When hip-hop drove the big cars
In the time when new media
Was the big idea
That was the big idea..."
U2 - Kite
Le *gasp* - in a shocking and unprecedented plot twist, a video game release has been pushed back several months! Stop the presses!
The original Bloodlines has clung to its status as a true classic for fifteen years now, lauded for its narratives, characters, sound, replay value, quest structure and general atmosphere yet lambasted for its poor combat and a degree of bugginess and clunkiness evoking a termite-powered tractor. So when the developers for the sequel declare they need more time to avoid the first title's problems... well, yes, by all means do please try to keep the loading times under marathon length. But more than avoiding the original's weak spots I'm worried it simply may not be possible to match its strengths.
I'm not going to pretend to have any insider knowledge of Bloodlines 2. In fact I fully intend to forego looking up any of their press releases or other hype. After this post I'll probably just ignore it until it comes out then install it on release day and dive in, quest by quest, zone by zone, chapter by chapter. It's one of the few games I've had no problem pre-ordering blind. If it's great I'm in on the ground floor, but let's face it, even if it does turn out to be crap then ninety bucks is a small price to pay for the colossal amount of bitching I'm going to want to do on the topic, and if they manage to fuck this one up I'm quite prepared to output an entire new canine subspecies' worth of bitch.
I do know that none of the three founders of old Troika Games seem to have any involvement in the project, as all three now work for inXile or Obsidian, both of which companies have been subsumed into the soul-devouring vacuum which is Microsoft and are therefore no longer worth mentioning. I know nothing about Bloodlines 2's developer beyond skimming the game's Wikipedia page. I'm slightly encouraged by Paradox's involvement (they tend to have superior tastes) and they did get Brian Mitsoda back, who was supposedly responsible for so much of Bloodlines' charm. (edit: and then they fired him)
But no matter how creative your team might be, the main problem with trying to sell any game these days is that it largely means marketing to snowflakes, and catering to the younger generation's moral cowardice and narcissism will:
1) sap games' atmosphere of their more gut-wrenchingly memorable moments.
2) snow any quality under mountains of politically correct, self-righteous posturing.
Mitsoda himself leaned slightly toward glorifying politically correct archetypes in Dead State, but it's more worrisome to see Cara Ellison, the new senior writer, bragging she's going to "move away from what she considered to be the 'male power fantasy' of Bloodlines to give it a broader appeal." Well... ok? I guess? We can certainly do with fewer big guys with big swords like The Sheriff. Though it begs the question: how willing are you to also move away from glorifying codependence, servility and emotional manipulation, a.k.a. female power fantasies? And do you, like most women and certainly well-indoctrinated feminists, treat individual freedom as a "male power fantasy?"
Oh well. They did also wrangle Chris Avellone into their team somehow (edit: and then they fired him) and if anyone in the game industry might have retained enough of a head on his shoulders to realistically depict both masculine and feminine crimes, it's the guy who wrote Ravel into Planescape: Torment and Grieving Mother's dialogue in Pillars of Eternity.
Wait and see... 2020 you say?
See you then.
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