Haha, it’s rather silly isn’t it?
Some other people noticed that the game’s lead producer, Christian Sclütter, was also fired in August. Here he is with Brian talking about the project’s origins with No Clip.
Oh so one of the guys that was fired was actually one of the guys that pitched the game in the first place…
Co-writer, designer, and one of the key public faces for the game, Cara Ellison, has removed any mention of Bloodlines 2 from her Twitter account and moved back to Scotland last month.
Man, this game is hemorrhaging creative leads. I’m thinking the absolute best-case scenario is a fairly generic action-RPG but with vampires in it, and thus lacking most of the stuff that made the original so likeable.
This has gone from something I was really looking forward to playing to something I doubt I’ll ever purchase, assuming it is ever released in the first place.
Why do I have a feeling the postmortem will be more interesting than the game.
If they state a later date they look like some sort of indie dev and people forget about it. Even if fans are frustrated by the delay, they’re still reading about and discussing the game.
Plus the news drives ad revenue at IGN, Gamespot, wherever.
Psychology.
PC Gamer confirmed with Paradox that she’s out!
“We can confirm that Cara Ellison has decided to leave Hardsuit Labs and is no longer working on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2,” a Paradox spokesperson said. “Cara brought fresh ideas to the project and many of her contributions will be present in the game launching next year. We thank her for her work on Bloodlines 2 and wish her the best in all of her future endeavors.”
So, uh, who’s writing it now? Because I don’t believe the spiel that the game is fully written already.
Man…I really hope they don’t wind up screwing this one up. This is my most-anticipated game in years, and I just REALLY want it to be good.
And honestly, it doesn’t even have to “live up” to the original (although I’d like it to be a bit more stable!) – capturing the spirit and being a DECENT game will probably scratch the itch I have. Although obviously, I’d love for it to be everything that we all want it to be.
I hope it is as good as you want it to be, even if I find that increasingly unlikely.
Yeah I’m becoming increasingly more concerned, as well.
I’m jonesing for it so bad right now, all I need it to be is “not a disaster.” Sadly, even that’s not looking so good…
The first one also killed a studio.
It did, that’s true. It was released as kind of a buggy mess, although it got a bit better through patches. I didn’t play it until a bit later, and by then it was in a pretty good state.
Ultimately, though, the final product was…pretty unique, and honestly, I loved it. I never expected to see a sequel, but dammit, now I’m all excited about it (since the E3 announcement last year!)
Bloodlines 1 is a great game but the second half felt like it was developed by a different team. It was so combat heavy, and not in a good way. Hopefully the sequel doesn’t make the same mistake.
All I remember about combat in VTM: Bloodlines is finding a katana and stealthing around impaling people from behind. It was beautiful.
That, and…I think it was Celerity? The skill that makes you run real fast. That was quite useful as well.
I almost want a replay…
Did you remember the endgame combat, where the game throws wave after wave of enemies your way? All of a sudden I felt like I was playing Doom. And if you neglected to put enough points into combat skills (melee, ranged), it can be a slog getting through it. I had to cheat my way past that female boss in Chinatown. I still don’t know how to defeat her!
Man it’s been…a very long time. I played a very stealthy melee-heavy fast-running killer. I got that katana (I think it was in Chinatown) and combat became MUCH easier.
I do remember it getting crazy there at the end, vaguely, but I know I managed to beat the game a couple of times. Only place that ever gave me trouble was some bug that caused a certain mission to not be completable, somewhere…in a cave, with a boat and a timer…I don’t remember. I had to cheat past that one play-through, but other than that, I never ran into anything that was a deal-breaker.
Apparently I don’t already own a (readily-available) digital version, and thus am not currently reinstalling it. That’s the only reason, though.
Not sure it’s worth the $20 they want for this very moment. We’ll see if I’m still craving it in a week. :-)
I got it from GoG a while back for next to nothing. I liked it when it first came out, but my attempt at a replay ended when I got frustrated with some combat sequence somewhere against something.
True, but I don’t recall it being the second half of the game. Rather near the run up to the end-game, at some point after the Holloywood sewers of endless despair…it’s combat all the way down. There is no other way.