So is this whole thing just a bigger scale iteration of the tension in the original VTM:Bloodlines design between RPG/stealth/dialogue/non-combat gameplay versus shooter-O-rama? I still remember the vast disappointment that many RPG types like myself and Angie G felt back in the day when we got deeper into the original Bloodlines and encountered the transition from dialogue-centric gameplay to Shooter Shooter Shooter (Hollywood sewers, I’m looking at you).
That could explain things if so.
Could be that. Vampires do kind of lend themselves to the shooter genre with super speed, strength and various magic stuff. The persuasive, charming and manipulative side of vampires is definitely more challenging to portray in a first person game. To my knowledge Bloodlines 1 is the closest anyone got but it wasn’t flawless by any means.
My guess is HardSuit Games way over-promised what they could deliver, came back and said they’d need more money, and Paradox said you’re out. I thought the game was in serious trouble last year when they released their promo video for the game. It was ripped straight out of the Joker and a few other movies and was not the ambience or style one expected (and didn’t want) for the title.
My theory is that Paradox’ internal tolerance for “close enough” went way down after observing the Cyberpunk launch.
The moment they promised verticality with climbing and flying around I thought that sounded insanely ambitious. To create any meaningful number of locations you can reach with this mechanic without making 99.99% of the cities windows inexplicably inaccessible would be a huge challenge.
I would probably go for a Dead State 2 over a VTM Bloodline 2 at this point. Designers are pretty much writers. I mean there is a lot of transferable skills there.
Although I really couldn’t care less about the general mechanics and desires of modern players…whatever the hell that means. When Demon’s Souls came out, I can imagine Sony US rejecting to publish it on similar grounds.
This Paradox rep all but confirms what you were thinking. The shift could’ve been quite abrupt. I can’t wait to read the inevitable behind the scenes scoop on this game.
“Bloodlines 2 is going to be fully transferred to another team. Hardsuit Labs isn’t going to be responsible for development anymore. There’s going to be a new team onboarded on that. What kind of a team has not been announced yet because of the legal reasons. Everything needs to be on paper before Paradox can legally announce this is happening and who it is.”
When I was at Sierra we took SWAT 4 away from our internal studio and gave it to Irrational.
Whoa, I never knew it was once an internal project. Did Irrational use any of the stuff you guys had done?
That was the plan, but I’m not sure if they actually did. It was supposed to be a 3-4 month project but ended up being much longer. You can’t just hand someone else’s code to a new developer and assume they’ll get up to speed immediately.
Edit: I think they also ended up switching to the Unreal Engine, which took additional time.
This was a great decision. Irrational did themselves proud with SWAT 4.
You can tell at exactly the point when Obsidian was really running out of time/resources. Copy-pasta environments and repetitive shooting with nary a dialogue in sight.
Obsidian? Do you mean Troika?
Yep. I get em mixed up.
Dontnod probably has no interest in working on a licensed IP. Techland has forgotten how to actually ship a game, so I don’t think Paradox would take that chance with an already troubled project. Maybe Larian? They seems like a one game at a time shop though.
Yager, Sumo Digital, Spiders?
Spiders is probably too small a studio. But it so happens that other studios of the same company have been working on two World of Darkness licensed games. One of them, “Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood”, was just released a couple of weeks ago with Metascore of… umm… 57%. Maybe not.
Man, I’d love to see a modernized Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
I have had this thought so many times. That would be very high on my wish list.
Right next to V:TM-B, actually, so, ummm…
Unsurprisingly, layoffs are hitting Hardsuit Labs:
Who needs writers for an RPG anyway?
Well, they aren’t doing a RPG anymore, that’s what the layoffs are about.
Yeah, GMG refunded my preorder in store credit. That’ll teach me never to preorder again, only the very few playable early access games and kickstarters.