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?
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Wasn’t the studios fault
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?
The gameplay in their original IPs is only subpar if you think that walking sims are inherently lesser games.
It’s not like that at all.
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.
SOMA isn’t a walking sim and I don’t remember such situations in Still Wakes the Deep. The gameplay never stood in the way for me.
Let’s agree to disagree in that case.
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.
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.
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.
And would hip hop be lesser music than jazz?
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.”