What’s Next for Bloodlines 2

[RagnarokCzD]

reworked male model

Question:
Am i the only one who would appreciate if they would on the contrary rework female model, and used current one as a male?

 

[Necromass]

Question:
Am i the only one who would appreciate if they would on the contrary rework female model, and used current one as a male?

The most likely reason we haven't had customization dev diary until now is that they are likely putting more effort into making phyre less default Shepard and more your shepard.

Finally, some news about release date. It is no surprise at all.

Hope they can make the game into something good, and maybe do as they say, listen to the community (ahem, main character name, ahem).

Discord seems to be indicating that phyre is just an alias as "The Nomad " is the main title with hints that we might make a new name for out self during the game, who knows mbh its unironically something stupid fabian suggests and phyre just rolls with it not knowing anything better whos going to tell and elder there names stupid.

Hopefully we can get many titles like swtor did for the inquisitor class there darth names was determined by your choices / alingment.

I also wish we could have a thread to track all these discord dev posts they offer a lot of information that most people are going to miss out on because discord is a terrible platform for discussion.

 

[Dr. B]

The most likely reason we haven't had customization dev diary until now is that they are likely putting more effort into making phyre less default Shepard and more your shepard.

View attachment 1177767
Discord seems to be indicating that phyre is just an alias as "The Nomad " is the main title with hints that we might make a new name for out self during the game, who knows mbh its unironically something stupid fabian suggests and phyre just rolls with it not knowing anything better whos going to tell and elder there names stupid.

Hopefully we can get many titles like swtor did for the inquisitor class there darth names was determined by your choices / alingment.

I also wish we could have a thread to track all these discord dev posts they offer a lot of information that most people are going to miss out on because discord is a terrible platform for discussion.

Ok I genuinely did not understand a word of that Discord post.
I mean all Dev Diaries and communication has referred to the protagonist as a vampire with the unisex name Phyre.

Is the protagonist now to be called "The Vampire formerly known as Phyre"?
It doesn't help much if Phyre is just what he/she/it is called and not the real name, it would still be the in-game name for crying out loud.

 

[Jia Xu]

Ok I genuinely did not understand a word of that Discord post.
I mean all Dev Diaries and communication has referred to the protagonist as a vampire with the unisex name Phyre.

Is the protagonist now to be called "The Vampire formerly known as Phyre"?
It doesn't help much if Phyre is just what he/she/it is called and not the real name, it would still be the in-game name for crying out loud.

Tabletop lore time:

Elder vampires spend hundreds of years accumulating enemies and an equal amount of time learning how to evade them. It is very common for Elders to disappear and take on fake identities, forcing their enemies to start all over again in their hunts. "Phyre" is one of those fake identities and it is the character's most recent one. She will be Phyre until it becomes more convenient to become someone else.

A famous example of this would be the medieval Gangrel elder, Qarakh, disappearing for centuries and then reappearing under the name Jalan-Aajav. Jalan joined the Sabbat and not even they know who he really is. As for who Phyre really is, that's for us to determine. The developers have said that it is up to the player to build the canon for Phyre's past.

 

[Azar]

Is the protagonist now to be called "The Vampire formerly known as Phyre"?

No, I think what the post means is that "Phyre" is the name that our protagonist has chosen for this time and age. Its not their "true" name. The game will still refer to Phyre as Phyre since its the name our protagonist wants to portray themselves as.

 

[Pyoro]

It's a typical "dev comment", unfortunately (of course, context unknown ^^). Can't just come out and say "it won't be used", or "it will be used". No, we must give an answer that's vaguely placative but that can mean anything from "it'll come up rarely" to "it'll come up all the time but it's not real" to "it'll dynamically change" to anything you can basically imagine.

Who knows why; but it's that communication thing again. Might as well not say anything.


All that being said the modern trend of obsessively addressing protagonists by "titles" I'm not a fan of either. Modern BioWare does it aaaall the time and it's what I'd describe as "pretty cringe" ...

 

[Jia Xu]

It's a typical "dev comment", unfortunately (of course, context unknown ^^). Can't just come out and say "it won't be used", or "it will be used". No, we must give an answer that's vaguely placative but that can mean anything from "it'll come up rarely" to "it'll come up all the time but it's not real" to "it'll dynamically change" to anything you can basically imagine.

Who knows why; but it's that communication thing again. Might as well not say anything.


All that being said the modern trend of obsessively addressing protagonists by "titles" I'm not a fan of either. Modern BioWare does it aaaall the time and it's what I'd describe as "pretty cringe" ...

There's a reason why you've noticed that every company does this. Situations change. Games change over development. They don't want to make any promises with anything less than 100% certainty that they can keep them. If something beyond their control does come up that causes them to have to break a promise then all of the people fueled by hysteria will screech "BUT YOU PROMISED!!!!"

 

[Pyoro]

(...)

First of all, "typical" isn't "every". "Project Caesar" is, what, 3 clicks away. You can compare the thoroughness of their DDs and answers to user questions compared to this game here, if you need convincing, and that's just the convenient next-door-example.

Secondly, this isn't some "how long will the game be" or some interpretative question; it's also not a question early on in development where it's unclear yet how the game will turn out precisely. It's about the protagonist's name. If they don't know when the DD claims the game was ready to be shipped in a few months, they just want to account for community feedback and have more time to polish, and they don't know how the name is used, then ... what? That's just not plausible.

Thirdly. Everyone hates the name. Even if you piss off people by saying something you won't make anything worse, so really, no point playing coy. ^^

 

[AngryHitsuji]

more time between testing and launch, ensuring we release the game when it’s ready

That's what the corpo suits said about Cyberpunk and we all know how that turned out.

and Skylines 2.

adjust certain areas, such as Fabien, and incorporate other community feedback. We will also use the time to expand the game’s story

It doesn't sound much like it's actually finished and being "polished". Rather it sounds like it's still in development and will be release by the middle of next year no matter what.

 

[Azar]

But we have some positive sign

That's what the corpo suits said about Cyberpunk and we all know how that turned out.

Yeah, 100% better than what it would have if they had pushed it out earlier. It was still a disaster but it wouldve been even more of a one had they not done it.

To be frank, much of the problems were CDPR's own doing. Making a AAA game like that is already nigh impossible, but they tried to pile impossible on top of impossible by trying to accommodate last gen consoles using their own engine. VtMB2 won't have that problem.

As I said earlier, this delay fills me with confidence since
- VtMB2 was not canceled like other projects (Life by you, prison architect 2 etc)
- They believe they have a promising enough game that polish helps make it a successful game. They won't push it out to die.
- That the devs are clearly taking notes of our critique; This makes their claims that we have moved to the "polishing" stage more believable. If we are in polishing stage, I now strongly believe that the game indeed will launch.

 

[MTReddy]

I'm not even going to act surprised. This delay should've been obvious to everyone. That said, more dev time can only be a good thing. I hope a good game will eventually come from this.

 

[Jia Xu]

First of all, "typical" isn't "every". "Project Caesar" is, what, 3 clicks away. You can compare the thoroughness of their DDs and answers to user questions compared to this game here, if you need convincing, and that's just the convenient next-door-example.

Secondly, this isn't some "how long will the game be" or some interpretative question; it's also not a question early on in development where it's unclear yet how the game will turn out precisely. It's about the protagonist's name. If they don't know when the DD claims the game was ready to be shipped in a few months, they just want to account for community feedback and have more time to polish, and they don't know how the name is used, then ... what? That's just not plausible.

Thirdly. Everyone hates the name. Even if you piss off people by saying something you won't make anything worse, so really, no point playing coy. ^^

Comparing Caesar to any other PDX game is pointless. The Caesar board is only like that because a specific developer (Johan Andersson) is pretty much online like 12 hours a day. I've seen him posting there at 1 AM in his own time zone. He does it because he really, really likes to post there. Expecting this from anyone else isn't just absurd, it's quite illegal. There are labour laws. You cannot force people to work all day and then force them to post on the message board all night.

These two examples couldn't be more different, really. EU5 is an upgrade from EU4. Bloodlines 2 is something completely new and they're still exploring exactly how far they want to take it.

What exactly is the issue with the protagonist's name? I understood what they said very clearly. I even went out of my way to explain it in this topic and it was not a complex subject. If you don't understand what they're saying here it's because you don't understand tabletop. The questions being answered on Discord are to a highly educated audience who are very familiar with the setting. What you seem to want here would require them to first explain to you how the entirety of Vampire: The Masquerade works so you can understand all of the in-universe terminology that they use. That's not their job. If you want to learn more you can buy the tabletop books or you can read to read in-game codex entries that will help you. You can also ask me any questions about VTM and I will happily answer them for you but don't pretend there isn't an answer. Attacking the devs because you don't understand the setting clearly isn't fair.

 

[RagnarokCzD]

Discord seems to be indicating that phyre is just an alias as "The Nomad "

Thats what i dont really get ...
"The Nomad" sounds 100% better ... s/he is allready known by that title ... it carry some weight ... and we could be named anyhow we wanted.

How could someone think that this nickname that screams "im 12y old and all good names were allready taken in this online game" would be better. :-/

 

[RagnarokCzD]

all of the people fueled by hysteria will screech "BUT YOU PROMISED!!!!"

By itself your argument seems logical ...

But how would you explain that they dont seem to care that people (as you say) screech things like "BUT YOU PROMISED!!!!" ... for Clans, Character creator, Name, Elif, Guns, tabletop Skills ... and all the other things that were indeed promised by previous developers?

Quite selective aproach isnt it? :-/

 

[Jia Xu]

By itself your argument seems logical ...

But how would you explain that they dont seem to care that people (as you say) screech things like "BUT YOU PROMISED!!!!" ... for Clans, Character creator, Name, Elif, Guns, tabletop Skills ... and all the other things that were indeed promised by previous developers?

Quite selective aproach isnt it? :-/

What do you mean by the previous developers? Hardsuit Labs? Any promises they made don't apply to The Chinese Room. TCR are only responsible for their own pledges.

When HSL's game got cancelled, everything they promised got cancelled with it. It's sad but it happens.

 

[Pyoro]

VtMB2 was not canceled like other projects (Life by you, prison architect 2 etc)

PA2 wasn't cancelled, it's just delayed ... for now. LBY was delayed twice ... then cancelled.

They believe they have a promising enough game that polish helps make it a successful game. They won't push it out to die.

They always say this with delays. Maybe this time it's true. Maybe not. Who knows?

That the devs are clearly taking notes of our critique; This makes their claims that we have moved to the "polishing" stage more believable. If we are in polishing stage, I now strongly believe that the game indeed will launch.

Again, you could see that in LBY too (for example working on character models after people kept complaining, or small changes like the "present" graphics after it was pointed out those don't fit the game). "We just want to ensure that early access is as fun as possible". Still got cancelled.

Of course it's up to you how optimistic you are but what's being said and shown here isn't anything different than what's said and shown about other projects, and they all released or didn't in various states. So the indications to me are just kinda weak ^^;

It'd be a different thing if they were very specific about what they want to accomplish or had large chunks of ingame footage. But we got neither (yet), so game can be anything or nothing.

 

[RagnarokCzD]

Any promises they made don't apply to The Chinese Room.

That is certainly one way to look at it ...
Other would be that adopting the name means adopting baggage that is inseparatedly tied to it.

 

[AngryHitsuji]

"We're delaying it to polish" is marketing corpo-speak.

No marketing department is going to allow their dev team to say "we're delaying it because it's broken, unfinished and still 2 years away from being ready" because that will cause negative headlines, pre-order cancellations and make people lose interest.

And if it were actually finished, the game would be out yet.

So what's left. You can't say it's not ready, but you can't say it's actually finished, so you have to say "it's finished, but it's not ready" which is a contradiction in terms until you come up with "we're actually just polishing it now".

 

[Azar]

"We're delaying it to polish" is marketing corpo-speak.

No, its not JUST that. Every single video game goes through that same period of time. It is therefore not false, you just choose to see it that way. You are purposefully only seeing the worst case scenario here, that there is nothing behind the talk. This seems to me entirely unwarranted considering what the devs have shown us, and a something of a 'you' problem.

Ive played computer games since the early 1980s, Ive seen a million of these projects. While World of darkness has a terrible track record as such, it does not automatically follow that if one developer fails, another will automatically fail. HSL Bloodlines 2 and TCR Bloodlines 2 are independent cases that have almost nothing to do with each other except the name of the project. I have seen nothing that would make me lose faith in TCR version of the game. On the contrary, I'm feeling more confident every time they show new stuff.

I was there when they announced the WoD MMO project. I waited 6 years for it with great expectation, my hopes were crushed when they canceled it after 6+ years of development. (In fact I carried a photo of the sunset from the day of cancellation as my facebook banner for several years, thats how much it hurt me.) I was there when the whole WoD IP was dead and mummified under CCP control for many, many years. I was there when Paradox bought it.

Im happy that we are actually nearing the final straight here. You should be too. I'm hopeful for the first time in ages, even though I have every right to be as jaded and bitter as you.

 

[Pyoro]

No, its not JUST that.

The fact that they are doing stuff like adjusting the role of Fabian - if actually meaningfully true - is basically they themselves saying it's "just" that.

It's also rarely true that development ends neatly with a nice chunk of polishing at the end. That's why we got that absurd crunch at the end of development for so many games in the first place; because stuff gets implemented until the very last minute ^^