They fought to change the name since the beginning because they knew it would be impossible to deliver a real sequel and while this name might get initial sales it would cause blowback killing the game almost immediately…
Which is exactly what happened.
Like, they’d have loved to make Masquerade 2, but they weren’t given the time or funds to make it.
The worst part is that this failure will probably kill any chance of The Chinese Room getting to actually take a proper swing at this, from scratch, with time and a real budget. It really feels like if they were allowed to do that they would hit it out of the park. Bloodlines 2 is a much better game than the review scores suggest, mostly weighed down by the expectations people put in the Bloodlines name.
Chinese Room is clearly a bad fit for Bloodlines. They have zero experience with RPG games.
They make good walking-sim style gaming experiences with strong atmosphere and world-building, but they've never made any RPGs. Bloodlines was a living world full of dynamism (remember the Voerman twins missions?).
Their gameplay also tends to be subpar. The original Bloodlines had some flaws with gameplay (combat), but you still had a lot of different gameplay options and approaches.
Why shouldn't people have expectations for a strong roleplaying experience and player freedom for a Bloodlines game?
They absolutely are, in terms of gameplay. Ozzy Mandus and The Crank Hog Machine sacrificed most of the gameplay Frictional’s Amnesia became known for. There are no light mechanics. Barely any physics puzzles. The pigmen are braindead, which removes the challenge and the tension. Even if it’s a better story and atmosphere than The Dark Descent, it’s a lesser game. Even Still Wakes The Deep only goes as far as “throw the object to make the thing look away” when you’re not just responding to non-diegetic prompts.
You can make the argument that walking simulators have a place in the gaming landscape, and you’d be right, but by their nature, they are the exact opposite of what Bloodlines 1 was and what Bloodlines 2 should have been. Why Paradox decided it was a good idea to entrust with it a studio that has only made things that it never should have been is a fucking mystery to me.
Those two studios for the game because it was Hardsuit’s idea to make the game in the first place and TCR barely kept Paradox from canceling the have after they kicked Hardsuit out of the project.
I think it basically went like this (simplified):
Hardsuit: “Hey Paradox, we wanna make Bloodlines 2. We have everything worked out, we have the best possible writers involved, and it’s a real passion project; here’s our pitch.”
Paradox: “Wow, that pitch convinced us completely! You get all the green lights in the world!”
Hardsuit: “Now keep in mind we’ve never done a project on this scale before so we’ll need plenty of time—”
Paradox: “We set you on an extremely aggressive schedule. Surely that’ll motivate you into delivering perfection!”
Hardsuit: “That’s literally the exact opposite of what we need.”
Paradox: “But it’s the exact non-opposite of what you get. Now chop chop, we already gave the release date to the press.”
Hardsuit: “We’re not getting the game done in that timeframe.”
Paradox: “No problem; we’ll delay a little bit. Surely nobody will mind.”
Hardsuit: “It’ll take more than ‘a little bit’. We told you that—”
Paradox: “Okay, sure, whatever, the game’s canceled now. Don’t call us back.”
TCR: “Hey, can we try to salvage this? We really wanna see this made. But we’d like to throw away all of the writing, characters, and gameplay. Everything except the setting, really.”
Paradox: “Okay, sounds reasonable. But make it snappy.”
TCR: “We’d also like to change the name because what we can deliver won’t really be a proper sequel to—”
Paradox: “Bloodlines 2 it is. Good discussion. Glad we talked about this.”
TCR: “That’s literally the exact opposite of what we asked for.”
Paradox: “Can’t hear you; too busy launching the sequel to one of the most beloved cult classics in the action RPG genre.”
Customers: “Well, this is a pretty bad sequel. Decent game but they really shouldn’t have called it Bloodlines 2. We’re disappointed.”
Paradox: “The only logical course of action is to swear to never release a non-strategy game ever again because nobody appreciates our art.”
With the second paragraph I agree, it’s a bad fit for a sequel and this is consensus (probably, I didn’t enjoy Bloodlines much), even TCR thinks so. But is this a scale? Is Bloodlines 1 a lesser game with subpar gameplay because it’s systems weren’t as complex as other CRPGs? “Game” is just the term we stuck with, it doesn’t mean that the fidelity of the gameplay, the mechanics and dynamics is paramount. If I value narrative, and it is, has become, a narrative medium, I very well might think that A Machine For Pigs did a better job.
I enjoy walking sims (Soma is one of my favourite games of all time) in general and TCR's releases as well.
That doesn't mean one can't recognize that TCR tends to struggle even with relatively simple gameplay and that a game like Bloodlines requires strong gameplay design/implementation skills.
While I loved the atmosphere of Still Wakes the Deep, there were many situations where weak gameplay undermined the ambiance and immersion.
I hope I was able to at least share my own reasoning (even if you don't agree). And I think we can both agree that TCR does not have any experience in RPG games.
Sweet, just in time for the pro. Fingers crossed the next revision doesn’t play games at all, just $1000 to pipe Morbius trailers to my TV. It’s all I ever wanted.
Isn’t it rad that Sony designed the ps5 to have easily replaceable side panels and then for some reason only releases the really cool panels as part of a full console?
There will probably be loads of third-party panels just because of that lol, just need some spray paint for the the glossy middle part or something for the finishing touch
I don’t know if you were part of the memers who got Morbius re-released but if so hats off because back then my in-laws were so excited to show me this movie they discovered on Netflix.
Which makes perfect sense - none of the previous producers have. Mostly, they’ve just used their stock characters and locations, and made a game that they thought would be fun out of them. There’s a couple of games that qualify as ‘direct sequels’ (Ocarina -> Majora’s, Wind Waker -> Hourglass) but even then, it doesn’t benefit you much to have played the preceding one. Would be weird to try and twist the games into a chronology that strikes me mostly as ‘fanon’ anyway.
Nintendo did try that, though, and mixed it around again whenever they felt like it. “New research uncovered that…” blah blah. Better off if they don’t bother anymore.
I wish these idiots would quit trying to tell the people playing the game that they are wrong for not liking it. Like, no man, listen to them, this is feedback. You can’t take all of it without a pinch of salt but if you see a common theme, then you should address it.
Yep, would get this over the meta headsets that I have stayed away from if it got full PC support. Until then just going to wait to see if Valve releases anything new.
Or at least actually finished, for some reasonable definition of “finished”. I’m going to buy Haunted Chocolatier on release and I’d pre-order that given the chance and I never pre-order (I’m actually 1 for 1 on pre orders, I pre ordered Star Trek Voyager Elite Force).
Elite Force was absolutely incredible! Considering you were trapped in like a ship graveyard the variety of environments was pretty impressive. The combat was fun, the story was interesting…could’ve used a little more ship exploration on voyager, though.
Bethesda, simply put, doesn’t know how to react to criticism. Instead of taking this feedback and improving their product they double-down and insist that you should like it because they said so. If it’s boring it’s boring man. They are simply as disconnected as possible. Remember the whole canvas bag fiasco? Then they said “ah, canvas costs too much, we aren’t planning on doing anything with the nylon one”… deal with it in other words. Then they were puzzled why people disliked them to all hell.
I can’t believe how ignorant you are of the worldwide canvas shortage of 2018. Canvas became a global strategic resource. Lack of canvas destabilized numerous nation states.
The idea of frivolously wasting that precious canvas on a video game trinket is frankly offensive.
Yup. And shitty plastic shell for the rum. Then people who requested refund got their info and CC numbers leaked by their system which they took offline immediately.
I’m not 100% sure but I think FO76 is maintained by BGS Austin. They seem to be far more interested in taking feedback and making the game better than the main Bethesda studio. FO76 may be fundamentally flawed but post-launch it’s definitely getting more care than Skyrim, FO4 and Starfield combined.
They also took class action lawsuits for that game as well, so that might be affecting that push to fix the game. But even if they fix it, doesn’t negate the fact they said they don’t plan on fixing canvas issue, or any problem they caused. Only when there was an outrage they reacted. Remember the horse armor for Skyrim or when they tried to sell mods that were included in previous game. I do.
Given how many features use generative AI to build user-generated content I would say mark this moment. There is a future of slop-centric Roblox stuff everywhere and this may well be where it starts.
I'm not as mad about that as most will be, but... yeah, I've mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
I appreciate it more because it’s generative AI based off of user created content and their own content. I respect that more than using outside sources that got their training data from god knows where and just slap that shit in there and call it a day.
How is it based on UGC if the game wasn't out when they implemented the GenAI? As far as I can tell they're using a whole bunch of ML-based tools built on Unreal tech for animation and model creation and what seems to be run of the mill Gen AI for textures. I could be wrong, but hey, I'll hold you to that being cool when EA or Ubisoft show up with their version of the same thing.
You can enter a text prompt and they spit out a texture based on it, which sure seems to just be a good old image generation model. They do generate mesh from images, which probably has some ML involved, although it's harder to tell how much is just good old photogrammetry, and they do face and body animation from video source. I think that's all part of the Unreal Engine 5 metahuman package, which I'm pretty sure does use some machine learning. Oh, and I am pretty sure a bunch of the writing and character AI has been machine-created, be it in real time or baked offline.
Part of the problem is that people aren't super clear on what "AI" is supposed to mean, so it's hard to know what they're supposed to be angry about. The texture generation thing at least is clearly in the GenAI danger zone.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
How many people are actually playing the game to find out though? I’m always strongly suspicious every time some new game explodes onto social media. Why couldn’t they use AI to generate user reviews and comments also?
There’s a lot of suspiciously crap games that manage to explode to the top of the steam trending list. I’ve been bitten before.
This one has art that looks so generic I can’t even tell if they’re screenshots or promo pics unrelated to the game. It suddenly makes sense now I know it’s genai. It’s not trying to communicate anything to a user it’s just vibes man.
No no it’s good, this is actually better than them making a proper announcement. Community loves this shit.
Quick summary:
Dev changes name, handle, and pfp on twitter. Posts a cryptic message about keeping your eyes closed tomorrow.
Reverse image search of pfp leads to a recipe released April 2nd
Cryptic message appears to be a reference to an Imagine Dragons thing from April 2nd
“Tomorrow” was interpreted as being related to the big switch 2 reveal, launching April 2nd
The name and handle also appear to be references to things having to do with April 2nd
The community is ablaze right now. Without a hint of irony: there is more genuine belief in the game actually coming out this time than there was before the original delay was announced in 2023, back when we had an official release date
I have a hard time accepting the way social media works. The whole chain of logic you just spelled out makes me want to vomit. I don’t want to have my strings pulled, my chain yanked, or my goose got. I want to be talked to like I’m a person, and I know it’s just going to keep happening less and less and one day it’s going to do my head in.
I get that, but you’re also not quite getting the full picture with this specific instance. The community on Reddit has been waiting for Silksong so long that they have been over-analyzing every single game convention for years to see if we’re going to get a release date, and had a heated debate over whether or not a blood sacrifice of a member of the community would bring the release. They’re a little crazy over there.
The context only increases the granularity of my distaste. We live in a society of conspiracism and forgetful unthinking chaos. I don’t want to read entrails for clues about the future, I want to wait patiently for a good game and not become schizophrenic trying to connect meaningless dots.
I don’t want to read entrails for clues about the future
But, you don’t have to. This is them hinting about a upcoming announcement of a release date. For the average player like you and me, it’s just the announcement itself that we need, and we’ll get that.
Just… don’t pay attention to it? It’s something that interests other people. Imagine if somebody said that about something you liked that they had no interest in.
The silksong community is one of my favorite of all time for years now. Every couple of weeks a new “theme” of insane shitposting evolves. Most fun and creative silly posting I’ve ever seen.
One common post is “_____ every day until silksong comes out”. People are doing fanart challenges, one guy posts a video of himself petting a cat every day which is very popular. The cat had to get a surgery at one point and needed a cone but was fine.
It’s not just noise. It brings people a lot of joy. There’s been several posts over the years from people basically grieving the potential loss/change of the community once the game actually drops. I’ll miss it, too
Tbf there are a lot of people who love solving cryptic puzzles and getting info out of very little, thats why ARGs are a thing. The good thing is, you don’t have to engage, you can just wait for proper announcements but for the people who love this shit they get to have fun, and presumably the devs too for making it.
And imo it shows that team cherry is interacting with the community in a positive way and might actually be finishing the game
It’s not for “normal” people, it’s for die-hard fans in their community, a little brain teaser / clue hunt. For the rest of us, there’ll be a proper announcement and a trailer.
Then don't engage with it lol? You are free to wait for proper official announcement or confirmation of the game instead of being here discussing a cake picture
Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely hope it does come out soon! But I’ve been on the hype train long enough to no longer get my hopes up. Instead, I’ve reached the true hype nirvana: There is no Silksong. There never was any Silksong. It’s merely a collective delusion.
It would be quite funny then to have them shadow drop it on april 1 with people freaking out about trying to tell others only be be met with disbelief as credibility of any statement about game release was already heavily compromised. Bonus point if they add 'coming soon" to logo on steam page for that day.
Well it must have worked. All I heard for months when it came out was how bad everything about it was, then I finally got it myself and it quickly became one of the top favorite games of my life. Sorry for everyone who had a bad experience because I loved it so much.
I thought it was okay. It fizzled out pretty quickly for me as it felt half-baked and overly "gamey", which kept breaking the immersion illusion for me. I never did finish it. But I started over when Phantom Liberty dropped last week and it feels soooo much better. The immersion doesn't feel like it's being killed by a thousand cuts... everything feels more natural and believable now. It still has it's gamey moments, but they are a lot less obvious now.
I’m playing for the first time, amd my only real gripe is I wish the gorgeous cyberpunk world were more like Yakuza, with a million random minigames. Other than that, it’s been a blast.
The main story was pretty good, especially the Panam ending, which should have been the successor to Fallout: NV imo. Easily could have been it’s own game, excellent, 8/10.
I picked it back up in the post game after the skill tree rebalance and tried to get the highest heat level possible with the cars with guns on them, but the police kept getting lost, which decreased my heat level. Max tac couldn’t find me in a big intersection. I dejectedly uninstalled the game and decided to play something else. The red engine just can’t handle hazard level 5 interactions that well :/
I also played a quest, but it was just a “find a dead body” radiant quest for which I got about $2,500. I want more main storyline and less paper mache missions. The art direction and main storyline(s) are strong, but everything else feels really mushy to me. Witcher 3 was pretty solid all the way through.
When the game first came out you could walk around the corner to hide from the police. And none of the NPCs knew where any of the roads were, so they were just scrape along the side of building for no reason at all.
Yes and no. The AI is significantly better… but it’s still not great. Case in point: cops will chase you now, but it doesn’t take long to get a feel for how to fudge their pathing and lose them.
I played it on PC at launch and thoroughly enjoyed it. They’ve completely redone the skill tree system and reworked a ton of the weapons/clothing/cyber gear. It’s different now, but the story and core gameplay are still very much the same. I’m replaying it for the DLC and having a great time.
If the promotion of mtx.is jarring or overwhelming then even limiting to cosmetics sucks. If something ends and there are multiple click through screens encouraging players to by mtx and other ads within the game to buy the mtx it can become a chore to ignore. Even if gameplay itself is not impacted, the things that happen outside of gameplay can deag down the whole experience.
An example would be those stupid unskippable season pass screens where the bar goes up slowly and it reminds you of what you didn’t get becsuse tou didn’t buy the season pass. A few seconds each time, sure, but it adds up and is clearly trying to goad you into spending money. That shit sucks even if it limited to cosmetics.
I would rather pay $60 to own and be able to fully play the game. However, my response came from my perception of surprise and doom-and-gloom by the community when we already knew it would be free-to-play.
If a game is going to have mtx, they shouldn’t be charging for it during a prerelease. They have multiple ethical ways to handle it that would garner better feedback.
Leave it out entirely and focus on the gameplay. That is what should be selling the game anyway.
Have the mtx but without a way to pay real money. Give the players the option to ‘purchase’ in game currency and give them a running total.
The latter would be reset at release, but would gather feedback on what people want to spend and if the promo process is well implemented.
Both would run counter to the actual purpose of the vast majority of mtx which is fleecing whales and this is EA.
The most ethical implementation of mtx that I know of is actually for a paid game, Helldivers 2. The in game promo stuff is minimal and does not negatively impact the menus or interacting with the ship. The option to buy stuff doesn’t use dark patterns, but it is easily available. When they did set prices too high for a collaboration thing they apologized due to feedback and gave the other half of the stuff that would have been for sale to every single player. It is basically the exact opposite of Call of Duty’s mtx.
My guess is that there is only one skate park and simple character creation that is free for everyone. Everything else is behind paywall. Want pink shorts and green hair? want to skate around the city or in new park? want a new deck? open the wallet.
I’m not saying don’t try it, because some people do like it, but I don’t think Starfield will ever be worth the time it takes to play, let alone having to pay for it too. It absolutely does not respect the player’s time, and there’s no content in it that I saw that’s worth playing. I didn’t see anything when I played, but I think I’ve seen just about everything after watching a stupid number of videos discussing the game. None of it is particularly interesting (in fact, I think most of it is fundamentally uninteresting because they weren’t willing to ask how their universe could be different from our own).
BG3 though is absolutely worth playing whenever you decide to play it. I don’t think it’s getting a DLC because Larian said they’re working on something new and unrelated now, but it’ll probably still see some patches and the price will come down, as well as more mods being available.
I recently bought the OG Dragon’s Dogma for $6. There are a ton of QoL and fun mods that improve gameplay, no DRM crap, and the game performs really well overall. Zero reasons IMO to buy DD2 right now and put up with an inferior experience and Denuvo.
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