This game is apparently NOT dead!

  • @Godric@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Short article with more information:

    https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-has-been-quietly-rebuilt-by-dear-esther-developer-the-chinese-room-with-different-gameplay-mechanics-and-rpg-systems/

    TLDR: Dev is The Chinese Room, developer of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. They still won’t say what happened with Hardsuit Labs, the OG dev, and the mechanics and system will be totally different.

    Instead of a thin-blood (new, weak vampire), you’re an Elder (old, scary vampire) fresh from torpor (long VampNap).

    • ithas
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      1510 months ago

      Neither of those had any NPCs, did they? I’m not familiar with Dear Esther but from looking it up it says you just explore environments, and I remember Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture having like, vague humanoid models but I don’t recall them being animated, could be wrong.

      • @Godric@lemmy.world
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        310 months ago

        I personally haven’t heard of either before, and that’s concerning if they don’t have experience with NPCs.

        • @suspecm@lemmy.world
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          210 months ago

          I have nothing but Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs to judge them on and based on that, they are very good at writing mysteries and cryptic stuff but they seem to be lighter on the gameplay side. From that, the writing will be good but hopefully it will have any gameplay.

    • @escapesamsara
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      1110 months ago

      Instead of a thin-blood, you’re an Elder fresh from torpor.

      Welp, there goes the exploration of the world factor.

      • @ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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        1210 months ago

        Depends on how long the torpor lasted. If it was for a couple of centuries, a lot of has changed in 200 years. The player is going to have to find out the new political players, guns, vehicles, new clans, etc.

        If the player was in torpor for a couple of decades, yeah the world exploration will be dull.

      • @Godric@lemmy.world
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        810 months ago

        True, it’ll make it more confusing for new people just now picking up the IP, and telling them to play a 20-year old game for context is a hard sell.

        As someone who already played VTMB, I’m excited to be playing as an Elder for once instead of the standard fledgling.

      • @Red_October@lemmy.world
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        210 months ago

        No no see you just woke up from Torpor, so yeah you’re an elder, but also you’re super weak, and nobody knows who you are so you won’t get any respect until you’ve done some basic bitch errands. But EVENTUALLY, you’ll be powerful and respected.

        Yeah this “Elder fresh from torpor” angle just completely killed my excitement, shit sounds so… bland now. So typical.

    • Alto
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      610 months ago

      I played the shit out of Blacklight: Retribution back in the day, and saw the whole transition from zombie studios to buildblock to hardsuit labs. The devs were really active on various forums, and all seemed like great people.

      I’ve been waiting so long for them to release something new, but this sort of game was a complete departure from anything they worked on (as the main dev) in the past. I’m not shocked that it didn’t worked out.

      • Endorkend
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        710 months ago

        To be fair, an indie like Coffee Stain went from an absolute dumbass meme game like Goat Simulator to something crazy complex like Satisfactory.

        You can’t really judge what a young studio is capable of.

        As for you not being a thinblood in this game, you’re named as being a thorped elder waking up, so there could be RPG mechanics of you growing as you get stronger from waking up.

        And they don’t say which elder you are, so you could wake up as any type of elder, even a Nosferatu.

        • @Elohim@lemm.ee
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          110 months ago

          Coffee stain went from an absolute dumbass meme game like Goat Simulator

          This is Sunctuary erasure.