And I was getting so hopeful after Mitsoda got canned and the game got pushed back indefinetely. Auteur theory is a fuck, Mitsoda has basic gen-x’er humor and I’m glad he’s gone. Why the fuck did they decide to pivot into this Fallout 4 type dreg though? The main character is going to have an established backstory and everything.
Why make an RPG if you don’t want players to role play?
The big problem with a fully voiced protagonist in an RPG is that it can nearly double the amount of conversational voice acting you need to record and it’s this big thing that logistically locks in everything around it. It’s a huge expenditure of resources for very little benefit that incentivizes simplifying dialogue and quest design to accommodate it.
It’s not necessarily bad in and of itself, like looking back at Mass Effect people generally remember Jennifer Hale’s performance as fem!Shep more fondly than, well, almost anything else in the series’ writing apart from Mordin Solace’s story and singing, but it’s a worrying use of resources for an already struggling project.
like fuck it does. silent protags are way more immersive because the voice in my head sounds like me and can have 11 slightly different ways to say “fuck off” instead of being limited to yes, yes, sarcastic yes, and no, but maybe later.
“but but but how else will we railroad you into our lack of being able to write an actually compelling story?”
Every time some news comes out about this game I get less and less excited. I’ve already removed it from my steam wishlist. I’ll wait until the game is heavily discounted.
I delisted it after I heard they shitcanned basically all the people who worked the original Bloodlines-- I got no reason to believe Bloodlines 2 will be anything that made Bloodlines 1 worth the time spent.
What’s a good game in this series? Gonna try it one day.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and mod tf out of it on your second playthrough
Do it on the first tbh
The original still holds up generally, though it is very horny
and it has a lot of “haha this character is ND look how weird and wacky they are” moments, and I think a little bit of transphobia as well? If you can stomach that and some godawful combat you’ve got a decent RPG. It scratches an itch I haven’t found covered by other games - Vampyr tries, but misses sadly.Get it on GOG.com and not steam though. Otherwise I can recommend the TTRPG, the newest edition is pretty fun. It doesn’t have to be edgy, people just make it that way.
Isn’t the newest edition the one that shucked a WHOLE BUNCH of vamp clans from the story entirely, necessitating the split between ‘old World of Darkness’ and ‘new World of Darkness’? 'Cause I’m just sayin; if it won’t let me have my Malkavian I’ve ran for nearly 17 years as he was intended to be played, I don’t want it-- and be damned if I run him as a Ventrue offshoot
Technically, oWoD/nWoD (officially it’s WoD/CoD) are different worlds with different games.
That said, V5 was and attempt to repackage Vampire the Requiem from CoD for WoD audience and it shits on the previous editions so much it basically is a new game too. Same with Werewolf, I hear. I expect nothing good to come of M5 at this point…
P.S. Malks are still a clan, but Dementation is an amalgam(what used to be combination disciplines) of Dominate with Obfuscate for some Caine forsaken reason.
I gave up on bloodlines 2 a while ago, but every time I see news like this come out it still makes me sad. At least some of the VNs they’ve put out have been fun, but it feels like the Bloodlines series is cursed.
I gave up, then I got interested when Paradox started releasing some news. It sounded like they were making something good with it, then I started getting disappointed agin.
What watching a game development is like these days
I’m confused as to why you’re happy that the guy who is the only reason the game was being made at all got fired with zero explanation
Fair confusion, I think it might be due to a difference of perception. As far as I’m aware Mitsoda wasn’t the only reason the game was being made - He got hired on to develop it after the decision to make a new game had been made. He got fired due to constant delays, changes in scope and narrative, and (as far as I can glean) due to being a shitty boss. It’s a lot of accusations hidden behind NDAs and the like though, so there’s no real way to know one way or another.
In general I am just very sceptic of any “auteur” when it comes to games. Especially when said lead has a track record of making bloated and never-ending projects.
Could you post the article link instead of a screenshot next time? Also, yes, it’s going to be ruined by execs who have never played a game since they’re adults and think they understand the market.
Stop caring so much about games that aren’t out.
It’s a piece of fiction I’m excited about, and I find this news interesting. If you don’t then you don’t have to interact with the post.
I unironically take game delays as a positive, better delayed than broken on release. Though often the delay is due to the “auteur” director constantly changing his mind (and it’s always a he). When I read the director got kicked and the game was delayed I saw it as a real good thing - They were going to take their time or whatever.
So why the fuck did they decide to do this shit?
BG3 has voice acting and it’s easily on par with V:tM Bloodlines.
Idk if that’s going to save this too-edgy-by-half remix of 90s-era punk horror. But it’s not the kiss of death you guys are making it out to be.
There is a difference between having voice acting and having the player character having voiced lines too. Tbh I don’t know what makes the latter worse. But usually when the player character has voice acting it is not received well.
In BG3, your character does not have voiced lines even if you pick a premade.
Tbh I don’t know what makes the latter worse
There’s the loss of immersion / the way they might pronounce stuff not matching what you as the player feel emotionally but the main thing is you have to record every sentence for every single dialog in the game. From the big bad buy to the random NPC with a two-sentences exchange. If you don’t the lack of voice acting compared to the other dialogues will be felt. This costs a lot, and can even result in decreasing the variety of the PC’s dialog.
Also anyone wanting to make complex mods will either have to have a new voice for the PC for their mod; or have them be silent, which will again be jarring.
Ah, fair enough.
Yeah like the other person said, the comparison with Fallout 4 is being made for a reason. The point is a voiced protagonist, not voice acting as a whole
Voice acting is great! Though I’m sure there’s some oldhead out there that thinks vidya gaems went to shit when the first NPC started speaking, and I’d love to meet that guy.
My issue is with implementing voice-acting on the player character in an RPG. It’s hard to pull off, it immediately limits possibilities and interpretation of the character and it often leads to a sub-par dialogue system in my experience. It can be done, ME had some good moments, but it’s much harder, and ME had a premise that allowed for locking in the interpretation of the character beforehand (Shepard was going to be some rugged militarist no matter what due to the backstory). They might pull it off with VTMB2 too, I just really doubt it, and I’m going to hate being locked into the authors interpretation of the character.I guess. At some point, I’m just looking for a good story with a nice polished veneer.
More annoyed that, in the year of our Lord 2023, its this fucking hard to reskin ME/Fallout 3 as Gothic Horror and get it out the door.
I’m just looking for a good story with a nice polished veneer.
Yeah, me too. Disco Elysium is a fantastic game, and it is (in a lot of ways) very rigid about the character you’re playing. It’s just fantastically written and beautiful to experience, and that’s the best I can hope for.
Not all games can deliver that though, and I’ll gladly take a mid story with lots of possibility for roleplay/exploration different approaches and the like. I just have a hard time enjoying a middling story that is also rigid in its presentation of its character, especially when that story is presented thru an RPG.More annoyed that, in the year of our Lord 2023, its this fucking hard to reskin ME/Fallout 3 as Gothic Horror and get it out the door.
:yea: I really just wanted some cool locations, some fun powers and some neat side-quests. It seems like every group that’s been involved thinks it has to make some Epic Saga or some shit. Just give me some Prototype but with more RPG elements.
Honestly, the more I think about it… Can the folks that did Pathologic 2 put together a V:tM game? Because I feel like they’re both on the same frequency.
That would rule
Worse dialogue than in F4? Not sure I’m ready for that…
