Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 won't release this year, pre-orders suspended, lead...

midian182

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What just happened? Are you looking forward to playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 this year? Unfortunately, it will no longer be launching in 2021. The game’s development hell isn’t showing signs of improving, either: Hardsuit Labs, which was leading the project, has been booted by developer Paradox, and pre-orders are no longer being accepted.

The first Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, released back in 2004, is a much-loved RPG—especially by this writer—and the sequel has been highly anticipated. But signs of trouble arrived last year when the original launch month of March 2020 was changed to an unspecified date in 2020 because the studio valued “quality over making the Q1 launch window.”

Bloodlines 2’s problems became more apparent last summer. It suffered a second delay, this time to 2021, and there was mention of “organizational changes.”

Paradox revealed in its latest earnings report that Bloodlines 2 will not be launching this year. “We have now chosen to postpone the release of [Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2] further, and we will not be launching the game in 2021,” it states.

What’s more worrying is that the game’s lead developer, Hardsuit Labs, is being replaced. “We have started a collaboration with a new studio partner to finish work on the game. This has been a difficult decision, but we are convinced that it is the right way forward to do the game justice,” wrote Paradox.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has been beset with problems for some time now. Its narrative lead and the creative director were fired last year. This came after narrative designer Chris Avellone had his work removed from the game following sexual harassment allegations against the veteran writer from people within the industry.

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This game is officially vaporware at this point: Duke Nukem Forever territory. Even if it gets completed first firing the key person that carried over from the original Bloodlines, it's writer, and now switching the developer studio completely?

This franchise is just cursed.
 
Wow, two years late for this title, and probably the same for Dying Light 2. What is going on at these game dev studios? I'm surprised they aren't just cancelling it at this point.
 
Wow, two years late for this title, and probably the same for Dying Light 2. What is going on at these game dev studios? I'm surprised they aren't just cancelling it at this point.
Sometimes a dev team is just way in over their head and can't deliver anything proper. Add to that changes to the story and other things and you get broken deadlines and rushed poor quality code.

Changing the team was probably a reset button, a push by the publisher to move away from the problem and to salvage something from its investment.
 
Regardless of the nay sayers I would much rather have a game that was complete and relatively bug free vs. getting something out early that has to be constantly upgraded. Their only mistake was letting the market team get ahead of the product team leading to a big let down for the public ......
 
That's kinda sad. Twenty-five years ago I used to LARP Vampire: The Masquerade in Montreal's Old Port area.. I still have my old Gangrel clan book (somewhere) and I loved it. I'll always remember the significance of these symbols:
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It's just another example of announcing games too soon.... I feel like some kind of policy needs to be written to state no game can be announced full stop until it hits Alpha.
 
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