Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Got an email back from Paradox Store's customer support. They're cancelling my pre-order of the Physical PC Collector's Edition and giving me a refund.

It was a nice CE with a cool statue and stuff, but if I don't think the game is gonna be good anymore, then I don't want all the cool stuff that comes with a shitty game.

Of course, the game could end up good, but my confidence is low at this point.

Now I'll just wait for a deep discount during a Steam sale if people say the game is good. Crisis averted.

 

You should only preorder a game if you really want the collectible shit it comes with and you have that kinda money to waste on it. Don't preorder a game in any form and then think it might turn out good. Preorders are for exclusive plastic things.

Otherwise, assume every game is shit until proven otherwise

 

I mean, I wanted the collectible shit at the time, but now I don't want the collectible shit. If I didn't want the collectible shit when I thought it would be a good game, I would've pre-ordered it on Steam digitally.

 

Why pre-order though? I guess you could cancel anytime before launch but wouldn't it make sense to wait even just a day or two after launch to see if there is a reason to wait and not spend 60 on the game?

 

I think you're underestimating how big a Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines fan I am.

EDIT: Just for reference, it's my 4th favorite game after Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Fallout and Wasteland, in that order.

 

No pre-orders mean no pre-orders though. There are no exceptions.
Do not preorder, ever.
Especially not for a box of trash they made for a penny so they could up the price to 100 bucks for a Collector's Edition.

[edit]

Oh and I was already not going to get this game cause of the Epic exclusivity deal (or did that not work out?) so for me this doesn't change much but could change my entire approach to Paradox. Depending on the reasoning and who they replace him with I might just have to avoid their games like the plague which I hope won't be the case.

 

There was never an Epic exclusivity deal on this game.

 

Vampires are fucking cringe.

 

Looking it up now yeah you're right, I have no idea where the hell I got that information from.
Well in that case I'm glad I was wrong and can take scratch it off my list.

However with the Mitsoda situaiton... It depends on what happened.
Him getting fired off of the project is bad and all but a narrative lead? If the game is in its late stages wouldn't the narrative design and writing already be done for the most part? So the game could still be a Mitsoda game and anyone who wanted that will get that. It just means he got fired. Which is... Weird, to say the least. I wouldn't buy it at full price anyway so I'm waiting a long time for this to go on sale proper and by that time I will probably have the information I need to know just what the hell happened and whether I want to support such a organizational change or not.

 

It seems more likely than ever, that when this game releases I'll get to use my smug "I was right all along" face for a while.

But who knows, I might be surprised for the positive. But all the alarm signs I had in the past just went off even harder after these latest news.

 

They could cut a lot of content to make sure the game releases sooner rather than later. Also Paradox is known for cutting up their games into expensive DLC packs. Perhaps they wanted that for this game and Brian disagreed and that's why he's axed. All speculation on my part, of course. But a leopard doesn't usually change their spots.

 

Probably mixing it up with the Outer Worlds, which got an exclusive deal with Epic.

 

Yeah, that was another game I was gonna buy day one (not pre-order) but as soon as they announced EGS exclusivity, I'm pretty much not getting it until it's deeply discounted on Steam for like 75% off or more. EGS can suck it.

 

No reason to. The main game was finished in March and they've been working on sidequests the entire time. Brian was fired for cosmetic reasons about the game not being out 'fast enough' when he had nothing to do with it. The fact it did have an additional several months of development time can only have benefited it tremebndously.

 

And yet, they go and hire Alexandre Mandryka. Which doesn't fill me with confidence, since all the games he has worked on are all action focused and not RPG or narrative focused games.

What I want on a VtM game is narrative, character, world building and a P&P faithful RPG system (as much as possible in a video game). Action and combat is second place.

Also, there is no guarantee that they will not cut or change stuff implemented/written by Brian, now that there's no one there to complain about it. Alexandre will probably have to go through all the game and see what he wants to change, cut off, edit, etc. If he doesn't he will never get the feel or knowledge to make new side quests or content to be implemented. He will also not be able to make his content fit with the one already in the game without doing this.

You're a writer. So imagine if you're writing a novel for 5 years that's supposed to be a sequel to another novel you wrote before. 85-90% of it is done, then someone fires you and hires someone else to take over your novel. Someone that never wrote a novel in the style your one is. What are the chances that the new writer will not change the work you've already done? If it doesn't change anything, what are the chances that his content will fit perfectly in your novel?
I would say that the chances are all very small.

 

I don't think they can faithfully recreate old Bloodlines. They really haven't made games like that in... well, since Bloodlines, basically .

 

What I'm saying is that it's not like this will result in changes to the game. The game was done months ago. This is the beta-testing and bug fixing stage.

I imagine the only goal now is, "FINISH WHAT YOU'RE DOING, PEONS!"

 

It might be that.
But then it's a bit weird they hired Alexandre as Creative Consultant to help in the final stages of development. Like they said here:

Final stages of development doesn't really need a Creative Consultant/Director if no new content is being written for the game.
And as they say there "Alexandre is committed to following the vision that is in place", which really implies that he is writing stuff for the game and maybe changing some previous stuff too. Otherwise they didn't need to say that he is following the vision that's in place already, since he wouldn't be writing, editing or changing anything.

There is also the question on story content DLCs (like expansion DLC). Those will not be written by Brian anymore. If they are written by Alexander, there's that high chance that it will feel out of place compared with the base game.

It's my opinion only, but I think they will have Alexander do a bunch of stuff. Otherwise they wouldn't have hired him.

 

CT Phipps is so naive and fabulously optimistic that it becomes comical. They wouldn't hire someone if the game was already done because that's a waste of money.

Also, citation needed on the game being finished in March, because final stages of development is not being finished.