Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2

[Irenaeus]

Dev Diary #12: Developing Ventrue



Fletcher

LMAO they're reusing the assets from the first Bioshock. This is one of those mutant freaks (splicers) you kill between Big Daddies.

[1998]

Clan Highlight: Ventrue

The Clan of Kings, Blue Bloods, Tyrants, Warlords, Patricians, Borgias

Ventrue vampires usually choose their progeny from mortals familiar with power, wealth and influence. Seeing themselves as the rightful leaders of vampire society, Kindred of clan Ventrue take up the mantle of leadership wherever possible, often in the form of high positions in Camarilla Courts.



Playing a Ventrue in Bloodlines 2
Ventrue are blue blooded tyrants who incite obedience in both their allies and their foes. Focusing on the Discipline Dominate, Ventrue forces their prey to obey their command to fight their friends, forget what they’ve seen or even kill themselves. Feeding builds up Fortitude, allowing the Ventrue to soak up more damage in case any enemy is powerful enough to resist their force of will.

Abilities
When you choose your clan, you will start out with a passive ability unique to each clan. You are then able to unlock abilities from the Ability Tree, starting with your chosen clan. Each ability requires spending Ability Points to unlock which are earned from completing missions, combat and exploration. At the peak of the Ability Tree, you can unlock the clan Perk, a reward to those dedicated enough to unlock all of the abilities for a clan, giving a permanent passive upgrade.

Flesh of Marble
Clan Passive: Feeding hardens your skin, making you highly resistant to damage.
Cloud Memory
Cause a target to forget you were there, putting them into a relaxed state.



Possession
Possess an opponent, allowing you to see through their eyes for a period. While possessed, the target can be commanded to attack another person.



Terminal Decree
Use your powers of Dominate to command someone to kill themselves.



Mass Manipulation
Subdues enemies within your gaze, preventing them from attacking. Dominate abilities will affect all subdued opponents while Mass Manipulation is active.



Thirst
Clan Perk: Increases the amount of health restored by feeding.

https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/ima ... e1e532.png
There are many different ways to play your character in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Venture rely on the rise-and-fall mechanics of their Layered Fortitude, building up a defense to take on stronger opponents, while using abilities to dominate weaker foes and make them fight their friends or even kill themselves. Each clan has a straightforward way of playing, and does not require ability optimization. At the same time, if you want to, you can customize your playstyle by visiting certain important vampires throughout Seattle, who are sworn to assist you by offering their Blood to help you unlock abilities from their Clan.

Abilities from other clans may cost more AP depending on how well they align with your clans Disciplines. The Ventrue Disciplines are Dominate (the supernatural ability to control others) Fortitude (the ability to resist physical and mental attacks) and Presence (the supernatural ability to attract, awe, or terrify). If a Ventrue would try to unlock the Brujah ability Taunt, which is part of the Presence Discipline, it would cost less AP, than if they attempt to unlock an ability from a Discipline they don’t already have, such as Obfuscate. Unlocking additional Clan Perks will make them stack, so you can collect them all if you wish, elevating your power much closer to elder level.

Activated abilities and the Clan Perks can be learned from the other clans, but your clan passive can not. This means that while you can combine abilities and features from other clans in hundreds of different ways, your Ventrue playthrough will remain different from playing as another clan who branches into Ventrue abilities.



Image: Ability tree for Ventrue with all clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. The Banu Haqim ability Split Second has been equipped, replacing Possession.

[Oyster Sauce]

You can learn every single ability from a different clan except for one ****** passive? Replay value through the roof.

[Vergil]

>clans reduced to perk categories on a skill tree
They keep finding new ways for it to be even more over than last time.

[1998]

You can learn every single ability from a different clan except for one ****** passive? Replay value through the roof.

This whole believe that players are mad if they can't do ever single thing in one playthrough, especially for the target audience of bloodlines, just shows how little they understand about gaming or their potential audience.in general.

[1998]

Exciting update from some of the very talented folks at TCR

What are we up to?

Summer’s here so we figured it’d be a good time to pull back the curtain a bit and show you how a game like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is made. This month we’ll give you a couple of glimpses into how the magic becomes a game. In this post we’re focusing on the atmosphere of the game: Concept Art, Level Design, Lighting and Audio.

Concept Art
“For quite a while the Concept Team was working on an Underground area[www.paradoxinteractive.com] - exploring mood and tone for that section of the game. It took quite a bit of time since it's incredibly detailed. Once everyone was happy with our concepts, we decided to move on to one of the core locations of our city: Weaver Tower, the headquarters of the Seattle Camarilla.

We already had a basic layout for this area, so we focused on the entrance hall first. This is a large and striking space and solving the architecture and lighting fit was a fun task for the Concept Team. After this, we moved onto secondary places like corridors and rooms. We used the Entrance Hall as a main reference for what we wanted to achieve.

Like every location, Weaver Tower needed some unique features. We wanted to have something both mysterious, yet ancient feeling. Naturally, the real world provides the best inspiration, and the meticulous care and time it takes for bonsai trees to develop is where we gravitated towards. However, we also wanted it to feel different. So by juxtaposing the organic form of the tree, we designed it to be made of thousands of brass wires seemingly erupting from a Smokey quartz. All of which was achieved in Unreal Engine 5 to really get an established idea of how these statues fit in the space and create the most impact for players. We hope you’ll enjoy browsing around these spaces!”






⁃ Text - Junior Concept Artist Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 1 & 2 - Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 3 – Lead Concept Artist Michele Nucera.

Level Design
“As a Level Designer, I love working on spaces that evoke a range of powerful emotional experiences for the player. I've been exploring how we can best achieve this, while collaborating with our other departments. I am very excited to see your reactions!

Recently I’ve been working on an early level in the game, where I focussed on how we can encourage player learning, and how we can help you to feel confident when playing our game. We also want to build levels that support a variety of playstyles, to make sure that you can play as your chosen Clan.
As a Vampire, we want you to be able to embrace your supernatural movement options. Our levels have been carefully crafted in a way that will allow you to experiment and have fun with our traversal system, and in some places, be challenged.

I can’t wait for you all to play!”






⁃ Level Designer Amy Lee

“In Bloodlines 2 my main focus is to guide you through the cold and looming backdrop that our Design and Environment Art teams have meticulously crafted over the past few years. These quests, set in our nocturnal version of Seattle, allow you to delve into the lives of its many Kindred inhabitants.
Taking place after pivotal moments in the main questline, these adventures will offer you the chance to explore Seattle at your own pace. You will be visiting its Clan leaders, keeping the competition at bay and making decisions that will affect the outcome of your journey as Phyre. These are stuffed with Narrative and lore and I'll be taking you from the depths of the underground to the snow-capped high-rise rooftops.

Having so many great moments of Bloodlines 2's story under my care has always felt like a big responsibility. I am happy to report however, that working with the Narrative team has been wonderful, and bouncing ideas off of them has been some of the most fun I've had here at TCR. I look forward to heading into the night with all of you all, but for now I have more public spaces to deface.”






⁃ Junior Level Designer Jack Goddard

Lighting
“Lighting plays a central role in reinforcing the style, atmosphere of – and most importantly, immersion into – a game world. It can elevate, transform and enrich a simple environment into something much more than the sum of its parts.

The original Bloodlines is iconic for its atmosphere and sense of nostalgia, in part due to how it aptly captured the cultures and attitudes felt at the turn of the millennium. With Bloodlines 2 we wanted our atmosphere to resonate through the same blood-soaked spectacles, but to show the world as it is now.
These nights, many cities have undergone what would look from the outside like a glow-up. Things are shiny and new, flawless, stripped of anything that might bely their history and heritage. Not because we ourselves are flawless, but because we've become better at hiding our monstrosity. But the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. And the more vibrant that light, the more pressing the darkness that seeks to swallow it.

With this in mind, the tenets of Neo-Noir[www.paradoxinteractive.com] work hand-in-hand with our desire to create an atmosphere of deception and intrigue. Neo-Noir places a strong emphasis on silhouette, form and negative-space to create striking, stylish scenes that have an inviting yet threatening ambience.
Seattle at night is a dangerous place with a diverse range of environments and districts all with their own unique personality. The Lighting team have been working hard to ensure these areas feel enticing, seductive and immersive.”


⁃ Senior Lighting Artist Freddie Pitcher

Narrative
“It is simply a tad too early to reveal what I’m working on right this minute, but I figured perhaps you’d enjoy hearing about how we as Writers create Ambience in games. Something perhaps players don’t think of much (means we did our job right!), but that is still a big part of the overall experience. “Ambients” are the sounds you hear in the game outside of roleplay conversations; this can range from short lines you might hear from a passing NPC to situation-specific enemy dialogue. They're a vital part of developing the game's soundscape to help it feel like a fully fleshed-out world.

It's a process that involves close communication between Level Design and Narrative Design. Getting the ambients right requires understanding every fight, every location, every NPC, and writing unique dialogue to fit. How many enemies are there in this fight? Do they all appear at once or do they come in waves? Why is that NPC here? If you lurk before approaching, can you learn their motivation? Does eavesdropping on them give you a hint for where to go next? What can you learn about the wider world by listening to them?

Ambients are a perfect opportunity for world building, we give each NPC their own personality and a brief look into their life, no matter how minor a part they play. So while it's fun for the player to get a glimpse into their world, ambients really reinforce just that: this is their world. So Phyre (and by extension, the player) is just a small part of it.

Our team mould these around the traversal of the world while accounting for various playstyles; a player who favours stealth might overhear an entire enemy conversation, while a player who prefers to brawl might jump right into the fray and cut off all but the first line. We then move on to implementing every piece just so, to ensure it triggers at exactly the right moment, giving the player an immersive experience that feels alive and natural.

Thanks a lot for reading about this part of game development!”

⁃ Games Writer Cherish Goldstraw

Sound
Hi, all! I've created a few behind the scenes videos showing the process of recording some of the sounds for VtM:B2. I used a variety of different microphone types and techniques to capture close detailed recordings of various textures which would work well for the blood and gore in BL2. I then processed these recordings to bring out the finer details of the sounds to help create a hyper-realistic sonic aesthetic for them bone-crunchy moments in the game.


⁃ Sound Designer Marcus Bagshawe

[DagothGeas5]

Truly wish this was a better game

[logincrash]

Clan Highlight: Ventrue

The Clan of Kings, Blue Bloods, Tyrants, Warlords, Patricians, Borgias

Ventrue vampires usually choose their progeny from mortals familiar with power, wealth and influence. Seeing themselves as the rightful leaders of vampire society, Kindred of clan Ventrue take up the mantle of leadership wherever possible, often in the form of high positions in Camarilla Courts.



Playing a Ventrue in Bloodlines 2
Ventrue are blue blooded tyrants who incite obedience in both their allies and their foes. Focusing on the Discipline Dominate, Ventrue forces their prey to obey their command to fight their friends, forget what they’ve seen or even kill themselves. Feeding builds up Fortitude, allowing the Ventrue to soak up more damage in case any enemy is powerful enough to resist their force of will.

Abilities
When you choose your clan, you will start out with a passive ability unique to each clan. You are then able to unlock abilities from the Ability Tree, starting with your chosen clan. Each ability requires spending Ability Points to unlock which are earned from completing missions, combat and exploration. At the peak of the Ability Tree, you can unlock the clan Perk, a reward to those dedicated enough to unlock all of the abilities for a clan, giving a permanent passive upgrade.

Flesh of Marble
Clan Passive: Feeding hardens your skin, making you highly resistant to damage.
Cloud Memory
Cause a target to forget you were there, putting them into a relaxed state.



Possession
Possess an opponent, allowing you to see through their eyes for a period. While possessed, the target can be commanded to attack another person.



Terminal Decree
Use your powers of Dominate to command someone to kill themselves.



Mass Manipulation
Subdues enemies within your gaze, preventing them from attacking. Dominate abilities will affect all subdued opponents while Mass Manipulation is active.



Thirst
Clan Perk: Increases the amount of health restored by feeding.

https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/ima ... e1e532.png
There are many different ways to play your character in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Venture rely on the rise-and-fall mechanics of their Layered Fortitude, building up a defense to take on stronger opponents, while using abilities to dominate weaker foes and make them fight their friends or even kill themselves. Each clan has a straightforward way of playing, and does not require ability optimization. At the same time, if you want to, you can customize your playstyle by visiting certain important vampires throughout Seattle, who are sworn to assist you by offering their Blood to help you unlock abilities from their Clan.

Abilities from other clans may cost more AP depending on how well they align with your clans Disciplines. The Ventrue Disciplines are Dominate (the supernatural ability to control others) Fortitude (the ability to resist physical and mental attacks) and Presence (the supernatural ability to attract, awe, or terrify). If a Ventrue would try to unlock the Brujah ability Taunt, which is part of the Presence Discipline, it would cost less AP, than if they attempt to unlock an ability from a Discipline they don’t already have, such as Obfuscate. Unlocking additional Clan Perks will make them stack, so you can collect them all if you wish, elevating your power much closer to elder level.

Activated abilities and the Clan Perks can be learned from the other clans, but your clan passive can not. This means that while you can combine abilities and features from other clans in hundreds of different ways, your Ventrue playthrough will remain different from playing as another clan who branches into Ventrue abilities.



Image: Ability tree for Ventrue with all clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. The Banu Haqim ability Split Second has been equipped, replacing Possession.

How the **** did they manage to make the game look worse than the 20 year old original?

[Vergil]

Exciting update from some of the very talented folks at TCR

What are we up to?

Summer’s here so we figured it’d be a good time to pull back the curtain a bit and show you how a game like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is made. This month we’ll give you a couple of glimpses into how the magic becomes a game. In this post we’re focusing on the atmosphere of the game: Concept Art, Level Design, Lighting and Audio.

Concept Art
“For quite a while the Concept Team was working on an Underground area[www.paradoxinteractive.com] - exploring mood and tone for that section of the game. It took quite a bit of time since it's incredibly detailed. Once everyone was happy with our concepts, we decided to move on to one of the core locations of our city: Weaver Tower, the headquarters of the Seattle Camarilla.

We already had a basic layout for this area, so we focused on the entrance hall first. This is a large and striking space and solving the architecture and lighting fit was a fun task for the Concept Team. After this, we moved onto secondary places like corridors and rooms. We used the Entrance Hall as a main reference for what we wanted to achieve.

Like every location, Weaver Tower needed some unique features. We wanted to have something both mysterious, yet ancient feeling. Naturally, the real world provides the best inspiration, and the meticulous care and time it takes for bonsai trees to develop is where we gravitated towards. However, we also wanted it to feel different. So by juxtaposing the organic form of the tree, we designed it to be made of thousands of brass wires seemingly erupting from a Smokey quartz. All of which was achieved in Unreal Engine 5 to really get an established idea of how these statues fit in the space and create the most impact for players. We hope you’ll enjoy browsing around these spaces!”






⁃ Text - Junior Concept Artist Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 1 & 2 - Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 3 – Lead Concept Artist Michele Nucera.

Level Design
“As a Level Designer, I love working on spaces that evoke a range of powerful emotional experiences for the player. I've been exploring how we can best achieve this, while collaborating with our other departments. I am very excited to see your reactions!

Recently I’ve been working on an early level in the game, where I focussed on how we can encourage player learning, and how we can help you to feel confident when playing our game. We also want to build levels that support a variety of playstyles, to make sure that you can play as your chosen Clan.
As a Vampire, we want you to be able to embrace your supernatural movement options. Our levels have been carefully crafted in a way that will allow you to experiment and have fun with our traversal system, and in some places, be challenged.

I can’t wait for you all to play!”






⁃ Level Designer Amy Lee

“In Bloodlines 2 my main focus is to guide you through the cold and looming backdrop that our Design and Environment Art teams have meticulously crafted over the past few years. These quests, set in our nocturnal version of Seattle, allow you to delve into the lives of its many Kindred inhabitants.
Taking place after pivotal moments in the main questline, these adventures will offer you the chance to explore Seattle at your own pace. You will be visiting its Clan leaders, keeping the competition at bay and making decisions that will affect the outcome of your journey as Phyre. These are stuffed with Narrative and lore and I'll be taking you from the depths of the underground to the snow-capped high-rise rooftops.

Having so many great moments of Bloodlines 2's story under my care has always felt like a big responsibility. I am happy to report however, that working with the Narrative team has been wonderful, and bouncing ideas off of them has been some of the most fun I've had here at TCR. I look forward to heading into the night with all of you all, but for now I have more public spaces to deface.”






⁃ Junior Level Designer Jack Goddard

Lighting
“Lighting plays a central role in reinforcing the style, atmosphere of – and most importantly, immersion into – a game world. It can elevate, transform and enrich a simple environment into something much more than the sum of its parts.

The original Bloodlines is iconic for its atmosphere and sense of nostalgia, in part due to how it aptly captured the cultures and attitudes felt at the turn of the millennium. With Bloodlines 2 we wanted our atmosphere to resonate through the same blood-soaked spectacles, but to show the world as it is now.
These nights, many cities have undergone what would look from the outside like a glow-up. Things are shiny and new, flawless, stripped of anything that might bely their history and heritage. Not because we ourselves are flawless, but because we've become better at hiding our monstrosity. But the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. And the more vibrant that light, the more pressing the darkness that seeks to swallow it.

With this in mind, the tenets of Neo-Noir[www.paradoxinteractive.com] work hand-in-hand with our desire to create an atmosphere of deception and intrigue. Neo-Noir places a strong emphasis on silhouette, form and negative-space to create striking, stylish scenes that have an inviting yet threatening ambience.
Seattle at night is a dangerous place with a diverse range of environments and districts all with their own unique personality. The Lighting team have been working hard to ensure these areas feel enticing, seductive and immersive.”


⁃ Senior Lighting Artist Freddie Pitcher

Narrative
“It is simply a tad too early to reveal what I’m working on right this minute, but I figured perhaps you’d enjoy hearing about how we as Writers create Ambience in games. Something perhaps players don’t think of much (means we did our job right!), but that is still a big part of the overall experience. “Ambients” are the sounds you hear in the game outside of roleplay conversations; this can range from short lines you might hear from a passing NPC to situation-specific enemy dialogue. They're a vital part of developing the game's soundscape to help it feel like a fully fleshed-out world.

It's a process that involves close communication between Level Design and Narrative Design. Getting the ambients right requires understanding every fight, every location, every NPC, and writing unique dialogue to fit. How many enemies are there in this fight? Do they all appear at once or do they come in waves? Why is that NPC here? If you lurk before approaching, can you learn their motivation? Does eavesdropping on them give you a hint for where to go next? What can you learn about the wider world by listening to them?

Ambients are a perfect opportunity for world building, we give each NPC their own personality and a brief look into their life, no matter how minor a part they play. So while it's fun for the player to get a glimpse into their world, ambients really reinforce just that: this is their world. So Phyre (and by extension, the player) is just a small part of it.

Our team mould these around the traversal of the world while accounting for various playstyles; a player who favours stealth might overhear an entire enemy conversation, while a player who prefers to brawl might jump right into the fray and cut off all but the first line. We then move on to implementing every piece just so, to ensure it triggers at exactly the right moment, giving the player an immersive experience that feels alive and natural.

Thanks a lot for reading about this part of game development!”

⁃ Games Writer Cherish Goldstraw

Sound
Hi, all! I've created a few behind the scenes videos showing the process of recording some of the sounds for VtM:B2. I used a variety of different microphone types and techniques to capture close detailed recordings of various textures which would work well for the blood and gore in BL2. I then processed these recordings to bring out the finer details of the sounds to help create a hyper-realistic sonic aesthetic for them bone-crunchy moments in the game.


⁃ Sound Designer Marcus Bagshawe

Translation: We have nothing important to show you here's some ****** concept art and screenshots from unreal.

[1998]

Exciting update from some of the very talented folks at TCR

What are we up to?

Summer’s here so we figured it’d be a good time to pull back the curtain a bit and show you how a game like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is made. This month we’ll give you a couple of glimpses into how the magic becomes a game. In this post we’re focusing on the atmosphere of the game: Concept Art, Level Design, Lighting and Audio.

Concept Art
“For quite a while the Concept Team was working on an Underground area[www.paradoxinteractive.com] - exploring mood and tone for that section of the game. It took quite a bit of time since it's incredibly detailed. Once everyone was happy with our concepts, we decided to move on to one of the core locations of our city: Weaver Tower, the headquarters of the Seattle Camarilla.

We already had a basic layout for this area, so we focused on the entrance hall first. This is a large and striking space and solving the architecture and lighting fit was a fun task for the Concept Team. After this, we moved onto secondary places like corridors and rooms. We used the Entrance Hall as a main reference for what we wanted to achieve.

Like every location, Weaver Tower needed some unique features. We wanted to have something both mysterious, yet ancient feeling. Naturally, the real world provides the best inspiration, and the meticulous care and time it takes for bonsai trees to develop is where we gravitated towards. However, we also wanted it to feel different. So by juxtaposing the organic form of the tree, we designed it to be made of thousands of brass wires seemingly erupting from a Smokey quartz. All of which was achieved in Unreal Engine 5 to really get an established idea of how these statues fit in the space and create the most impact for players. We hope you’ll enjoy browsing around these spaces!”






⁃ Text - Junior Concept Artist Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 1 & 2 - Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 3 – Lead Concept Artist Michele Nucera.

Level Design
“As a Level Designer, I love working on spaces that evoke a range of powerful emotional experiences for the player. I've been exploring how we can best achieve this, while collaborating with our other departments. I am very excited to see your reactions!

Recently I’ve been working on an early level in the game, where I focussed on how we can encourage player learning, and how we can help you to feel confident when playing our game. We also want to build levels that support a variety of playstyles, to make sure that you can play as your chosen Clan.
As a Vampire, we want you to be able to embrace your supernatural movement options. Our levels have been carefully crafted in a way that will allow you to experiment and have fun with our traversal system, and in some places, be challenged.

I can’t wait for you all to play!”






⁃ Level Designer Amy Lee

“In Bloodlines 2 my main focus is to guide you through the cold and looming backdrop that our Design and Environment Art teams have meticulously crafted over the past few years. These quests, set in our nocturnal version of Seattle, allow you to delve into the lives of its many Kindred inhabitants.
Taking place after pivotal moments in the main questline, these adventures will offer you the chance to explore Seattle at your own pace. You will be visiting its Clan leaders, keeping the competition at bay and making decisions that will affect the outcome of your journey as Phyre. These are stuffed with Narrative and lore and I'll be taking you from the depths of the underground to the snow-capped high-rise rooftops.

Having so many great moments of Bloodlines 2's story under my care has always felt like a big responsibility. I am happy to report however, that working with the Narrative team has been wonderful, and bouncing ideas off of them has been some of the most fun I've had here at TCR. I look forward to heading into the night with all of you all, but for now I have more public spaces to deface.”






⁃ Junior Level Designer Jack Goddard

Lighting
“Lighting plays a central role in reinforcing the style, atmosphere of – and most importantly, immersion into – a game world. It can elevate, transform and enrich a simple environment into something much more than the sum of its parts.

The original Bloodlines is iconic for its atmosphere and sense of nostalgia, in part due to how it aptly captured the cultures and attitudes felt at the turn of the millennium. With Bloodlines 2 we wanted our atmosphere to resonate through the same blood-soaked spectacles, but to show the world as it is now.
These nights, many cities have undergone what would look from the outside like a glow-up. Things are shiny and new, flawless, stripped of anything that might bely their history and heritage. Not because we ourselves are flawless, but because we've become better at hiding our monstrosity. But the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. And the more vibrant that light, the more pressing the darkness that seeks to swallow it.

With this in mind, the tenets of Neo-Noir[www.paradoxinteractive.com] work hand-in-hand with our desire to create an atmosphere of deception and intrigue. Neo-Noir places a strong emphasis on silhouette, form and negative-space to create striking, stylish scenes that have an inviting yet threatening ambience.
Seattle at night is a dangerous place with a diverse range of environments and districts all with their own unique personality. The Lighting team have been working hard to ensure these areas feel enticing, seductive and immersive.”


⁃ Senior Lighting Artist Freddie Pitcher

Narrative
“It is simply a tad too early to reveal what I’m working on right this minute, but I figured perhaps you’d enjoy hearing about how we as Writers create Ambience in games. Something perhaps players don’t think of much (means we did our job right!), but that is still a big part of the overall experience. “Ambients” are the sounds you hear in the game outside of roleplay conversations; this can range from short lines you might hear from a passing NPC to situation-specific enemy dialogue. They're a vital part of developing the game's soundscape to help it feel like a fully fleshed-out world.

It's a process that involves close communication between Level Design and Narrative Design. Getting the ambients right requires understanding every fight, every location, every NPC, and writing unique dialogue to fit. How many enemies are there in this fight? Do they all appear at once or do they come in waves? Why is that NPC here? If you lurk before approaching, can you learn their motivation? Does eavesdropping on them give you a hint for where to go next? What can you learn about the wider world by listening to them?

Ambients are a perfect opportunity for world building, we give each NPC their own personality and a brief look into their life, no matter how minor a part they play. So while it's fun for the player to get a glimpse into their world, ambients really reinforce just that: this is their world. So Phyre (and by extension, the player) is just a small part of it.

Our team mould these around the traversal of the world while accounting for various playstyles; a player who favours stealth might overhear an entire enemy conversation, while a player who prefers to brawl might jump right into the fray and cut off all but the first line. We then move on to implementing every piece just so, to ensure it triggers at exactly the right moment, giving the player an immersive experience that feels alive and natural.

Thanks a lot for reading about this part of game development!”

⁃ Games Writer Cherish Goldstraw

Sound
Hi, all! I've created a few behind the scenes videos showing the process of recording some of the sounds for VtM:B2. I used a variety of different microphone types and techniques to capture close detailed recordings of various textures which would work well for the blood and gore in BL2. I then processed these recordings to bring out the finer details of the sounds to help create a hyper-realistic sonic aesthetic for them bone-crunchy moments in the game.


⁃ Sound Designer Marcus Bagshawe

Translation: We have nothing important to show you here's some ****** concept art and screenshots from unreal.

This and trying to harvest goodwill. "See all those junior employees working hard? Not their fault our game sucks, plsss support"

[Zothique]

Is this **** still being developed/ever going to come out? Will it be transed to hell and back? Will the Nosferatu be "hot" this time instead of morbidly disgusting? Many questions...

[1998]

Is this **** still being developed/ever going to come out? Will it be transed to hell and back? Will the Nosferatu be "hot" this time instead of morbidly disgusting? Many questions...

In the first iteration, they had decided to leave Nosferatu out, because being ugly and crawling through sewers might trigger ********.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Guess you can't have character sheets in a vidya game anymore. Only RPGslop

[gerey]

In the first iteration, they had decided to leave Nosferatu out, because being ugly and crawling through sewers might trigger ********.

A Tzimisce elder is wondering where his creations have run off to.

[Schizoid1488]

Did these ******* ever confirm if we'll still get the redhead milf and the turkish goth girl in this game or were they both scrapped? It's so ******* blackpilling seeing that disgusting rancid feminist zoomercut femcel in every single dev note that I stopped following after the first two.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guess you can't have character sheets in a vidya game anymore. Only RPGslop

Every game that's an RPG or just has "RPG elements" has the most generic UI lifted directly from games like Destiny 2 & other looter shooters.

[SoLong]

Being an environment designer or programmer must be a depressing job.

Imagine designing beautiful buildings, breathtaking vistas and spending hours to make sure it's just right... only for the SJW squad in your company's writing department to **** out another horrid script. So now your palace is being used as a backdrop for cringeworthy race baiting loudly bleated out by ****** in ball gowns.

[1998]

Apparently, dev diaries were on hold or something. I doubt anyone noticed.

Now they are announcing their return along with a dev diaries roadmap. Pathetic

[J1M]

Looking forward to the roadmap roadmap.

[CSM-101]

This is going to get scrapped more times than the White Wolf MMO.

[aweigh]

Making jokes about this being GOTY was fun until they released gameplay of the new build...

[1998]

The release window has been updated to first half 2025? Guess I must have forgotten it, but I really didn't know that **** was supposed to come out earlier than that. At least they are somewhat "smart" about it and don't give a fixed release date, and let's be honest, even this one they will likely miss.

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/532790/a ... 3?snr=2___

[Vergil]

Apparently, dev diaries were on hold or something. I doubt anyone noticed.

Now they are announcing their return along with a dev diaries roadmap. Pathetic

I would put dev diaries on hold too if it was a 50/50 split between showing boring art assets no one cares about or new gameplay details that immediately make the game look somehow worse than the last.

[Roguey]

The video shows that hair customization is in, so you won't be forced to look like an anachronistic enby.

The site mentions they're adjusting Fabien as well (presumably to make him less obnoxious). And they're using this time to give it "twice as many endings as its predecessor." (likely as silly as Todd's claim of Fallout 3 having over 200 endings).

[Vergil]

The site mentions they're adjusting Fabien as well

By adding a toggle to shut him up permanently I hope

[Irenaeus]

They should do a prequel to Bloodlines.

[Zothique]

I hope this **** gets canceled. What a joke.

[Shillitron]

They should do a prequel to Bloodlines.

The prequel should be to never make this trash game with a bunch of danger hairs.

[logincrash]

They should do a prequel to Bloodlines.

They should not make games at all, seeing how a game set in contemporary setting would be full of their pozzed up faggotry and a game set in any previous historical time period would be full of their pozzed up faggotry. They can't help themselves.

[CSM-101]

I hope this **** gets canceled. What a joke.

It'll keep limping along until it's been a decade and Gearbox buys it.