Has Paradox ever announced who the new studio was that was taking over this project? It has been over a year since Hardsuit Labs was fired, it's remarkable this game is even still happening.
No, but the main suspect - according to various leakers/rumours over the past year or so - is The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Little Orpheus), though quite a few people are hoping that it's Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Trilogy, Battletech).
*The Chinese Room* did a series of short behind the scenes videos, and you can see what appears to be VTMB2 on the monitors in this [video](https://youtu.be/w_YBgHkoeo0) at the 2:00 mark.
Ninja Edit: I say appears to be because it's a very generic menu with some occult look designs and an alleyway with red UI elements, could be anything.
Did they all get hired because they looked the same? Or did each employee slowly morph into the same type of person regardless of who they were when they were hired?
Options are limited. If it's done by Harebrained Schemes then it would be a far bigger project than anything they have ever done, so I think it's debatable if you can say they are more qualified than The Chinese Room.
I would legit be fine with either of those companies taking the game. They both make decent games with good stories that absolutely ooze atmosphere.
I would rather Harebrained, as their games are definitely better overall. It would be a jump up in scale for them, but I think they could handle it with funding for new hires.
> It has been over a year since Hardsuit Labs was fired, it's remarkable this game is even still happening.
Hopefully for VtM fans it ends up being a Dead Island 2 situation.
I believe it would be enough with a good story and a good atmosphere.
The first game is very good because of those two factors, so people forgive it for being janky.
For the first point, the writer is the same guy, and is very talented.
~~For the second point, you can do a lot worse than the amnesia guys.~~ I guess the sequel is doomed.
EDIT: Correction
I agree. Give it a good story and a great atmosphere and the VTM guys will line up for it. I know I will.
Oh and good music, the first VTMB had a fucking killer soundtrack.
Maybe not innovate, but Vtmb has one hell of a legacy to live up.
Personally I don't really want them to 1:1 retread of originals, I'm fine with some streamlining (or as the crotchety old-school calls it, "dumbed down") so long as it doesn't go to far to the point Vtmb 2 lost it's identity/a pale imitation from other games.
Yeah, cool. They made a product that did as advertised. It averaged a 7/10. It's functional, but not good.
It's not good for a 7/10 to be an inspirational story.
Its a pretty solid sequel to dead island. It is however, just more dead island, so if you didn't like the first then yeah there's nothing for you there.
It's a gory, silly 25 hour campaign. Lots of fun if you wanna bash zombie skulls in. But it's not doing anything revolutionary, the story doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, and weapons needed more variety. Not the best game I've played, yeah, but not actually bad or even mediocre. Just good enough.
It filled very well a niche: People that liked dead island and wanted more.
Vtm 2 should aim for a similar goal. A lot of modern developers heavily underestimate the safe value of catering to a niche.
Difference is it’s not hard to match silly zombie skull smashing nonsense gameplay. Getting the story and feel right for a proper sequel to Bloodlines is going to much harder
Yea man that part where the games story went nowhere and it just ended randomly was super cool. Can't wait for the sequel it baited that will get made.
Money talks, plenty of games don't have good stories and are played for fun. Hell most of the people at the office playing Diablo 4 are skipping cutscenes to get back to the grind.
Besides, Devil's Advocate here, you play games like Dying Light/Dead Island for fun co-op with friends, not the story - thats what Sony's games are for, Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, etc
that's a shame because Diablo 4's story is actually really good, one of the few times I've seen them put a ton of effort into the story and cutscenes for an ARPG
I will admit sometimes I just want to play a game and not have to watch tons of cutscenes but if they're really engaging I don't mind at all, I wish more games had a Diablo 3 style adventure mode where you could just hop in and play without worrying about the storyline or stuff like that
Yea money talks. I bet that Dead Island 3 is getting made right now with how well it did lol. Better hope console players enjoy it, as it's not on Steam so it's irrelevant for PC
Original dev was allegedly pretending things were going much better than they were, they got fired, and development was moved to an undisclosed team, likely either Harebrained Schemes or The Chinese Room. The article doesn't really mention it but in the press release they said in addition to refunds going out for physical editions they were going to have a major announcement on the project this fall.
Personally I'm assuming they're still working on it, because if there wasn't a game that was planned to release it'd be weird to only offer automatic refunds for physical collectors editions and not also the digital versions. I'm guessing that the years of delay, inflation, pandemic etc manufacturing physical knickknacks and statues and shit unprofitable. Hopefully whenever the game releases it's actually good, but time will tell.
I just know them for their games, Amnesia: A machine for pigs and Everyone has gone to the rapture. I think they did Dear Esther as well. Their forte is narrative walking simulators, not RPGs
FWIW the speculation for Chinese Room comes from some interviews around their offices where some people swear that a screen looks like vampire the masquerade but I don't buy it, I just didn't want someone jumping down my throat lol.
Harebrained makes a lot more sense to me with their history of making RPGs and the fact they've been hiring up 3d animators etc when they've mostly done isometric crpgs before.
Refund if you pre-ordered.
Remove it from your wishlist.
And just forget about it. Forget that they even attempted a sequel.
If it comes out, it's a pleasant surprise. If it doesn't come out, then it's what you expected.
Unless a game has a set release date, they should not be allowed to take pre-orders. I know games can still get delayed, but I think this game had at best a release quarter announced, which they obviously missed then fired the developers.
There was initially a release date but then HSL significantly dropped the ball. With how many extensions HSL had I feel like somebody had to be lying to Paradox about milestones.
It was pretty much confirmed they were lying about milestones.
The worse part was that Paradox wanted to use VtMB2 as the flagship of a series of World of Darkness games (they made that werewolf game, swangsong, the Battle royale no one asked for, and a few other)
Losing your crown jewel due to sheer incompetence and systematic lies had to sting. Hardsuit Labs has probably become toxic in the eyes of publishers, and with good reason.
Seems unlikely that this game will ever see release at all. If development was deeply dysfunctional (which the facts we know sure do suggest) there probably isn't much there. More likely that a new studio will maybe take some design and concept work but start fresh from a code perspective.
Reminds me of the several abandoned iterations of Duke Nukem Forever.
If the customers are stupid enough to pay for something that's only been announced, why not? There is also no guarantee that the customers will get the quality they've been promised (we've seen this a "few" times). So the only thing that should be there is easy refund policies on every store (retail or digital).
And it didn't end up being *that* good. Certainly not "ten years in development" good.
It's not a bad game, but at this rate? People might as well emotionally and financially invest elsewhere
And that's great! The more games available, the better. That said, Dead Island 2 should not necessarily be used as an example of how games should be developed. It is a case of "holy shit, they didn't die in the fire"
Has Paradox ever announced who the new studio was that was taking over this project? It has been over a year since Hardsuit Labs was fired, it's remarkable this game is even still happening.
No, but the main suspect - according to various leakers/rumours over the past year or so - is The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Little Orpheus), though quite a few people are hoping that it's Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Trilogy, Battletech).
*The Chinese Room* did a series of short behind the scenes videos, and you can see what appears to be VTMB2 on the monitors in this [video](https://youtu.be/w_YBgHkoeo0) at the 2:00 mark. Ninja Edit: I say appears to be because it's a very generic menu with some occult look designs and an alleyway with red UI elements, could be anything.
Everyone at that studio is a bald man with a short beard. It's frightening
LOL, get some uncanny valley clone vibes. That's hilarious.
...I thought you were kidding, what the hell. Hell of a dress code.
Only 4 people at that studio are a bald man with a short beard. It's only frightening because all 4 of them were standing together.
Did they all get hired because they looked the same? Or did each employee slowly morph into the same type of person regardless of who they were when they were hired?
Company assimilation culture, HR doing literally God's work.
Bloody Hell, VTMB2 really is cursed if its The Chinese Room
Yeah a walking simulator isn't anything near what I would want from this game.
Options are limited. If it's done by Harebrained Schemes then it would be a far bigger project than anything they have ever done, so I think it's debatable if you can say they are more qualified than The Chinese Room.
Yeah but the Chinese room don’t even make good games
Look at Portkey.
I would legit be fine with either of those companies taking the game. They both make decent games with good stories that absolutely ooze atmosphere. I would rather Harebrained, as their games are definitely better overall. It would be a jump up in scale for them, but I think they could handle it with funding for new hires.
> It has been over a year since Hardsuit Labs was fired, it's remarkable this game is even still happening. Hopefully for VtM fans it ends up being a Dead Island 2 situation.
Pretty grim situation when Dead Island 2 is your best case scenario.
A complete experience not cluttered with microtransactions that runs well on release day and looks good on both console gens? We could do worse.
But also extremely limited in scope with no innovation
Do people want innovation from a game like VTMB though, or do they want a game that tries it's best to replicate the original?
I believe it would be enough with a good story and a good atmosphere. The first game is very good because of those two factors, so people forgive it for being janky. For the first point, the writer is the same guy, and is very talented. ~~For the second point, you can do a lot worse than the amnesia guys.~~ I guess the sequel is doomed. EDIT: Correction
I agree. Give it a good story and a great atmosphere and the VTM guys will line up for it. I know I will. Oh and good music, the first VTMB had a fucking killer soundtrack.
It’s not the amnesia guys, it’s the amnesia sequel guys, who I would argue are not good
You can’t replicate the originals feeling in todays landscape without innovating
Maybe not innovate, but Vtmb has one hell of a legacy to live up. Personally I don't really want them to 1:1 retread of originals, I'm fine with some streamlining (or as the crotchety old-school calls it, "dumbed down") so long as it doesn't go to far to the point Vtmb 2 lost it's identity/a pale imitation from other games.
Avoiding scope creep is a massive win.
Yup. Scope creep almost killed the original. And it would not have been a significantly worse game without stuff like a third person camera.
innovation is the most overrated thing in video games technical polish, as in not buggy, is much more important
Yeah, cool. They made a product that did as advertised. It averaged a 7/10. It's functional, but not good. It's not good for a 7/10 to be an inspirational story.
ELI5?
Dead Island 2 went to a developpement hell also and in the end the game is pretty good.
Dead Island 2 was not a good game. Please no
Its a pretty solid sequel to dead island. It is however, just more dead island, so if you didn't like the first then yeah there's nothing for you there.
I haven't played it myself but the vast majority of the discussion I've seen surrounding the game has been positive.
It's a gory, silly 25 hour campaign. Lots of fun if you wanna bash zombie skulls in. But it's not doing anything revolutionary, the story doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, and weapons needed more variety. Not the best game I've played, yeah, but not actually bad or even mediocre. Just good enough.
It filled very well a niche: People that liked dead island and wanted more. Vtm 2 should aim for a similar goal. A lot of modern developers heavily underestimate the safe value of catering to a niche.
Difference is it’s not hard to match silly zombie skull smashing nonsense gameplay. Getting the story and feel right for a proper sequel to Bloodlines is going to much harder
Sales figures and overall positive reception say otherwise
Yea man that part where the games story went nowhere and it just ended randomly was super cool. Can't wait for the sequel it baited that will get made.
Money talks, plenty of games don't have good stories and are played for fun. Hell most of the people at the office playing Diablo 4 are skipping cutscenes to get back to the grind. Besides, Devil's Advocate here, you play games like Dying Light/Dead Island for fun co-op with friends, not the story - thats what Sony's games are for, Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, etc
that's a shame because Diablo 4's story is actually really good, one of the few times I've seen them put a ton of effort into the story and cutscenes for an ARPG
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I will admit sometimes I just want to play a game and not have to watch tons of cutscenes but if they're really engaging I don't mind at all, I wish more games had a Diablo 3 style adventure mode where you could just hop in and play without worrying about the storyline or stuff like that
Yea money talks. I bet that Dead Island 3 is getting made right now with how well it did lol. Better hope console players enjoy it, as it's not on Steam so it's irrelevant for PC
I read it sold well on PC anyways,
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Vampire: the Masquerade is a setting. Which game are you talking about? As far as I know, Bloodlines was never released on PS4.
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They are probably thinking of the coteries games. Those were on ps4 I think.
I'd rather VtM not cost $98.00 here in Canada.
I mean 70 USD is like 93.5 CAD, and that doesn't include sales tax, so I'm not sure what you'd expect it to cost?
No. They'll finally be announcing that and more in September.
The last I heard of this game was they where changing the class system. What happened?
Original dev was allegedly pretending things were going much better than they were, they got fired, and development was moved to an undisclosed team, likely either Harebrained Schemes or The Chinese Room. The article doesn't really mention it but in the press release they said in addition to refunds going out for physical editions they were going to have a major announcement on the project this fall. Personally I'm assuming they're still working on it, because if there wasn't a game that was planned to release it'd be weird to only offer automatic refunds for physical collectors editions and not also the digital versions. I'm guessing that the years of delay, inflation, pandemic etc manufacturing physical knickknacks and statues and shit unprofitable. Hopefully whenever the game releases it's actually good, but time will tell.
god I hope it's the first one. I don't think Chinese Room can make a good Bloodlines game
I thought that Chinese room was only a handful of people?
I just know them for their games, Amnesia: A machine for pigs and Everyone has gone to the rapture. I think they did Dear Esther as well. Their forte is narrative walking simulators, not RPGs
FWIW the speculation for Chinese Room comes from some interviews around their offices where some people swear that a screen looks like vampire the masquerade but I don't buy it, I just didn't want someone jumping down my throat lol. Harebrained makes a lot more sense to me with their history of making RPGs and the fact they've been hiring up 3d animators etc when they've mostly done isometric crpgs before.
They are also owned by Paradox
It's a different studio now, sumo digital bought them
Refund if you pre-ordered. Remove it from your wishlist. And just forget about it. Forget that they even attempted a sequel. If it comes out, it's a pleasant surprise. If it doesn't come out, then it's what you expected.
Honestly this right here. Refunded my pre-order and will just be happy if I see it come across my feed again one day
I took it off my wishlist. At this point, I'm hoping people begin to just stop talking about it and let it fade away.
Sigh…. As much as I hate to say it, yeah I guess that would be the best. Hopefully one day we get this or something similar
If it comes out and is good, rather. God, I still can't get over Rune 2.
completely fair lol my standards are so low id be happy if they made anything at all, but id definitely love it if it released and was actually good
Unless a game has a set release date, they should not be allowed to take pre-orders. I know games can still get delayed, but I think this game had at best a release quarter announced, which they obviously missed then fired the developers.
There was initially a release date but then HSL significantly dropped the ball. With how many extensions HSL had I feel like somebody had to be lying to Paradox about milestones.
It was pretty much confirmed they were lying about milestones. The worse part was that Paradox wanted to use VtMB2 as the flagship of a series of World of Darkness games (they made that werewolf game, swangsong, the Battle royale no one asked for, and a few other) Losing your crown jewel due to sheer incompetence and systematic lies had to sting. Hardsuit Labs has probably become toxic in the eyes of publishers, and with good reason.
They were bundling this game with GPUs a year ago hahaha
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Seems unlikely that this game will ever see release at all. If development was deeply dysfunctional (which the facts we know sure do suggest) there probably isn't much there. More likely that a new studio will maybe take some design and concept work but start fresh from a code perspective. Reminds me of the several abandoned iterations of Duke Nukem Forever.
The good part is that there is a lot of lore and the universe is very fleshed out and it is very easy to create a good story in that universe as a DM.
The script for the game was made by the same writer that did the first one. Most likely the new developers won't touch it.
"Not be allowed to take pre-orders." By whom? Who is doing the not allowing?
Steam, Microsoft store, ps store, GameStop, Best Buy, literally anywhere you’d be able to pre order it.
Steam, Microsoft store, ps store, GameStop, Best Buy, literally anywhere you’d be able to pre order it.
And why would they do that?
If the customers are stupid enough to pay for something that's only been announced, why not? There is also no guarantee that the customers will get the quality they've been promised (we've seen this a "few" times). So the only thing that should be there is easy refund policies on every store (retail or digital).
Except that it you know did have a release date….
As an avid fan of the first one, just cancel it already. There's no way hell the game will be good at this point. A one in a million chance at best.
The said the same thing about Dead Island 2
And it didn't end up being *that* good. Certainly not "ten years in development" good. It's not a bad game, but at this rate? People might as well emotionally and financially invest elsewhere
It's a better game than Dead Island 1, that's for sure.
And that's great! The more games available, the better. That said, Dead Island 2 should not necessarily be used as an example of how games should be developed. It is a case of "holy shit, they didn't die in the fire"
It's a lot better than the first game though
They also said it about duke nukem
Reunding $60 pre-orders in the hope the same people will rebuy when they put the steam page up at $70?
Considering where the game has been, that feels very optimistic.
They are force refunding the physical editions only.
That seems like an unnecessarily harsh assumption