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So after months of silence after Hardsuit fired major staff members (lead writer, creative director, and then senior narrative designer left) and went into radio silence; there is actually talk about this game again:

It won't be coming out in 2021. Because Paradox decided to kick the entire development studio (Hardsuit Labs) off the project and hand it over to an unspecified new developer (or no one, the announcement is vague that beyond 'Bye, Hardsuit,' anything could be happening.)

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/bloodlines-2-development-update.1458755/

They've stopped accepting preorders (no idea if they've cancelled existing ones), and have no release date. And shut down the official Bloodlines subforum to read-only mode, so they don't have to deal with the reaction.

Hold on to your butts, because this has every sign of going downhill from here.

Makes you wonder what's been going on behind the scenes for all that to happen.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Makes you wonder what's been going on behind the scenes for all that to happen.

I suspect the stories will come out eventually, but they've been notably almost dead silent since roughly August. Which is when Hardsuit (I assume it was their call) fired Brian Mitsoda and the creative director. And a lot of the hardcore fans of the first game bought into this one as their dream come true because he was on it (even after it was clear from the gameplay slice last spring (iirc), that this was looking very first-person brawler, with a lot of RPG elements missing (like most of the clans). And general consensus was the gameplay slice didn't even look very good, which caused them to push back in the first place (and Covid no doubt furthered that, and ironically bought them something of a grace period. Apparently Paradox was even less happy than they let on

But pulling a complete developer change a year after it was due out in the first place is raising a lot of hackles. 'Vampire Nukem Forever' is perhaps the kindest appellation I've seen so far.

The smarter analysis is wondering why they went with Hardsuit in the first place, as their portfolio is... thin. The one major title they've got is Blacklight Retribution, and they inherited that from Zombie Studios when that shut down (and the founder and some of the Blacklight team left). But they did a Frogger game too, so.. yeah.

Although, on the other hand, Paradox also bungled the release of the new edition of PnP Vampire (a couple years ago now, after they bought that from the Eve:Online folks (who bought it after White Wolf folded)), in part because of terrible choices of who to get into bed with, so there is likely lots of blame to go around.

They're definitely to blame for six months of non-communication in the face of a lot of pre-orders, which is definitely crappy behavior. And not bothering to address the issue with this announcement (and a delay of unknown duration) doesn't help at all. Someone is botching their Public Relations check.

Wow.

That's... rather spectacular? In the amazing "holy gak that just happened" sort of way. This game hit hard and fast when announced. I would have thought they'd really want to get it going and successful.

This almost sounds like a tacit and quiet admission that the project is being shelved. The only reason to stop taking preorders and effectively close off the community is because you don't expect anything to happen anytime soon.

If they're switching the developer, then it's pretty much assured that nothing is happening soon. Though it's also likely that they haven't picked a new developer yet (and might be debating whether to even pick a new developer).

I love the Vampire universe. The old game was really cool and it had some really interesting lore. Which is why the first one was so good imo. I was excited about the second one on announcement. But after seeing more and more of the stuff they were putting out with little to no depth to it, I was getting worried.

I hope Paradox takes over and puts this back on track. I didn't pre-order at the beginning for a lot of reasons. I feel justified in that now.

Eumerin wrote:
If they're switching the developer, then it's pretty much assured that nothing is happening soon. Though it's also likely that they haven't picked a new developer yet (and might be debating whether to even pick a new developer).

Pretty sure if that's true then this game is doomed. I think this happened to duke nukem forever and aliens colonial marines and those both turned out sub par.

Changing developer means 1 of 2 things;

1) The first developer was failing massively to deliver on some aspect of the project and this failure was so glaring that Paradox completely pulled the plug. That's a big thing. It's not small. It's unlikely anything from that first year of development is going to be salvaged which means any continuation of the project would be starting from at, or effectively near, zero.

2) Paradox has completely lost interest in the product. This is complicated or unlikely. There's clearly enthusiasm and interest in a new Vampires game. Paradox would need to be in some kind of crunch to start down that road. To my knowledge Paradox isn't in any sort of financial bind.

Both things bode very ill for the game and the complete pulling of preorders is more telling than I think people realize. Total bombs have hit the market without preorders being pulled. This is Paradox outright admitting they no longer know the game's fate. If they were certain they were going to just hand it to someone else and release it they'd keep accepting preorders and push the release date back. Instead they've yanked the cord on both. You don't do that if you're confident the game is actually coming. It means the development is completely in the air.

The most telling thing will probably be how fast a new developer appears. If Paradox doesn't announce a name in a year, I'd consider the project dead.

The only game I remember that did ok from development hell is STALKER the game about the Chernobyl power plant nuclear disaster with mutants and scavengers.

 LordofHats wrote:

The most telling thing will probably be how fast a new developer appears. If Paradox doesn't announce a name in a year, I'd consider the project dead.

A year is way too long. Anyone they get would probably need a year to get up to speed and absolutely rush to get a final version out- they can't keep pushing it off.
Considering they've been almost dead silent for 6 months, the announcement that they've axed Hardsuit seems unlikely if they don't already have plans in place. Either they're in final negotiations with someone, or they're moving it to their own internal teams. If they don't have something productive to say by the end of next month (if that long), they've really screwed the pooch.

Granted, Paradox has been screwing up a lot lately. They still haven't announced any new content for CK3 (despite it being sold as part of the deluxe edition), Imperator Rome just got its 2.0 revamp (not sure how that's shaking out), and the next Stellaris DLC is focused on putting in more basic 4X systems into the game finally (espionage and something approaching a fuller diplomacy system). Empire of Sin was only published by them, but it was a exploitable, unfinished piece of gak on release. But they've massively over promised on Bloodlines 2, and they need to get it rolling in the right direction and get the customer base on to the idea that they have a plan and its moving in the right direction ASAP.

Good point. For some reason I keep thinking of the first thread on this game like it wasn't that long ago :/

 LordofHats wrote:
Good point. For some reason I keep thinking of the first thread on this game like it wasn't that long ago :/

Yeah, it went up on steam at the end of April 2019, botched its first vertical slice about a year later, then Hardsuit got into its personnel woes in August of 2020, went silent and now this. Its had a bad time.

It could still be a fun game (which is weird for me to say since I think Bloodlines 1 is a vastly over-rated crappy shooter, with a few RPG decorations that become meaningless the further you get into the game). But at this point I have no idea what kind of game its going to be. The Hardsuit version was looking like a first person brawler with magic powers, and a token adherence to the latest PnP version of the game; and I have no idea if they're going to ultimately stick with that to get it out, or actually try for a real RPG. Or something else entirely. Too many unknowns for two years after officially announcing the game and putting it up for pre-order.

The forum shutdown and the removal of preorders (but not cancellation of existing ones), and lack of confirmation of anything beyond 'Bye, Hardsuit' makes me worry they're going to shove something half-baked out the door.

I kind of hope the reasoning is because Hardsuit mismanaged funds or something. They ran out of money or there was some internal conflicts. The firings seemed kind of sudden and out of nowhere then radio silence for a long time.

Voss wrote:

Granted, Paradox has been screwing up a lot lately. They still haven't announced any new content for CK3 (despite it being sold as part of the deluxe edition), Imperator Rome just got its 2.0 revamp (not sure how that's shaking out), and the next Stellaris DLC is focused on putting in more basic 4X systems into the game finally (espionage and something approaching a fuller diplomacy system). Empire of Sin was only published by them, but it was a exploitable, unfinished piece of gak on release. But they've massively over promised on Bloodlines 2, and they need to get it rolling in the right direction and get the customer base on to the idea that they have a plan and its moving in the right direction ASAP.

Imperator had a shakey start, but from what I've heard it's been doing better lately.

Also, the most recent DLC for Hearts of Iron IV has apparently been well-received. But that particular DLC was just three new country trees, and not a completely new system, or an overhaul of one of the major nations.

HoI4 DLC is literally the barest of bones compared to.. Anything they put out. I genuinely don't know what they're thinking with them but they are never worth the price.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
HoI4 DLC is literally the barest of bones compared to.. Anything they put out. I genuinely don't know what they're thinking with them but they are never worth the price.

They're thinking that players would like it. And from all reports, the players do. I would hope that developers generally have that as a goal when releasing DLCs.

It's true that there are no overhauls of game parts, such as what Man the Guns did for naval warfare. And some of the major powers are still waiting for an overhaul. But Battle for the Bosporus wasn't marketed as having those. It's focused on three nations - two of which fought in the war, and one of which was seen as a possible participant in a strategic location. And it was advertised as doing exactly that.

If you're not interested in those nations, you lose nothing by not buying the DLC. But if you are interested, it's reportedly quite fun.