Here we are after all this time and still not a single leak about what the hell is happening with Bloodlines 2. It looked so far along, I will remain curious what the heck was so wrong with it that they've seemingly gone back to formula.
I played a couple hours last night. I really like the story and characters so far, it’s like a detective vampire game and you do earn xp and can spend it on your skills as you see fit. There are three pre-builds to choose from at the start or you can allot your starting points yourself.
Unfortunately the game is pretty buggy with lots of graphical bugs and some gameplay ones too. Add the really bad animations and it’s easy to get taken out of the game because characters keep twitching their whole bodies while talking. (I’m on an Xbox series s though, maybe it’s better on other platforms?)
It desperately needs a patch and I’m considering putting it on hold until one is released (or if I guess). Bugs and robot animations aside I really like it so far and will probably keep playing in spite of the bugs because I really want to play more now that I made this post
Neco on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Oh, I thought it was another VN
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Is there another VtM VN coming out? Maybe I just got confused of the subtitle
I think so, plus there’s kind of a lot of them. I didn’t realize Swansong was any different until a couple months ago.
I hope there's some more Werewolf VNs in the pipeline. Heart of the Forest was pretty good, but it was also basically just an introduction to Werewolf.
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WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
I want Swansong, but there's no way I'm putting 50/60 bucks down for it
Maybe it'll be patched up and discounted enough for me in the Christmas sale.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Looking at the GOG summer sale, I am struck by how the existence of Bloodlines 2, even as vaporware, has made buying Bloodlines 1 more expensive. Used to be you could get it around $6 CAD during a sale, now it's more like $12.
Granted most people I know already have a copy, but still.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
Looking at the GOG summer sale, I am struck by how the existence of Bloodlines 2, even as vaporware, has made buying Bloodlines 1 more expensive. Used to be you could get it around $6 CAD during a sale, now it's more like $12.
Granted most people I know already have a copy, but still.
A popular streamer was on the front page of Twitch streaming a Bloodlines first playthrough, and I've been pretty addicted! I don't even like Twitch that much, but watching someone who's into it experience Bloodlines for the first time just makes me too happy.
It's really aged remarkably well in some important areas -- the voice acting and facial animations are still amazing. Yeah the animations glitch sometimes, but they're still more expressive and feel more like actual people than characters in most games released today. It just has some really good moments that few games ever have been able to hit. I'm going to focus on the joy of that instead of the sad saga of Bloodlines 2.
Looking at the GOG summer sale, I am struck by how the existence of Bloodlines 2, even as vaporware, has made buying Bloodlines 1 more expensive. Used to be you could get it around $6 CAD during a sale, now it's more like $12.
Granted most people I know already have a copy, but still.
A popular streamer was on the front page of Twitch streaming a Bloodlines first playthrough, and I've been pretty addicted! I don't even like Twitch that much, but watching someone who's into it experience Bloodlines for the first time just makes me too happy.
It's really aged remarkably well in some important areas -- the voice acting and facial animations are still amazing. Yeah the animations glitch sometimes, but they're still more expressive and feel more like actual people than characters in most games released today. It just has some really good moments that few games ever have been able to hit. I'm going to focus on the joy of that instead of the sad saga of Bloodlines 2.
There is nothing quite like watching someone do oceanside for the first time. Just such an amazingly scary part of the game.
Yeah. There are just a lot of really good "oh shit" moments that make it a blast to see someone experience it for the first time.
All the way up to the ending! Obviously the ending segments get too combat heavy (and Ming Xiao is way overturned and will drive lots of people crazy), but the ending itself is fantastic. That's hard to pull off in any medium it seems like.
Here we are after all this time and still not a single leak about what the hell is happening with Bloodlines 2. It looked so far along, I will remain curious what the heck was so wrong with it that they've seemingly gone back to formula.
It's been months at this point, but a random Bloodlines 2 rumor was dropped into Digital Foundry's weekly talk show, timestamp here. In response to the official announcement of development resuming, Sam Machkovech @ArsTechnica says that he's heard more about what happened to BL2 than he's willing to say right now, but is making the point that virtually nothing from the cancelled Bloodlines 2 is coming over, that they are basically starting from scratch, including in terms of narrative, so it could be quite a while before we see anything. Anyone could have easily guessed as much, but this info just pushes it a little more towards certainty now.
Yeah the complete radio silence and length of time since Hardsuit labs was kicked off makes that seem right
We reaaaally need a mysterious blog to pop up by "Ryan Bitsoda" spilling the details on all of this mess.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Late as ever, but I picked up Night Road for a flight(and the Tremere DLC of course).
The writing is great, though I feel like they could have easily done a bit more like used some backdrops or artwork to make it a bit more immersive... but that's just a nitpick.
Can't find the V:tM thread but Humble has a bundle with most? of the visual novels. That means no Swansong unfortunately, but there are $1 and $4 tiers.
Supposedly, according to a Swedish article featuring an interview with Paradox' CEO, the release date for Bloodlines 2 will be announced 'soon'. And that it's 'not impossible' said release date will be somewhere in 2023.
Well end of 2023 would be nearly 3 years of development with the new studio....that seems to me like it would indicate they did scrap the vast majority of what was there before? That's quite a lot of dev time.
A game jam thing, comes out in a few days, FTP. Seems to have decent reviews, albeit being super short.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited April 2023
(Crossposted from the Steam thread, though a bit more notes on the lore)
I finished Vampire: The Masquerade: Night Road last night, and it's definitely a compelling story, but it does feel like the branches don't matter as much as I'd like.
I can kind of see the format of the game in how it allows the player to branch the story without making it go too wildly off the rails, and I'm curious how much playing as different clans really matter. They do a good job of adding clan-specific disciplines(I played as Tremere, so Auspex and Thaumaturgy got the most play), and little bits of background that tie into House and Clan, but I'm not sure how much impact it really has on the plot.
Also, a lot of situations that I would think would make a character all kinds of Final Death'd just inflict a minor speed bump before continuing afterward. I screwed up while negotiating with a monster, and the end result was the character being eviscerated. Scene ends, then the character waking up with a few aggravated damage, and the story moves on without skipping a beat.
That said, it does a great job pulling the player in using just text, though it also sprinkles in some really nice character art.
The main villains are, unsurprisingly, the Second Inquisition, and I kind of feel like they dominate the story a bit too much. They constantly loom over every screw up the PC makes, and it started to get a little irritating before long, and I wonder if modern STs get the same feeling. If I were to run a game again, I think I'd prefer using Sabbat or Anarchs, not the all-powerful hunters that somehow know everything and influence everyone.
I'm not up on the lore too much, but my understanding is that in the modern lore, the Sabbat is not really around all that much, due to largely migrating to whatever mystical vampire conflict is happening in the Middle East. I suppose you can always do a "Well this Sabbat group is still hanging around" thing, though.
I thought that Night Road did a very effective job of demonstrating why the SI are a threat, and creating the oppressive, nerve-wrecking mood of "we can't drop our guard for even a moment, they can be on us at any time". At the same time, I think that that's what Night Road is "about": the downfall of the Camarilla power structure, the loss of connection between Camarilla power centers, the forced retreat of vampires from the flashy "we rule the night" lifestyle, and about the existence of an equally-powerful force that poses an existential threat for vampires, a threat that needs to be constantly considered, managed, and mitigated. My understanding is that the other Vampire visual novels that came out recently are not "about" that kind of thing, so they probably don't feature the SI in the same capacity (although I haven't looked into them, really, so I might be wrong).
I played through Night Road many times, as many different classes, and to a certain extent this might have been a mistake. When you play so many times, it's like looking backstage at a play: the fantasy of the scene starts to fall apart, you start to see the machinery behind the curtain, and the props turn out to be hardboard cutouts that people hustle on and off stage. The main plot definitely has a set structure. It's a string of connected bubbles, and while you have a bunch of freedom and flexibility inside each bubble, you still still be forced to go from bubble to bubble as the story progresses. You won't be able to alter the trajectory of the story, and it's more about how you decide to approach challenges and conflicts, which tools you use to do so, and which activities you prioritize. Like, if you're at the migrant camp, you only spend X nights there, and if you decide to chat with the Anarchs one night, and steal some stuff another, and do whatever else on the third, welp, you didn't feel that rescuing the migrants was important, so at the end those migrants are gonna have a super-bad time.
That being said, there are some big choices you can make that shape where the story goes near the end. And even in the middle, when you make choices on the smaller scale (e.g. Do you try to jump in your car and escape the hunters, or do you run for the trailer park to lose them there?), it can lead to completely different scenes that you wouldn't otherwise experience. Despite playing through the game like 7-8 times, I was still coming up on scenes, conversations, and conflicts that I'd never seen before.
I do wish that some of the unique clan banes were more fleshed out, and had some mechanical impact. For Toreador, every once in a while there's like an extra sentence that mentions how your eye is caught by the beauty of some sight... and then it's back to the game as normal. For Nosferatu, they just... say that you have some special, unique Obfuscation technique that is always on, and makes it so people don't freak out? I don't remember if it drains Vitae or not, but it just completely sidesteps the difficulty and flavor of being a Nosferatu. I understand why - to do it in a way that's more appropriate to the source material, they'd need to effectively write a whole entire parallel game, where your character still manages to accomplish goals without letting any mortals see them - but it's a bit of a shame.
Still one of the best-written games I'd ever played.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I've played Shadows and Coteries of NY, and the SI aren't the threat, it's mostly infighting and political drama. It's good to know there's some replay value at least, but yeah, I got the same vibe about the "bubbles" and forced story progression.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited April 2023
The Second Inquisition like anything, is a narrative tool and they are the main antagonists of V5. The Sabbat were mostly wiped out because it turns out being a bunch of idiots who don't want to hide from humanity as they didn't regard them as a threat, when humanity is now actively aware and more than capable of hunting Vampires, is an extremely poor choice of lifestyle habits. The Sabbat are also arguably getting their arse kicked in the Gehenna war in the Middle East at the moment as well, which is also where they've decided to throw the majority of their resources. In any event, depending on the setting/ST the second inquisition is usually always a looming threat but also one that may or may not be particularly active, especially compared to individual buffy-esque solo hunters (AKA Hunter the Reckoning style characters). They do still exist in the setting though and are making inroads in some places, but they've got a different feel/style to the Sabbat from the old Masquerade days.
In my games that I run, the SI is basically a cudgel that the Camarilla use to keep Vampires who might be inclined to think they should make their own rules, ala Anarchs, more in line. The SI proved its mettle with several victories in the mid 2010s, particularly with the Fall of London, but otherwise 2020+ has been providing other distractions and problems that are drawing government attention. All Vampires are very conscious of this and have really tightened up their rules, especially around using electronic devices, making new vampires and so forth. I will have to try Night Road in order to see what they do with the SI out of interest, because the description in the thread sounds like a great basis for a more conspiracy and paranoia style game.
I think that Night Road did an amazing job of creating a sense of constant, back-of-your-mind worry. Yes, you're a potent night-time predator and all that, but you are not the invincible Lord Dracula ruling his vast lands from his impregnable castle or whatever; you're a small-time schlub living in a world full of bigger forces that can crush you if they become aware of you. You need to worry about the sun rising, you need to worry about feeding, you need to worry about the Beast, the SI is like background radiation that shapes literally every moment of your reality (can't use smartphones, can't use email, can't use tech that's too modern because it's trivially monitored by arms of the SI that are embedded in the government, etc), and - of course - you need to worry about all these goddamn elder vampires that are employing you, using you, manipulating you, and will just as easily discard you.
Now, granted, your own character gains power quite quickly and to a rather high level (which I guess is true of every RPG ever), and a lot of these things aren't meaningfully a mechanical threat. The writing and the narrative, though, constantly remind you of those worries, make them feel credible, demonstrate how they rule your life regardless of your rising personal power. And, frankly, even when you become fabulously wealthy and sink a ton of money into a sprawling villa, buying the kind of security that most lowly couriers couldn't dream of, the SI can still swoop in and bomb the hell out of your stronghold if you get reckless with the Masquerade; ask me how I know.
For folks looking to Vampire to be an empowerment fantasy, I think Night Road would prove to be a disappointment; for those who are willing to engage in a dis-empowerment fantasy, I think it works really well.
Posts
That's selling all the work a bit short, they had alpha-level stuff and a whole ton of writing, if the PR's to be believed.
Swansong
I played a couple hours last night. I really like the story and characters so far, it’s like a detective vampire game and you do earn xp and can spend it on your skills as you see fit. There are three pre-builds to choose from at the start or you can allot your starting points yourself.
Unfortunately the game is pretty buggy with lots of graphical bugs and some gameplay ones too. Add the really bad animations and it’s easy to get taken out of the game because characters keep twitching their whole bodies while talking. (I’m on an Xbox series s though, maybe it’s better on other platforms?)
It desperately needs a patch and I’m considering putting it on hold until one is released (or if I guess). Bugs and robot animations aside I really like it so far and will probably keep playing in spite of the bugs because I really want to play more now that I made this post
The trailers make it pretty clear it's not:
I think so, plus there’s kind of a lot of them. I didn’t realize Swansong was any different until a couple months ago.
I hope there's some more Werewolf VNs in the pipeline. Heart of the Forest was pretty good, but it was also basically just an introduction to Werewolf.
Maybe it'll be patched up and discounted enough for me in the Christmas sale.
Yeah, $30, maybe, but only Bloodlines 2 would be that price for me.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
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Yeah, more or less
Granted most people I know already have a copy, but still.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
A popular streamer was on the front page of Twitch streaming a Bloodlines first playthrough, and I've been pretty addicted! I don't even like Twitch that much, but watching someone who's into it experience Bloodlines for the first time just makes me too happy.
It's really aged remarkably well in some important areas -- the voice acting and facial animations are still amazing. Yeah the animations glitch sometimes, but they're still more expressive and feel more like actual people than characters in most games released today. It just has some really good moments that few games ever have been able to hit. I'm going to focus on the joy of that instead of the sad saga of Bloodlines 2.
There is nothing quite like watching someone do oceanside for the first time. Just such an amazingly scary part of the game.
Or therette for that matter.
All the way up to the ending! Obviously the ending segments get too combat heavy (and Ming Xiao is way overturned and will drive lots of people crazy), but the ending itself is fantastic. That's hard to pull off in any medium it seems like.
It's been months at this point, but a random Bloodlines 2 rumor was dropped into Digital Foundry's weekly talk show, timestamp here. In response to the official announcement of development resuming, Sam Machkovech @ArsTechnica says that he's heard more about what happened to BL2 than he's willing to say right now, but is making the point that virtually nothing from the cancelled Bloodlines 2 is coming over, that they are basically starting from scratch, including in terms of narrative, so it could be quite a while before we see anything. Anyone could have easily guessed as much, but this info just pushes it a little more towards certainty now.
We reaaaally need a mysterious blog to pop up by "Ryan Bitsoda" spilling the details on all of this mess.
The writing is great, though I feel like they could have easily done a bit more like used some backdrops or artwork to make it a bit more immersive... but that's just a nitpick.
Did they ever fix having to constantly check your character sheet for what choices you have a chance at passing?
The Swedish article in question
And have a quick video about it as well.
Hope really died a lot when they knifed the vision team.
But if its a jankfest that gives me the same vibes as the first one I'm there day 1 for that janky ride.
(Though thankfully I've never seen that.)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1926120/Vampire_The_Masquerade__Heartless_Lullaby/
A game jam thing, comes out in a few days, FTP. Seems to have decent reviews, albeit being super short.
I finished Vampire: The Masquerade: Night Road last night, and it's definitely a compelling story, but it does feel like the branches don't matter as much as I'd like.
I can kind of see the format of the game in how it allows the player to branch the story without making it go too wildly off the rails, and I'm curious how much playing as different clans really matter. They do a good job of adding clan-specific disciplines(I played as Tremere, so Auspex and Thaumaturgy got the most play), and little bits of background that tie into House and Clan, but I'm not sure how much impact it really has on the plot.
Also, a lot of situations that I would think would make a character all kinds of Final Death'd just inflict a minor speed bump before continuing afterward. I screwed up while negotiating with a monster, and the end result was the character being eviscerated. Scene ends, then the character waking up with a few aggravated damage, and the story moves on without skipping a beat.
That said, it does a great job pulling the player in using just text, though it also sprinkles in some really nice character art.
The main villains are, unsurprisingly, the Second Inquisition, and I kind of feel like they dominate the story a bit too much. They constantly loom over every screw up the PC makes, and it started to get a little irritating before long, and I wonder if modern STs get the same feeling. If I were to run a game again, I think I'd prefer using Sabbat or Anarchs, not the all-powerful hunters that somehow know everything and influence everyone.
I thought that Night Road did a very effective job of demonstrating why the SI are a threat, and creating the oppressive, nerve-wrecking mood of "we can't drop our guard for even a moment, they can be on us at any time". At the same time, I think that that's what Night Road is "about": the downfall of the Camarilla power structure, the loss of connection between Camarilla power centers, the forced retreat of vampires from the flashy "we rule the night" lifestyle, and about the existence of an equally-powerful force that poses an existential threat for vampires, a threat that needs to be constantly considered, managed, and mitigated. My understanding is that the other Vampire visual novels that came out recently are not "about" that kind of thing, so they probably don't feature the SI in the same capacity (although I haven't looked into them, really, so I might be wrong).
I played through Night Road many times, as many different classes, and to a certain extent this might have been a mistake. When you play so many times, it's like looking backstage at a play: the fantasy of the scene starts to fall apart, you start to see the machinery behind the curtain, and the props turn out to be hardboard cutouts that people hustle on and off stage. The main plot definitely has a set structure. It's a string of connected bubbles, and while you have a bunch of freedom and flexibility inside each bubble, you still still be forced to go from bubble to bubble as the story progresses. You won't be able to alter the trajectory of the story, and it's more about how you decide to approach challenges and conflicts, which tools you use to do so, and which activities you prioritize. Like, if you're at the migrant camp, you only spend X nights there, and if you decide to chat with the Anarchs one night, and steal some stuff another, and do whatever else on the third, welp, you didn't feel that rescuing the migrants was important, so at the end those migrants are gonna have a super-bad time.
That being said, there are some big choices you can make that shape where the story goes near the end. And even in the middle, when you make choices on the smaller scale (e.g. Do you try to jump in your car and escape the hunters, or do you run for the trailer park to lose them there?), it can lead to completely different scenes that you wouldn't otherwise experience. Despite playing through the game like 7-8 times, I was still coming up on scenes, conversations, and conflicts that I'd never seen before.
I do wish that some of the unique clan banes were more fleshed out, and had some mechanical impact. For Toreador, every once in a while there's like an extra sentence that mentions how your eye is caught by the beauty of some sight... and then it's back to the game as normal. For Nosferatu, they just... say that you have some special, unique Obfuscation technique that is always on, and makes it so people don't freak out? I don't remember if it drains Vitae or not, but it just completely sidesteps the difficulty and flavor of being a Nosferatu. I understand why - to do it in a way that's more appropriate to the source material, they'd need to effectively write a whole entire parallel game, where your character still manages to accomplish goals without letting any mortals see them - but it's a bit of a shame.
Still one of the best-written games I'd ever played.
In my games that I run, the SI is basically a cudgel that the Camarilla use to keep Vampires who might be inclined to think they should make their own rules, ala Anarchs, more in line. The SI proved its mettle with several victories in the mid 2010s, particularly with the Fall of London, but otherwise 2020+ has been providing other distractions and problems that are drawing government attention. All Vampires are very conscious of this and have really tightened up their rules, especially around using electronic devices, making new vampires and so forth. I will have to try Night Road in order to see what they do with the SI out of interest, because the description in the thread sounds like a great basis for a more conspiracy and paranoia style game.
Now, granted, your own character gains power quite quickly and to a rather high level (which I guess is true of every RPG ever), and a lot of these things aren't meaningfully a mechanical threat. The writing and the narrative, though, constantly remind you of those worries, make them feel credible, demonstrate how they rule your life regardless of your rising personal power. And, frankly, even when you become fabulously wealthy and sink a ton of money into a sprawling villa, buying the kind of security that most lowly couriers couldn't dream of, the SI can still swoop in and bomb the hell out of your stronghold if you get reckless with the Masquerade; ask me how I know.
For folks looking to Vampire to be an empowerment fantasy, I think Night Road would prove to be a disappointment; for those who are willing to engage in a dis-empowerment fantasy, I think it works really well.