That is still so fucking mysterious to me. The Chinese Room makes exactly one type of game, which is “guided-interactive narrative experience” to be diplomatic. The exact opposite of Bloodlines 1. Dear Esther, Ozzy Mandus And The Crankhog Machine, their entire portfolio follows the same formula: strong in art direction, atmosphere, and story; weak in gameplay. Even a hit like Still Wakes The Deep only takes gameplay as far as “throw object to make the thing look away”. Their gameplay systems are not just middling but comfortably average, just enough to keep the player engaged while moving through the (admittedly beautiful) environments.
So why the fuck did Paradox choose them for Bloodlines 2? Are they stupid?
The only explanation I can come up with is that they’re a studio that reliably ships finished projects, and maybe that was all Paradox was looking for.
After VtM 1’s tumultuous release, not to mention the drama surrounding the sequel’s development, that makes sense to me.
That being said, I don’t think it’s quite as big a leap as the person above is making it sound. To use their words, The Chinese Room are known for “strong art direction, atmosphere, and story, [and] weak gameplay”. They also suggest that the games TCR make are “the exact opposite” of Bloodlines 1. Which is kinda boggling my mind, cause I’m pretty sure the critical and user consensus of that game is that it excelled in its art direction, atmosphere, and story, and fell comparatively short in its gameplay. In fairness, I think he was referring to the limited open world nature of VtM 1 vs the straight linearity of the “walking sim” genre, but still. I’d argue the most memorable section of VtM is the Ocean House Hotel, which is, basically, a linear walking sim level, and it’s not as though the og game did a ton with its open world.
Now there’s an argument to be made that Paradox made the wrong call by doubling down on the peripheral elements of the game, rather than hiring a team that has ARPG gameplay bonafides, but I think that’s only an argument that can be made with the benefit of hindsight. Additionally, is it true that the gameplay/combat of VtM2 is glaringly bad? I can’t speak for myself, but the handful of reviews I read characterize it as serviceable at worst. Which, again, seems right in line with the first game.
They have been working on an unannounced city builder for a while now. Maybe not on the same scale as cities skylines, but at least it’s the same genre. So hopefully they have gathered some experience in the area already? Can’t speak to the results yet, though.
I’m more worried they don’t have the capacity to meaningfully improve anything about cities while also working on that new thing.
I think this means that the game won’t ever be fixed and they abandoned the dump fire that the cities skylines 2 is. What a shame, but was to be expected after how it went down with the release. It’s been like two years now and they didn’t improve the game much at all…
Yup. I’ve tried the game during their recent free weekend, and even with an empty map the FPS went below 30 FPS. Granted, that was at 4K with high settings, but still very much inexcusable considering it’s running on a 9070XT and again, a completely empty map.
After all, even putting all the other problems the game has aside, why shouldn’t I just play the first game if this one doesn’t manage to either look or perform dramatically better?
I don’t need anything from City Skylines 2 other than a fully fledged custom 3d asset importer. Then it will be as if the game has thousands of unpaid staff making content. Though if this next team picks up from an unfamiliar location it might still be a long time before we could even think of getting it.
I loved 1 - but 2 didn’t make any sense to me. Slapping 3D on it didn’t seem like something it needed, and it makes it a very different game. Plus, it’s not made by introversion - that’s where 95% of the humor and novel game mechanics came from.
Yeah I thought the same. I played 1 from the very beginning up until release. When I heard about 2 I wasn’t even interested, it seemed to me it would be doomed from the start.
I really loved the first game, but have zero faith in the sequel. I think the whole 3d rework makes no sense, and on top of that, it’s led by a company, that’s historically made the worst choices in every aspect of development
Prison Architect 1 was amazing, up until Paradox bought it. I didn’t have high hopes for PA2 (not like I was going to play it anyway) but I definitely wasn’t expecting this
Our continuous internal reviews and beta test groups have highlighted areas that we need to focus on more, mainly performance and content
From the FAQ:
Is the game canceled?
No, the game is not canceled.
What happens to pre-orders?
All pre-orders will be refunded in the upcoming weeks. The option to pre-order the game will be removed and the bonus will instead be added to the base game for all
Is there going to be Early Access or Beta Access to the game?
There will not be an early access or extra beta access right now
In the blog there are the steps to how to get the refunds, I’m not copying them in case they change.
All of this could have been said about PDX’s Sims competitor Life By You when it got “delayed indefinitely” too. But then a week later it was cancelled. And then a week after that the lead dev came out and said there was no reason for it to have been cancelled because they had been on track for release before Paradox pulled the plug.
But this was such an edge case, removing assets resulting in the unavailability of said assets in game, that this interruption simply couldn’t have been for foreseen.
They couldn’t foresee issues created by removing assets, in a game that is supposed to support user mods, which can be added/removed at any time? Really?
The explanation I’ve seen is that they wanted to pull the DLC as soon as possible, since it was - literally - the worst-rated product on Steam. I’m 99% sure the bean counters responsible for all of the terrible decisions (release the game, no matter what state! Release the DLC, no matter the amount of content!) pulled the lever on this one again - no chance they’ll see any responsibility with themselves.
This is but their legit response was “dunno, that wasn’t supposed to happen but it kinda did, maybe don’t do anything now, we’ll try to fix it sometimes”, so this is not that far:
I guess, but so the owner chose to get a refund, right? If so then that’s to be expected, if that’s the case then I don’t see what the fuzz is about. Unless the refund was forced onto the customer.
I think the refund would have been right to do from the company side once everything was prepared - it wouldn’t be right for them to keep any money from customers after the content has been integrated into the base game. But only once they are sure nothing will break due to the refund.
Yeah, the industry as a whole has been moving away from these types of processes for the last 15 years. There are exceptions where it can still make sense but they have significantly higher risk profiles than video games do.
Truth be told, i don’t have an ounce of care in me about this community council. I want them to make a product that was advertised, because so far it’s just a scam of colossal orders of magnitude (ha)
I think we need to admit that paradox is a shitty greedy company that cares more about selling a million DLCs than they do about making a quality product.
Paradox’s business practices have always been greedy and over monetized. Not sure why anyone is surprised their latest product sucks.
Hmm, I’ve only played Stellaris from this company and that game is great. A bit pricey with all the DLC, but the alternative of releasing a new Stellaris every few years probably amounts to the same.
Also, I’d rather play a well fleshed out 8 year old game, than getting a bare boned husk with each iteration - which sadly tends to be the norm for 4x games.
Furthermore, “releasing a new stellaris every few years” is not the only alternative. Look at all the games that exist that have regular free content updates.
Dont know about stellaris but I got Cities Skylines (1) with all the content DLCs at the time for under $50, which I consider a very good deal for the hours I put in. For reference, I paid roughly the same amount for BF5 which I played for about a month and then forgot about it
The link suggests the opposite of what you’re claiming
you were of course supposed to keep access to the Beach Properties content until the patch that moves it to the base game arrived. Assets are replaced by the placeholder boxes, but as the waterfront zoning isn’t available in the base game yet, I recommend holding off on loading saves with a lot of those zones.
Putting dlc content into the base game doesn’t sound like they are trying to sell millions of dlc
Only because there was major backlash for releasing dlc content before the base game is even in a finished state and is still missing content that players feel should be in the base game.
Yes, CO did bad releasing an unoptimized game, but if you put pressure for a cosmetic DLC to be removed you can’t be angry that they removed said DLC.
I strongly disagree with this for two reasons:
Nobody put pressure on them to remove the content from the game. “Removing the DLC” can be done in productive or non-productive ways, the latter of which happened here - a better solution would be to set it as non-buyable on Steam and wait with refunds until the patch has been released which allows people to continue playing.
It’s not just grey boxes (which would be bad enough on its own - these people paid for the content, there’s no technical reason for them not to have it right now) - the CO employee literally says:
Assets are replaced by the placeholder boxes, but as the waterfront zoning isn’t available in the base game yet, I recommend holding off on loading saves with a lot of those zones.
So the people who bought the shitty DLC, as in the die-hard fans, can’t play on their saves due to COs fuckup.
CSII has been a shitshow, and the devs rightfully should be ashamed, but honestly reading the comments on that forum makes me really not feel bad for a lot of those people doing the complaining.
Like yeah the game is broken, you got an incomplete product, and it’s ok to be upset. They didn’t fucking kill your dog, there’s no need to fucking dig into them quite so hard, dude. Stop acting like your abusive parents did to you.
forum.paradoxplaza.com
Aktywne