1 came out they were a PC only developer in an environment that was not friendly to that. They weren't killed by just Bloodlines -- they needed Bloodlines to perform extra well to stay afloat. Brian Mitsoda once gave a post-portem interview to a VTMB fansite, and when they asked him what he would have done differently he just said "Make an Xbox version". It hurt me to read at the time, because PC gaming was getting the short end of the stick in the crossplatform wars around 2004 (it's muuuuch better now). But given the climate of PC games at the time, it was a solid point. Troika also made a steampunk game, Arcanum, and it didn't sell particularly well. They then made a D&D game, Temple of Elemental Evil, and it sold even worse. It looks a lot like Baldur's Gate 2 (plays differently), and shockingly, it sold drastically worse than that other D&D game. That was never a signal to "stop making D&D games" -- it was a signal that Troika wasn't hitting the mark. BG3 seems to be doing pretty well I hear.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse -- Earthblood is a bad game. It is a bad game made by a studio notorious for making very janky, and sometimes just straight up bad games. The license did not make the game janky -- Cyanide Studios very clearly is responsible for making that game janky and bad. Go look at the thread on these forums for that game -- virtually no one had any real expectations for it. It looked like it was going to be probably bad from the very beginning, and it was.
Bloodlines 2 is a mess that requires a documentary post-portem to understand what the hell is going on. Maybe putting Brian Mitsoda as a lead was a mistake, given his history at Troika. I loved that he was involved because the writing is what made the first game great, but ya know, he was very directly involved with Bloodlines 1 and all of Troika's under performing games. Hardsuit Labs was also always a potential fly in the ointment -- they're making the entire game, and their track record isn't much. They made a generic looking FPS thing for PS4 and PC in 2012. It was unremarkable but appeared technically solid from a distance, and so a lot of us were cautiously optimistic that they could pull it off with Mitsoda and co. handling the writing stuff. That clearly was wrong. Whatever the hell is going on, Hardsuit Labs clearly messed something up.
This is all just completely egregious project mismanagement stuff. If Paradox learned anything from Earthblood, it was probably "releasing a shitty game in this state and banking on a cult hit is probably a bad idea". If their plan was to release Bloodlines 2 in a shitty state and expect for a cult hit....that's an incredibly stupid plan! I feel like that was not their plan, and this has turned into a stupid mess. They didn't need Cyberpunk to teach them that (which is a uniquely completely broken game on some platforms), and I would strongly question their entire management philosophy if they needed Earthblood to teach them that.
Rebooting a commercially failed cult hit was always a risky and ambitious plan! I don't think the "Vampire" part was the risky part; everything else was.
That they're taking such drastic measures and removing any speculative release date tells me that they are interested in making sure the game is actually up to snuff before getting it out there.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yeah, like, it's important to draw this distinction because I have a feeling it will get lost in the discourse. Whatever nonsense and bad decisions and mismanagement led up to this place, Paradox's decision to pull the game from these devs entirely and indefinitely postpone release absolutely seems like the right call (or at least a justifiable call) from the outside. Someone there is clearly thinking about the long-term health of the brand.
Any preorders are insta-approved for refunds, it's 2 weeks in library/2 hours played after it's out that has issues.
Someone I gifted it to requested a refund and I got the refund in under a couple hours--forgot to have it go back to my credit card but you know me, I'll probably just gift again.
At this point we don’t know but they have fired the old dev team and are bringing in a new one.
Press the up key on your keyboard.
Troika's persistent issue was a severe mismatch between their ambitious design ideas and their capability to polish games and fix bugs. By all logic Temple of Elemental Evil should have been a more feasible project but even that released in a rough state and a short, one dungeon focused adventure was not an easy sell to gamers at the time.
Had the indie game boom hit earlier, I think Troika could have been a good fit for making more focused 2D RPGs with interesting ideas and writing in Unity or RPG maker. Game engines of the time felt like an Achilles Heel for them.
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They are also squatting on the tv/movie/show rights, and plan to do nothing with them - and try to keep Macross stuff out of the US. But they refuse to license it out or sell the IP. It's infuriating as a separate issue from the Unseen, which was damn annoying by itself.
To elaborate a bit: unless I'm mistaken, what they are squatting on is the rights to Robotech, from a deal with Tatsunoko Productions, adapted from three contemporaneous shows, the original SDF Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEDA. Macross, as an actual franchise, is owned principally by its producers Studio Nue (who Tatsunoko co-produced the original SDFM with, alongside those other shows), cooperating with various Japanese networks like MBS. This is why, for example, there existed a completely regular complete DVD release of the original Macross (7 discs), which I own, for English audiences, and why Studio Nue has continued to produce entries in the franchise, most recently Macross Delta). Japanese courts have mostly ruled Tatsunoko, the only company Harmony Gold had an agreement with, has a partner's stake over the franchise that begins and ends with the original entry (including the film Do You Remember Love?, which is a fun romp, go watch it), aside from other shows they contributed to (like Evangelion), which is still relevant admittedly, particularly for video game production.
Harmony Gold, as far as I know, only controls the rights to what became Robotech in the regions they broadcasted in. This is why a completely different company licensed Amazon to stream SDF Macross (you can watch it if you have a Prime subscription), and why Harmony Gold presumably had a role in the distinct Robotech franchise video games that came out about two decades ago on Xbox, PS2, etc., but zero role in any of the dozens of Macross video games published in Japan. But what FASA bought was, I presume, what they were familiar with in Robotech, ergo property of Harmony Gold. FASA wasn't the only American company to do this (Hasbro did it too, apparently), and presumably realized they should probably just make their own designs. Macross, as a modern franchise produced by Studio Nue, hasn't received a new entry since the movie adaptations of Macross Delta (the hugely successful Macross Frontier got the same treatments), but, I have to imagine, is huge compared to something like FASA's BattleTech.
The various other non-Tatsunoko franchises FASA ripped-off excuse me, "borrowed via a licensing deal" are subject to their own hilariously labyrinthine terms I assume.
EDIT: Completely thought this was the BattleTech thread for a moment,
hahahahaha
no
they got the rights renewed last year even
Ugh, dammit all.
If I ever win the lotto I would spend every dollar for the sole purpose of ruining Harmony Gold and I would consider it money well spent.
Spoilered for off-topic, but I'm confused.
May I suggest Vampire: The Masquerade- Night Road?
The jury is still out on meaningful choices, but Shadows and Coteries have lots of great characters.
I remember reading lots of discussion here about the cab driver (implied to be Caine in the game) is actually probably just an elder super strong Malkavian? I remember several people mentioning that the PnP source material specifically says that Smiling Jack has been running around with an elder Malkavian pretending to be Caine in the Final Nights. Is this true? Where's it from if so? I can't find it anywhere from the wiki or searching google, and am wondering where it came from.
You sue anyone trying to do anything with them.
Hope they don't toss out everything 2 had going already and are just polishing it up while adding and tweaking what they need to get it up to snuff.
But probably another 5 year wait...
I guess 0.5 out of 3 ain't...bad?
Also if I remember correctly, in the Gehenna novel Beckett found Caine asleep in a cave in the middle east and cavorted with him through the final nights. Unfortunately, Jack was a bit of a letdown in the novel.
because like, why. That just nails it down and closes the door to any future possibilities and introduces canon issues and all that other boring stuff. It's more fun to just hint and imply that a character might be Caine, maybe.
So in that sense, the cabbie is as much Caine as any other future portrayal is gonna be. It'll always be a "ooh, maybe."
I'd say the distinct voice says the writers wanted it to be a believable possibility at the very least.
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Is the driver Caine? Absolutely 100%. Is Caine also that guy in the cave that jack hides with during the end times? 100% absolutely. Is Caine all those other hints in all the other games? 100% absolutely.
so true.
check search site: duckduckgo.com
Yes, I was vastly simplifying the situation
Anyways, back on track. I was heavily bummed to hear this is delayed past 2021. I feel this period of time has been a big let down in the big games I've been waiting ages for. I hope BG3 isn't more of the same.
I apologize for furthering that tangent, but the whole thing seems like a hilarious example in what would probably be described today as "American weeb stupidity", of a "Well, we're creating a fictional narrative franchise for a game series we own in its entirety, but goddamn do I want those anime mecha in my not-anime gimme gimme gimme."
The Sarna.net wiki, which I have no reason to disbelief, seems to suggest that FASA, with all the caution and forethought of Gollum if he were in charge of a fictional franchise, approached "Twentieth Century Imports" for the rights to make their precious designs their own, something that was probably only plausible in an age where a Japanese television program's only chance of coming to English-speaking North America was to be completely remade, rewritten and redapted, or altered effectively beyond recognition (see: the American pilot of the aborted Sailor Moon cartoon, the program Starblazers, and Robotech respectively). And that was still considered to be "pushing their luck." FASA drooled similarly over designs from Crusher Joe and Dougram. As it was 1984, around or slightly before Robotech was even broadcast in the US, they probably thought they had struck while the iron was hot and were just masterfully performing some Art-of-the-Deal jujitsu.
In fact, it's not even clear TCI had the rights to sell FASA anything after three decades of periodic litigation. What is clear is that, unlike FASA via some dude outside their office in a trench coat with bootleg Japanese video cassette, Harmony Gold USA, media company-turned-west-coast-realtor, actually secured the rights to distribute their Frankensteinian amalgamation of three anime that Tatsunoko Productions had a controlling stake in, 'cuz if you wanted to sell you anime in the U.S. and Canada back then, that's how you did it. Which, as far as I can tell, is why the hilariously sketchy Harmony Gold, and their partners, has consistently won against FASA, and their defense of "But he said he was totally good for it! He had business cards and everything! I want my mecha gimme gimme!" in U.S. courts over the last few decades.
Sure, we can be as uncharitable to Harmony Gold as possible as say they're not doing shit with it (they actually put out two Robotech video games on Xbox and Playstation 2, and a mobile phone game as "recently" as 2007, aside from a bunch of vaporware projects), but it doesn't change the fact that they actually, you know, acted competently as oppose to FASA, who apparently pursued a "spit in palm and handshake" approach and thought they were good. No wonder FASA had to, you know, get their own artists and design new shit, something they're entirely capable of, when they realized they couldn't actually make money off someone else's anime. And at least some f the designs were ultimately ruled as "sufficiently original" that even their old designs were permissible which just kind of leaves me wondering why FASA even bothered in the first place. Then again, this is the company that originally started with the name Battledroids before LucasFilm probably threatened to break their kneecaps. "I'm going to create an entirely new science fiction franchise from scratch. Who can I pay to get the rights to the X-Wings and TIE Fighters from Star Wars?"
I once again apologize for the tangent but, even as someone who grew up with the MechWarrior games (that might as well have been totally devoid of but my unseen precccsssious), the more I read about this the more hilarious FASA's wide-eyed incompetence and Harmony Gold's trolling looks.
I'm not asking whether Bloodlines wants you to think the cab driver is Caine or not. The game 100% implies, in more than one way, that he is (Malkavian dialogue with the cab driver, auspex, the dialogue files). They don't overtly state it for all of the reasons everyone just listed. Whether Bloodlines is saying he is Caine or not is not my question.
Specifically I was asking if someone could confirm the stuff with Jack hanging out with a super power Malkavian elder pretending to be Caine in the PnP source material. Ignore Bloodlines entirely for this please! I thiiiink Goumindong hit on what I'm asking with the "jack hanging out with a crazy guy in a cave" in end times thing. But I'm wondering if people were presenting the "elder Malkavian" thing as fact in the past, when it was more of a possible theory because Caine is always a "who knowwwws?" thing in the universe. Or does the source material specifically mention "malkavian elder pretending to be Caine hanging out with Jack" at some point?
I mean, I could have added a bunch of qualifiers to my statement. Such as:
*That is modern
*That isn't janky as shit
*That doesn't require mods and fan fixes to make the game playable