Good evening Kindred,

This week, as mentioned in our last dev diary, we’re bringing you our first video recap. Straight from The Chinese Room and their Community Manager Josh Matthews, you’ll hear from earlier dev diary authors Michele Nucera (Senior Concept Artist), Alex Skidmore (Project Creative Director) and Ben Matthews (Associate Art Director). In this recap, they’ll summarize their individual diaries, share additional thoughts and answer fan questions.

What’s Next​

We’ll be back with the next dev diary in two weeks and we’re looking forward to our third clan reveal at PC Gamer Show: Most Wanted.

 

[Foamhead]

I am a developer, and as you can see, I work in the industry. People in my position see and pass on everything. We interact constantly with customers and fans. It's not the job of a Concept Artist, a Level Designer, or a QA to come forward and spend time speaking to the community. Of course, they can if they wish to, but they're busy working on their game.

Marketing isn't always perfect, but saying they 'do not interact like human beings' is a wild generalization to make.


Game development is always ongoing and is governed by scope, cost, and what can be delivered in the allotted time frame. It's not about "state secrets"; it's about us being respectful to fans and not promising something that can't be delivered. As such, we can't always say outright what will be in the game because we 100% want to ensure it's correct. There are many things we've not talked about and are waiting until next year because of this. I believe that overpromising something would be worse.

Personally, even if things are a little conservative right now, we're taking in feedback, and when we can completely confirm and talk about things in the game, we will.



I'm sorry, but this isn't always true. Voice Actors are often called back to do more line reads if things have changed. Bloodlines 2 is still in development, regardless of the voice work completed. In film, I assume that ADR is done after the movie has been cut and edited, in games, development continues until the last moment, and as such, there's no time to bring in voice actors at the end when you need them at various stages of completion.

Honestly, I would try to talk to each of your points more, but it does feel that you have your thoughts set on these matters, and I can't change that. I will say that I appreciate your response. I'm around daily on the forums to try and answer questions that I can answer.

When I say "interact like human beings" what I mean is typical canned pre-approved talking points, comments with no content and not really addressing what's being said. It's almost like talking to a politician.

You are absolutely correct that overpromising is not good, but no one is asking for loads of specific gameplay features. They want to know if this is even a sequel to Bloodlines 2 in terms of tone and gameplay. That's a broad question that doesn't require specifically going over the game feature by feature. Once again, this is being sold as a sequel to a very beloved cult classic and was loved for very specific and identifiable story and gameplay, such as the very dark storylines, amazing characters and dialogue. If that's something you guys haven't "locked down yet" then then fans have every right to be concerned and upset at the bait and switch. You don't make fans wait 20 years and not deliver what has been advertised. You're acting like people are just impatiently wanted more details and not panicking that they are going to get everything they didn't want.

I have some friend who work for or have in the past worked for Bioware and Rockstar so I'm not totally blind to the development process. The reason I know dialogue is last is because it's very difficult to change after the animation has been done, and very very expensive especially if the actors are union. Maybe it's a little different in video games but I can't imagine much. I've done stuff with ADR and I can tell you if I went to my producers and said I want to re-do the dialogue after recording it, I could lose my job for wasting money and causing a delay. This is especially if I also have to re-shoot or re-animate scenes.

I am not set and if I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it, because I'd love to be wrong. Other then KotOR, Bloodlines is the game I most want a sequel to. You say you'd like to address my points, awesome. Whatever you're allowed to address, go for it... I'll believe you because you have no reason to lie.

I have defended you guys so I'm not just bashing you: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/about-your-main-character-choice.1606609/post-29268076

 

[Jia Xu]

When I say "interact like human beings" what I mean is typical canned pre-approved talking points, comments with no content and not really addressing what's being said. It's almost like talking to a politician.

You are absolutely correct that overpromising is not good, but no one is asking for loads of specific gameplay features. They want to know if this is even a sequel to Bloodlines 2 in terms of tone and gameplay. That's a broad question that doesn't require specifically going over the game feature by feature. Once again, this is being sold as a sequel to a very beloved cult classic and was loved for very specific and identifiable story and gameplay, such as the very dark storylines, amazing characters and dialogue. If that's something you guys haven't "locked down yet" then then fans have every right to be concerned and upset at the bait and switch. You don't make fans wait 20 years and not deliver what has been advertised. You're acting like people are just impatiently wanted more details and not panicking that they are going to get everything they didn't want.

I have some friend who work for or have in the past worked for Bioware and Rockstar so I'm not totally blind to the development process. The reason I know dialogue is last is because it's very difficult to change after the animation has been done, and very very expensive especially if the actors are union. Maybe it's a little different in video games but I can't imagine much. I've done stuff with ADR and I can tell you if I went to my producers and said I want to re-do the dialogue after recording it, I could lose my job for wasting money and causing a delay. This is especially if I also have to re-shoot or re-animate scenes.

I am not set and if I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it, because I'd love to be wrong. Other then KotOR, Bloodlines is the game I most want a sequel to. You say you'd like to address my points, awesome. Whatever you're allowed to address, go for it... I'll believe you because you have no reason to lie.

I have defended you guys so I'm not just bashing you: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/about-your-main-character-choice.1606609/post-29268076

These developer diary recaps have been human beings sitting around and casually talking about their jobs. That is what a developer diary is. It's software developers giving their thoughts on their work. Anyone can watch the video and see how natural these conversations are. This entirely dishonest argument about how they're just robots reading from a script is entirely reliant on no one taking 10 seconds to fact check this.

There is an entire year of marketing to go to release. They are not going to reveal everything at once. There's no point in badgering the publisher about this because they have a marketing schedule that they're going to follow. If you go to the official Bloodlines 2 website, they've even put out a rough roadmap on when they're going to talk about specific things. The big gameplay trailer is coming in January. They've said this a million times on multiple platforms. Yet, here you are asking when the gameplay is coming. The answers to your questions are available right now, and you don't want to see them for some reason.

Using anecdotal evidence to the tune of "my uncle works at Nintendo" to tell one of the publishers that you know how her job works better than she does is more than a bit absurd.