Nothing will ever come close to it

The biggest problem I found was that I was basically just the fetch quest bitch for everyone
I gave up after the Malk mansion I think or a bit after that

It just felt like I was doing whatever the fuck I was told to regardless of who asked me and I was getting nowhere at all

>>715299238
>anon stumbles on themes of deep underpinning horror

>>715299529
Anon, I understand the entire thing
>you are in a world you are not aware of, you have no idea what's going on or who you can trust, you must deduce who to trust, who is telling the truth and ultimately don't open it

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded it if it was just the overall plot made you acting like a bitch but pretty much all the side quests are the same 'bro do this, bro go there, bro find this, kthx'

>>715299726
>I wouldn't have minded it if it was just the overall plot made you acting like a bitch
...But that's literally the point of the story. Bertrum Tung spells this out for you when you get a chance to talk to him. He brags that he gets you to get rid of a Chinese spy and blow up a warehouse without him having to lift a finger or step out of his hideout. Pretty much ALL the kindred in the game use you as a pawn because that's vampire politics. Why dirty their own hands when they can make use of the Prince's errand boy who is pretty much at the dude's beck and call?

And the Prince himself is directly responsible for why you're running around like a good little dog thanks to a very specific reason, but you didn't get far enough into the story for that reveal either.

>>715300096
Anon, no. That's not the point I'm making.
It's everything outside of the main quest is still the same way and that's the part that confuses the fuck out of me

Does the Fledgling just have a sign that says 'I am your personal bitch even if you're a human'

>>715299238
>guys the roleplaying game is sending me on quests... I'm smart

>>715301469
>I am purposely trying to troll because I cannot counteract the fact that what you stated is true

Correct, sar! but do kindly needfully stop as trolling is not allowed, sar!

>>715299008 (OP)
I'm cautiously optimistic of the sequel

>>715301798
Don't be
The lead writer is a fan of trannism so it's going to be utter shit
Like part of the goal of the game design was to literally 'remove Whiteness' whatever the fuck that means

>>715301582
>guys I'm calling the guy Indian, do I fit in yet?

>>715301924
Can I see a quote?

>>715299008 (OP)
every day i wish i could erase all the memories of this game so i could enjoy it all over again

>>715301220
Yes it's called Elysium where everyone who isn't (You) swaps gossip about (You)

They know you have no choice but to obey the prince. So they put an obstacle in your path and say they won't remove it until you do X for them. You are stuck, you have to play ball or the prince kills you

Literally all I want from gaming is modern(-ish) urban RPGs with tons of freedom, deep roleplaying, multiple solutions to (most) quests, and fun NPCs.

Why is that so hard? There's this and Deus Ex and... ?

>>715309265
blame the open-world meme. impossible to make a city without it being automatically compared to GTA or every other open-world game being made. instanced smaller hub worlds packed full of detail are just a no-go in today's market
irony is that the worlds of Deus Ex and VtMB feel far bigger than any GTA game despite being a fraction of the size

I believe that Bloodlines 2 has a chance of being a serious contender. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, all that stuff. But what they are promising is a dark, intensely atmospheric, morally ambiguous vampire RPG dripping in neo-noir overtones. Where Bloodlines 1 aligned with then-contemporary industrial goth vampire iconography, the sequel leans into neo-noir, the likes of Drive, John Wick, the neon-soaked corridors of power, as it were.

>>715310392
The VTMB2 map is seamless, but focuses on being explorable and traversable over being large for the sake of large. It's not a pointlessly large open world full of dead space.

>>715301924
>The lead writer is a fan of trannism so it's going to be utter shit
While this is true (she worked on Hogwarts Legacy)...
>Like part of the goal of the game design was to literally 'remove Whiteness' whatever the fuck that means
Are you sure you're not getting The Chinese Room's Bloodlines 2 confused with the completely different Hardsuit Labs Bloodlines 2?

>>715311591
This is like the size of a small indie game map that takes a few hours to get through.

>>715310813
looks ok desu but why do you talk like AI

>>715311897
Two different interviews, different writers

>>715310813
I have high hopes for this game since I love the original so I'm sure it will disappoint

>>715312064
It's bigger than all the Bloodlines 1 hubs put together, though. It's like 25 city blocks.

>>715310392
I don't even have a problem with open-world. I think the only /v/ posters that do are ones that haven't played any games from before the PS1.

>>715312772
Going fully open world tends to result in a game world that prioritizes having a lot of stuff instead of making that stuff focused and interesting.

Paradox are on 4 weeks of leave currently. We should hopefully get new Bloodlines news in early August.

>>715304845
i wish for better virtual reality for vtmb

>>715312076
Sorry anon, just essay-brain taking over.

>>715310813
Motherfucker, do you work for the company?

>>715312873
It doesn't, and if you played pre-PS1 games then you'd know that.

>>715318071
Of course. There's always a shill for it every VTMB thread. Paradox needs a win.

>>715318071
The game's original director described his vision for the project as thus.
>When the opportunity to pitch for it came up, it was Dan Pinchbeck catnip. I was confident we could deliver - we’d been scaling up and bringing on more and more people with serious development chops and history. I knew I wanted to write the story too, we’d never been a studio that were going to finish someone else’s work.
>As it turns out, that dovetailed with what Paradox wanted and the state of the project. The inspirations were clear for me: dark US dramas like Succession, The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Cards. Anchor the gothic in the contemporary. Know that monsters exist in boardrooms and bars everywhere. Know that we live in a world that pretends it’s slick and sophisticated but where we’re still beating each other to death with the jawbones of asses. Know that you could get knifed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you’re as likely to die from the poison dumped into your water in the pursuit of profit. Know that immortality is a curse as well as a blessing and that too much power strips humanity away like acid. One of my favourite lines from a novel comes from William Gibson’s Count Zero:
>“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
I'm just repeating what the devs said in their developer diaries.

>>715318678
>The VTM franchise is a really amazing one. I grew up on paper-based RPGs, even if I’ve got fairly basic tastes when it comes to video games (I’ve got more hours clocked up on Far Cry and Just Cause than is healthy). VTM is special even for an RPG. It’s incredibly rich and deep, it’s morally and ethically complex, it combines modern politics with ancient supernatural evil, it’s biblical, it’s personal, it’s queer. It just screams TCR and everything we’d always tried to embed in our games.
Oh, no, wokeness alert.

>>715299238
bratty fledgling needs Dominate correction

>>715301798

>>715318071
>if only you knew how bad things really are

>>715310813
>>715311591
There have been a huge number of diaries that have explained practically everything there is to explain about the game. But it's increasingly obvious nobody read them.
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/dev-diaries

>>715310813
>industrial
kind of feels like the lack of this is what is making it seem boring to me

>>715319329
It's a pity that Paradox are forcing these games to be modern day, because I would have loved a period piece.

>>715309265
at some point you have to bite the bullet and just play tabletop, anon.

>>715318792
cyberpunk and wod have always been full of trannies and homos.

spoiler alert, trannys and faggots didnt just show up during the "culture war" in the mid 2010s.

that which is demonic and that which is witchcraft is full of hermaphrodites and sodomy, child sacrifices, sex with corpses and animals. all of these things are a part of occultic sex magic- you see it in alister crowley's rituals and even all the way back to ancient egypt and going back to sodom itself.

>>715319426
yeah, and i've been told a few times that industrial music trends with tiktok zoomers sometimes. think it could've pulled in a new audience but maybe i'm just being overly hopeful about that since i still listen to a lot of industrial. i don't hate other genres but it just doesn't feel as interesting. i don't even know if 2 really feels gothic either. the city architecture in 1 was somewhat realistic and believable but still felt like you were walking by old gothic buildings sometimes.

>The I.A.O. aren’t the only hunters to feature in Bloodlines 2. There is evidence that an ancient hunter is active on the streets of Seattle.
>In the early years of the 20th Century, many Kindred met their Final Deaths at the hands of a hunter known only as Santiago. Multiple coteries were wiped out in San Francisco and New Orleans, their destruction attributed to this same relentless pursuer. At the site of each incident, an ornate metal memento in the shape of a sharpened cross was left behind. Crucifixes of this form are called the Cross of St. James - hence the name given to this hunter.
>Speculation persists that Santiago, whoever they truly were, was a member of the Society of Leopold, one of the most ancient and feared factions of hunters of the supernatural. If that were true, Santiago would have seen themselves as a soldier of Christ, waging a holy war against the Damned.
Make your prediction. Will Santiago be a man? A woman? A tranny? A vampire? All four?

>>715319329
This. I want a 90s VTMB; give me that industrial Y2K grunge and let me dodge shitty low-res camera and baby cellphones

>>715299008 (OP)
I just want more games that are set in hub based zones in cities at night to explore. But i don't think the atmosphere will ever be replicated, maybe that's due to source engine and some hidden ingredient i can't quite put my finger on. The great thing about VTMB is that it has to be set at night in theme with vampires and the masquerade. The Darkness 1 game has some of the same elements, but it isn't the same kind of game. Maybe it's also the ambient music with all of the shoegaze sort of tracks happening in the background, not to mention gothic industrial music in clubs. It's a culmination of some very small components that make it very memorable. I am constantly searching for the game that gives me the vibes of VTMB, rather than it's RPG structure. Which would also be ideal if that was in the package too.

>>715320675
This might sound daft, but what if Santiago is Lou? Or maybe Santiago works for Lou? The artwork for Lou literally shows her toying with Santiago's bloody cross.