Too many red flags, I can't see this being good. Would love to be proven wrong though.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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The review does sound pretty dope tho, like a mixture of dishonored, disco elysium and enhanced telltale-game. like you i will keep my expectations low, but what i read in the hands-on review sounded better than expected from a game that has been through dev-hell and back.
Lasombra and Toreador being locked behind DLC doesnt exactly spark my confidence
I don't have much faith in this for a LOT of reasons, but that aspect isn't necessarily bad.
Bloodlines 1 was... interesting. The problem is that the coolest clan to play as was Malk but Malk also only really "worked" as a second or even third playthrough when you can understand all the fourth wall breakages. In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let's say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?
That actually seems perfect to me. The people with a lot of faith/hype pay full price. The rest of us get the game at a discount and then buy the DLC on sale in a few months.
That said? I am not familiar with Lasombra but Toreador are basically the charisma clan and... most CRPGs are best played as a charisma/diplomacy build anyway. So... yeah. Feels kind of bad?
Like, I will always think locking NG+ behind DLC (hi Sega/RGG) is a ridiculously shit feeling thing to do. But also? It sort of makes sense that the people who would even care about NG+ are the ones who are really into the game.
But I think a better example is how a lot of ARPGs will wait for the DLC to add the advanced classes that either require a lot more piano playing or who are just a radically different design philosophy (often minion masters) that the game just wasn't actually built around.
Which I think gets back to Day One DLC always feeling bad but actually making a lot of sense if you understand the game dev lifecycle. Like, I'll never like it but I also acknowledge there isn't a lot of value in "We finished up the DLC during QA but aren't going to sell it for a month so that people don't get pisssy"
In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let’s say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?
Unfortunately, in Australia the base game is $85, and the version that includes Lasombra and Toreador is $130. That makes the DLC almost as much as an entire new game, not merely a DLC.
But yeah, I agree that if the DLC was added to a game that was receiving otherwise good press, and if it didn't feel like they had just lopped off something that most players are going to want, I could maybe look past it. But this really feels like pouring salt into the already gaping wound.
Well, the good news is that batshit insane pricing is coming to the entire world... Although there is "hope" that basically everyone will decide that physical distribution isn't worth the hassle and everything becomes digital and all of the "We are going to price this to not piss off the people bringing discs into the country" goes away.
And I am not going to at all pretend I am immune to this. But it is important to think of the actual practice independent of the game and company. Because... what you described is effectively "I am okay with this if it is a game I like but not if it is a game I don't". Which is 100% true but it also is what has fueled so much of the shittiest behavior in the industry.
I hope it‘s everything fans hope for, they‘ve had to wait for too long
It's almost certainly going to be complete shit (if you are looking for a roleplaying game with strong world building and well written characters).
A mediocre action-RPG with a VTM theme. And Paradox are going to release a whole bunch of pricey DLCs while abandoning the core game and ignoring critical bugs.
I used to buy Paradox games 10+ years ago, by this point they are a European EA.
I’m still a sucker for Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3, but the HoI and Vicky followups have been stinkers. Their modern DLC pricing is also unhinged. I hope they will turn things around, but I don’t expect them.
And paradox are going to release a whole bunch of pricey DLCs while abandoning the core game and ignoring critical bugs.
I wanted to push back on that. I know they do that with their strategy games, but to do it with story-driven games too? "That's far-fetched," I thought. But no, you were spot on: There's day 1DLC, two clans are behind a pay wall.
You should really not be expecting any different with Paradox, they are truly awful.
I would have held my nose with the Day1 DLC if the game was good, but nah, they transformed it into an action RPG.
It's really too bad that Paradox was the company that got the VTMB license.
From what I can tell, Paradox bought White Wolf and is actually licensing the publication rights for the TTRPG to another company now.
Which means I’ll probably never see a Werewolf or Changeling game.
I replied to @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world with more information about the corporate structure, but the TL;DR for the purposes of your comment is that Paradox bought White Wolf, dissolved White Wolf shortly after V5's release in 2018, and brought White Wolf back earlier this year and White Wolf is back in charge of both licensing and publishing. (I suspect they also have in-house development, but it's not super clear.)
I'm not 100% clear on what you're getting at in your final paragraph, but Werewolf W5 came out in 2023, and there have been numerous non-vampire World of Darkness video games released during the Paradox era, including 2020's Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest.
As for Changeling, after doing Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the lead designer at White Wolf has said their next likely release will be a 5th edition Mage: The Ascension, but he also hinted at Changeling: The Dreaming, so it's not unreasonably likely that that will get a 5th edition release some time in the next decade. 2018 for VtM, HtR in 2022, WtA in 2023, I'd think worst case 2027 for Mage, 2031/32 for Changeling, unless they stumble across problems that force it to be cancelled.
My comment about werewolf and changeling was about video games, not TTRPGs.
Yeah fair enough. As I said, there was at least one Werewolf game released kinda recently. It doesn't seem to have had a brilliant reception, but it does exist. They also did release a Wraith game not too long ago, so they're obviously not afraid to reach into the more niche parts of the world. Changeling may be possible at some point.
Didn't know they bought out the license owner. That makes it even worse.
Yeah Paradox bought White Wolf in 2015, a couple of months after the previous publishers announced they were working on 5th edition. White Wolf brought the development of the game in house, underneath Paradox.
Then shortly after the release of V5 in 2018 there were a few scandals within White Wolf, and Paradox dissolved the company, handing off development to Modiphius with Paradox retaining final approval rights.
In late 2020 they partnered with Renegade to do the publishing of future V5 products. Paradox Interactive were the developers of Werewolf W5, and Renegade published it. It's unclear to me who exactly is developing W5 and V5 supplementary material, but I think it might be a mix of Paradox, Modiphius, and maybe others.
Then earlier this year, Paradox announced they were re-forming White Wolf to be the company in charge of licensing and publishing of World of Darkness content.
It's all super complicated, but the bottom line is that since before the release of 5th edition, Paradox has been the big business daddy.
Ha! Seems like development on the TTRPG side is just as much of a mess as with VTMB.
When you lay it out like that it does sound like a mess.
But actually looking at what they've done, from the outside, it wouldn't be obvious at all. They've had a steady pace of what seem to be fairly well-received books, and accompanied them with decent media such as the Jason Carl–storytold LA By Night actual play series. A lot of the old folks don't love the changes to lore and mechanics, especially in Werewolf, but more broadly they seem to have attracted relatively positive reviews.
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getting ready for my next fell-for-it-again award 🧛
Please
Don't
Suck
Like most major releases the past decade.
vampire game
don't suck
How does that even work
Touché 😁
it'll be some kind of a miracle if the game ends up being even decent after all the tumultuous dev-hell it went through...
But I sure hope it'll be good.
At this point they've had time to basically go through a full development cycle post Hardsuit Labs firing, haven't they? I think the game will be fine, it just won't be the Bloodlines 2 we were initially promised - or wanted. As far as I know they more or less threw out 90% of the previous project, kept some assets and had The Chinese Room make a new game.
Damn, I didn't realize the team that started with Dear Esther ended up on Bloodlines 2.
I have faith in that team, but at the same time, its... generally an ominous portent when any game's development has a team of idiot corpo mismanagers driving the whole process.
And yes, for clarity, if its needed, Paradox is a fucking awful publisher, they don't know how to make a 'strategy' game that involves any strategy other than 'cheese the AI', the 'strategy' they know is 'keep stringing along neurotic obsessives with an endless flood of pricey dlcs and false promises.'
The System Shock remake was really good, and that went through dev hell also, so it's completely possible.
Yes, but the publisher (ie, corporate slave drivers) on that wasn't Paradox.
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Like most major releases the past decade.
That’s disingenuous. You have terrible games now, you’ve got them 40 years ago.
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