Hey Everyone, it is me again, Andy Kipling, CEO of HSL and sometimes Producer on Bloodlines 2! I am here to give you an update on Bloodlines 2 development; or more specifically an update on how us developers are getting along.
First, let me start by saying that I hope you are all navigating these trying times brought on by this global pandemic in as safe and as best way you possibly can. At Hardsuit we have been working diligently to first and foremost ensure for the safety and health of all our employees while conforming with the Stay at Home orders of the state government. Second, we have been hard at work developing Bloodlines 2!
These times have introduced us to a whole host of new experiences, emotions and workflows: some good, some bad and some ugly. I figured it may be of interest to describe some of those to you.
First on the good side, full time exclusive WFH has been a pretty massive change for us; we typically favor in person interactions and the natural collaboration that takes place when you get multiple people in the same room together. But, at the same time we have taken this opportunity to become a better employer and developer and have fully embraced it. As a result, we have stood up new processes and workflows to foster and support creative development even when remote. We have updated and improved our back-end infrastructure to more easily support 100+ employees remotely pushing and pulling gigs of data to and from our servers. We are now more capable and flexible towards catering to individual needs by – be it mitigating a terrible commute through Seattle traffic, or working with individual talent outside of Seattle and outside of our time zone. All these things make us nimbler, and more adaptable in an industry that is constantly changing.
The bad part of the whole “never get to go into the office” (other than the Covid19 realities and its consequences) is that we miss out on a lot of what we have strived so hard to create, foster and cultivate at HSL: the positive work environment, the friendly random interactions with your fellow co-workers, and the general social dynamics of having a bunch of incredibly talented and creative people working together towards a common goal, all together in the same space. We, as a species, are without a doubt social creatures (much like our Vampire brethren…) and the day to day human interactions of being in the office can be very beneficial to our mental health. So, there are lots of discussions and considerations around staying healthy (both physically and mentally); trying to balance enough social interaction, while also stepping away from your computer – which may also be the only opportunity for social interaction.
In terms of examples this means that our in-person MTG games are now having to move online. Our tabletop gaming groups and campaigns are being conducted via Teams and even our after-work happy hours are shifting into video chat land where we can sit at our computers and enjoy each other’s company.
As a studio that strives very hard to separate and respect work and life for a healthy work/life balance, and generally frowning on the idea of “bringing your work home with you…” is seriously complicated when your work is unavoidably in, and inseparable from, your home. It can be challenging for the individual: suddenly finding yourself working 12 hour days, or waking up and going straight to your computer; and it can be challenging for the organization: how to support individual’s personal lives and time and ensure they are not overworking or burning out, but still being flexible to support what works best for them, be it working early or late. Disciplined communications, encouraging people to sign off and leave when the workday ends, respecting online status, managing co-worker expectations and more are all important steps we have taken and continue to take to mitigate this. But it is definitely the case that the “bad” of the full-time WFH means that work life balance is precarious and something we need to be ever mindful of.
Lastly, we have the ugly. Across the board we have all kinds of new offices and workplaces, new co-workers and office mates, and new protocols and processes. A few examples:
We have augmented our code review process to allow for external third parties; it has sped things up considerably and generally made us more efficient:
We have been able to bring on some highly qualified individuals who we previously didn’t have access to because they refused to relocate out of Scranton, Pennsylvania:
Additionally, we have even been able to take on a few interns while we WFH, though training them has proven more challenging:
We have had some new types of problems and issues to troubleshoot and debug:
Maybe from time to time we just need to shift gears from debugging our game to de-catting our workspaces. But honestly, George does love his cat.
We have also discovered a new species of cat who keeps popping up on our slack:
And finally, Nvidia’s new RTX noise cancelling support is pretty amazing. It can help convince your co-workers that, behind that Star Wars background in your Teams call, there are in fact no small children screaming and fighting. Just what we need when we are all stuck working from home.
But enough about us, and what we are up to. What about the game you say! Well first off, here is someone else’s WFH setup. Cannot say I know who it is though:
But seriously, stay tuned, we’ve got more developer diaries to look forward to, and we have some new media dropping Soon™.
Thanks for taking the time to check in on what we have been up to and how we are doing.
Otherwise, stay safe and healthy (mentally and physically)!
~Andy
Dev Diary #10: These past months were about side-quests and traversal
Hello everyone!
February and March have been intense, for many reasons. Like many others in the US and around the world, the COVID-19 outbreak has changed how we work in the last few weeks. To help mitigate this unprecedented illness, our developers are all working from home. We have provided infrastructure and hardware support for that to happen, as well as provided more tools and procedures to help facilitate communication. The biggest challenge to us has been the separation. We shockingly like each other in this studio and have found it a little difficult not to be able to hang out during the week. But we also want to keep our developers and their families safe, so this is a small price to pay. The new working from home paradigm seems to be agreeing with people, and development is proceeding from the comfort of our own homes.
Speaking of which, we are seeing more and more of the game come together. On the road to “content complete” many features are getting locked including side quests, systems, and animations. We're getting to the point where the game you'll get to play at release is clearly recognizable through the construction dust.
Side quests are where you really get to meet the World of Darkness in Bloodlines 2, just like the first game. They're also one of the main rewards for stepping off the beaten path and exploring our version of Seattle. Most of our side-quests are written, scripted, and locked down in the game, and we are very excited to share them with you. The narrative design department has been hard at work making sure these side quests feel every bit as integral to the fabric of the game as the main quests.
The game grew in other ways as well. It always was central to our vision to make players feel like a vampire through gameplay. One side of it is to create this freedom in movements that a mere mortal could never experience. This led us to the decision to expand your baseline Thinblood abilities to traversal - you can use Chiropteran Glide, Mentalism Pull for specific objects or Nebulation through vents at any time, regardless of your primary Thinblood Discipline choice. We went through the game, particularly the hubs, and investigated all the ways we could make them even more exciting and seamless for you to use. These powers have been with us for a long time, and we can fully leverage their potential uses throughout all levels for puzzles, rewards, and perhaps some secrets for you to find.
We organized a mocap session in February, focusing on facial and dialogue animations. Our animation team has been polishing things like the feeding animations, combat, Discipline usage, and other vampire mainstays (no devs were hurt in the recording of this mocap session, proof in images).
Thanks for reading and stay safe!
Dev Diary #9: New Year, New Milestone
Hello everyone and Happy 2020!
Last year ended with a bang for us, as you may recall from our last update, the game is now in Alpha which is a very big milestone for the team. After celebrating, a large part of Alpha is to scope the remaining work into manageable pieces and bring them to the next step in development – Content Complete.
At this specific point in development, we are beginning to lock down certain features and quests. This means after extensive internal and external review, the feature or quest is considered complete and all work on the content is finished. This doesn’t mean the feature or quest is done however, as it still needs to be fully tested and reviewed for problems and bugs. We would of course love to tell you everything we’ve already locked down, but hey, spoilers.
What we can tell you is that much of the one-handed melee attack animations have been updated and locked, including animations for knives and lead pipes, the VFX team has finalized the telekinesis effects for the Mentalism Discipline, and the Environment Art team has wrapped set dressing of interior spaces in the domain of the Baron of Aurora.
For the first part of the year we are pushing toward “Content Complete”, meaning all content of the game is final and bug-fixing and polish become the priorities. AI engineers are populating the levels with different types of pedestrians and encounters, Environment artists are dressing side-quest spaces, Lighting and animation have their eyes on the conversations with NPCs, making sure they are well lit and fit well with the surrounding environment, and the narrative and quest design teams are hard at work adding some additional content and surprises.
Even when a blizzard struck Seattle earlier this month, that didn’t stop the snowed-in team from building content for the game. Inspiration can come from one’s surroundings, so much of the work around that time came from very important sources:
Thanks for reading the update, we will be back in February with another update!
The Bloodlines 2 Team
VEIN PURSUIT: A new TTRPG video chronicle set in the world of V:tM
Paradox Interactive and Bloodlines 2 bring you Vein Pursuit, a new tabletop role-playing game vampire chronicle preceding the events of the game.
Bloodlines 2 takes place in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, the iconic pen-and-paper game that lets you experience the rich universe of the Kindred, in all of its grit and majesty. The Vein Pursuit chronicle offers viewers a glimpse into events occurring before the plot of Bloodlines 2, narrated by World of Darkness Brand Editor and V5 developer Karim Muammar. Starring members of Paradox Interactive, the Bloodlines 2 development team and exciting guests, this group of Kindred will take on a perilous mission, relying on their unique skills and attributes as much as the roll of the dice to survive.
Synopsis: A group of couriers; some of the most badass Kindred of Los Angeles, has been sent on the perilous journey from Los Angeles to Seattle, tasked with delivering precious and secret cargo to a vampire in the Emerald City. What the couriers don't realize is that betrayal lurks in their midst. However, this isn’t their story.
Vein Pursuit follows the perilous journey of the rag-tag band of Kindred who've been sent to save the couriers of the Anarch Free State and see the cargo safely north. On this journey through the backcountry of the West Coast, through deserts and mountains, all their wits and resolve will be tested. Time is running out - it’s going to be a hell of a ride!
Follow the journey of the coterie of Kindred starring players out of Paradox Interactive and Hardsuit Labs teams, as well as fan-favorite streamer Outstar.
Dev Diary #8: Celebrating Bloodlines 2 Alpha and the Holidays!
2019 is nearing its end, and with it comes our last dev diary for the year. It’s been a wild time for us, from the announcement at GDC in March, to meeting you at PDXCON. All throughout, we’ve been blown away by your enthusiasm. It’s now more than three years since Andy, Brian and Ka’ai pitched the idea of making Bloodlines 2 to Paradox. You and your support have made this real in a way that’s difficult to describe.
As Andy mentioned in the November dev diary, we’ve turned our attention inward for a bit. Right now, our number one priority is development, with the goal to make Bloodlines 2 the best game it can be. That’s starting to bear fruit. For example, we recently passed our Alpha!
This is one of the big milestones in game development, although in different places, Alpha can mean slightly different things. For us, it means that we are “systems-complete”; we’re done adding gameplay mechanics and features to the game. By contrast: Beta, which’ll happen next year, is “content-complete”. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the core game is done and ready to put in a box (“systems-final”). There are still quite a few people busy tweaking, balancing, and art-ing up the gameplay. It’s actually quite possible that our final game will ship with a few less mechanics than we had in the game at Alpha. In the end, we want to offer you really compelling, smooth gameplay. If over the coming months we find that something sticks out, we’d much rather put one less bullet point on the back of the box than shoehorn things in.
As you may imagine, work changes after Alpha. For some of us, it becomes much more about keeping the details consistent. For example: Earlier this year, some of our engineers and the UX team had come up with a better, more natural-feeling way of using elevators and choosing floors in the game. What this means is that we’re now going through all of our virtual Seattle and make sure all elevators fit this new logic. Not a big thing - but still, it involved diligent work by our technical designers supported by lighting, environment and UI artists.
In other places, systems-complete means that we get to add that extra in art that we didn’t want to risk spending time on before. Finally, we had time to invite everyone to the 'dismemberment meeting' - just another day in game dev. At the same time, the audio team are having a blast recording weapon foley, to make everything from picking up, to loading, stashing away and y’know, firing each individual weapon feel another bit more real.
Audio is also involved in completing the lines in the NPC Bark system - they work closely with engineering and narrative on that one. Barks are all those words and short sentences you hear AI utter in a video game. Often, that’s connected to AI states, like for example “aggressive”, “searching”, or “hurt”. Sometimes, it’s also tied to the NPC’s role in the world - a policeman will have different barks than a drunk barfly. Good barks are useful without drawing too much attention from the player, and it is not a piece of cake to find 15 different ways to say “I think I’ve seen something odd in that back alley”.
Of course, not all of us are chasing gameplay details towards that elusive “Final”. A big chunk of our team, our level and narrative designers, animators, environment, VFX and lighting artists are hard at work on the quests you will experience that gameplay. We’re looking forward to talking more about that race to Beta in the coming months. For now, to conclude this blog post, we’d like to share the work of our VFX team on blood effects. These are research prototypes created by Wesley Eldridge and Tracey Landau.
Time to put down the quill and wish you all great Winter Holidays! See you in 2020!
The Team at Hardsuit Labs
Charity Stream with Outstar for The International Myeloma Foundation
Josephine McAdams will be joining us later in the stream to talk about the foundation, why it's one she has chosen to support and some fun chatter about her current work in L.A by Night.
We'll also be joined by folks from the Bloodlines 2 team. Florian Schwarzer, Senior Product Manager and Rachel Leiker Lead UI/UX Designer, to chat a little about their part in this most anticipated game and perhaps a little vampire lore on the side.
During these five hours Outstar will be our Host for an entertaining look at the new mod for Bloodlines 1, Prelude, with famed modder Wesp5 joining us in chat to answer her questions. Following that up with a play of Coteries of New York, a new Vampire: The Masquerade game by developers Draw Distance, with friend of the Vamily Aavak joining us to lend his lovely vocals for dialogue on stream.
That's not all! A host of giveaways and raffles will be held on stream. For the top 3 donators they'll be sent the following goodies that no one can resist (we're looking at you Toreador):
Top Donator
Set of Signed Faction posters by HSL
VTMB Soundtrack Vinyl
Bloodlines 2 Game Key
V5 Core Book
Corsair Swag
Bloodlines 2 T-Shirt
Coteries of New York Game Key
2nd
Set of Signed Faction posters by HSL
VTMB Soundtrack Vinyl
Bloodlines 2 Game Key
Bloodlines 2 T-Shirt
Coteries of New York Game Key
3rd
Set of Signed Faction posters by HSL
Bloodlines 2 Game Key
Bloodlines 2 T-Shirt
Coteries of New York Game Key
With raffles on going through the stream for signed posters, T-shirts and more!
Last but not least we will have Twitch Drops* enabled. If you’re still looking for more Blood Points to unlock those goodies on your Bloodlines 2 account then be ready to drink them all up in chat!
If you haven’t started the quest yet, have a look at My Paradox Account section on the website and start collecting Blood Points to unlock in-games rewards at launch.
We can’t wait to see you all on Saturday, let’s spread the holiday cheer and help out a good cause while we’re at it!
-Bloodlines 2 Team
*How to activate Twitch Drops? When tuning in to the stream you’ll have the ability to activate your Twitch drop. You can find more information on how to activate Twitch drops HERE. If you do not have a Paradox account you’ll need to create one in order to activate the Twitch drops for this stream and collect Blood Points. Those with a Paradox account will use their existing credentials.
p.s We hear there's something going down at via bloodfortrade.com hmm... Suspicious.
Dev Diary #7: PDXCON Recap
Hi there! My name is Andy Kipling, and I’m the CEO of Hardsuit Labs. Being a CEO means a lot of responsibility: From deciding how to grow the team, to looking after the company's profit & loss plan. All of it important, but not all of it fit for a dev diary.
Seeing that we recently visited PDXCon, I thought I’d share what the event was all about, giving you a glimpse behind the scenes from the perspective of the HSL team.
On October 16, 2019, I boarded a flight whose final stop would not only take me to Germany for the first time but would also take me to my first ever PDXCon. I have attended a lot of industry-related conventions over the years, but I have never been to one which featured so many passionate fans focused on a single publisher’s set of games. And it was quite the experience.
The weeks leading up to PDXCon were intense as we had a lot of irons in the fire: Among other things, we were pushing forward on development, we were coordinating the pending delay announcement, and we were preparing talks for PDXCon.
Side note: developing a public talk about the nature of development is no easy task. On the one hand, I could probably talk for hours about Living World or Combat or general development, but without proper context, a lot of that talk can easily be misunderstood or misconstrued. So, boiling down all that information into something concise and comprehensible was a challenging yet interesting exercise.
That said, when we stepped off the plane in Berlin, the delay had already been announced, it was mostly well-received, and our talks were… nearing completion. With our feet firmly in Germany and our focus solely on PDXCon, we got to work, meeting up with our friend and Product Manager, Florian, at our hotel to being practicing and dry runs on our talks for the event.
The next day we woke up early and headed over to the Funkhaus where PDXCon was being hosted. We had the chance to show the very same demo we announced the game with, back in March at GDC. To this day, there have been no recordings of this build, which meant that we could offer our guests something exclusive. As I got into the groove, it was 7 months since I last did this demo, I recognized that we hit our familiar stride with when doing the press demos, a demo that was well received. It would turn out to be a stark contrast to the next day, however.
Saturday the 19th started early. We arrived at the venue around 7:30 am and the fans were already there en masse. Kudos to you all who were standing around outside the early cold fall morning.
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Demos with the fans started at 8:30 that morning and immediately I was surprised, excited and impressed. In all my years in this industry and with all the demos I have been a part of, I can not say I have ever had the privilege to present to a group of fans like the people at PDXCon. Within 30 seconds of starting the demo, our audience was clapping, cheering, shouting out answers for dialogue and generally showing a level of excitement I haven’t experienced before. And as a developer, that was super inspiring and emotionally fulfilling. For as early as it was, and as jet-lagged and tired I was, that initial experience was a real inspiration and something I took home to Seattle to share with the team. If only they also had been there. And to top it off, I had a Malkavian cosplayer in our audience!
From there it was a few more demos, followed by the big announcement show. After some quick rehearsals outside on the banks of the river Spree, it was back inside the concrete Funkhaus for a deep dive into combat mechanics, where I stood in for our designers, who had opted to stay home and press on with development. Despite my trepidation, it went off without a hitch.
By then, we had also settled into the rhythm that was our time at PDXCon. If one of us was not manning the demo booth, then someone was off giving a talk, be it on Combat, Living World, Dialogue Systems or the game’s narrative. Oh, and speaking of Narrative, I should note that while my experience reflected most of the other HSL dev’s experience, Brian and Cara, being responsible for our narrative, had quite a different experience; doing back to back interviews for two days straight. I’m truly impressed and glad that they could take on that responsibility.
Saturday was by far our busiest day, but it was also the most fun day. In addition to being able to show the game to our fans, we also got to interact with them one on one. We had a community meet and greet for an hour where we got to just speak freely about all things Bloodlines, HSL and Paradox. It was great to meet a lot of the fans, pose for pictures and just enjoy the conversation and support. I can not say how great it is to have positive feedback and support from the community. We have been at work on this game for a long time, and it is because of people like those who came to PDXCon (and many others) that we have the opportunity to put as much time and effort into this game as we have.
Also, to the person whose poster I accidentally signed twice, please accept my apology.
This takes me to the Dev Update on the main stage at PDXCon. While we did not end PDXCon with the keynote it did mark the culmination of a lot of behind-the-scenes work. We spoke to some of the history of the project, the studio, the relationship with Paradox, where we are presently and most importantly; where we are going from here.
I mentioned this earlier and I will mention it again, but the support that you all have shown us following the delay announcement has been tremendous and wonderful. It is that kind of response that inspires and motivates us developers and so I wanted to personally say thanks. It is something that we not only heard leading up to PDXCon but was reinforced over and over while at the event – do what is necessary and best for the game and we will support you.
So, with that in mind, and as we alluded to in the keynote, we are going to be a bit quieter for a while as we do just that – do what is necessary and best for the game; making it all it can be. This means that you may not hear or see from us as much but that does not mean we have forgotten about you. Rather, we are heads down working to make Bloodlines 2 everything we want it to be. We look forward to seeing you on the flip side. Until then...
— Andy Kipling
A letter to our fans regarding the launch and our commitment to Bloodlines 2
To all fans of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
For the last three and a half years, we’ve worked hard to bring you a worthy successor to Bloodlines 1. To us, that meant not only making good on the ambitions of this remarkable game, but also a duty to ensure we would not repeat its mistakes. Today, we have to tell you that we need some more time to get you the game you’ve been waiting for. Although Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will still launch in 2020, we have decided to value quality over making the Q1 launch window.
There are some things we wanted to hit under all circumstances when we set out to follow in Bloodlines’ footsteps: A deep, branching storyline; fascinating and amazingly acted characters; the rich universe of the World of Darkness. We firmly believe that we’re on the right track to get you all of this.
On the flip side, there’s the responsibility to avoid some of the issues that plagued the first game, which was famously launched too early. Over the last few months, it became clear that to stick to our original date would risk repeating that mistake. We won’t do that. In the end, everyone working on this game wants to offer you the best Bloodlines 2 we can.
This hasn’t been an easy- nor our first choice. Throughout 2019 we have been improving our processes and growing our teams, however it soon became clear that this alone won’t allow us to deliver the quality we want at the date we promised.
Your feedback was invaluable in this. It helped us give the proper weight to what we saw, as well. We’d like to thank you, and hope you’ll support us in the decision that came from it.
Many of us from Hardsuit Labs will be in Berlin for PDXCON. For those of you going, we look forward to seeing you there! We will be sharing insights into the development of Bloodlines 2 along with other steps we’ve taken to strengthen our development team to realize our ambitions for Bloodlines 2.
For those of you who won’t be there, we will be sharing more about this during the PDXCON Announcement stream on Saturday the 21st. We are also opening up a Reddit thread to answer any of your questions in the Bloodlines stream on the following Sunday.
Thanks,
Andy Kipling and Brian Mitsoda, on behalf of the team at Hardsuit Labs
We want to hear from you! Join the discussion on the comments below to ask your questions. We will compile them to be answered on October 20th during our special Dev Q&A stream live from PDXCON.
Tune in to Paradox Interactive Twitch or Mixer channels this Sunday Oct. 20th at 4pm CET to watch our dev team answer your most burning questions.
DEV DIARY #6: Environment Design
Hi Everyone! My name is Thanh Pham (Tawn Fam) from Hardsuit labs, and I am the Environment Art Lead on Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2.
Telling stories through a scene is a difficult challenge, even more so when the gap between fantasy and reality is minimal. The World of Darkness is the underlying layer below the facade of what we perceive as reality. If you are unlucky enough to find yourself behind this veneer, you’ll soon encounter very real powers and evils that you’ve previously relegated to fiction. In Bloodlines 2 a set of relatively ordinary people are turned into vampires against their will. They find themselves as fledgeling thinbloods, being trust into a world they don’t understand, and with no-one there to show you them the ropes. Amongst the tasks of Environment Art we are asked to support the story of these characters and how they move through their new life through environmental cues and set dressing.
Full disclosure; I came into this project without a complete understanding of the narrative surrounding vampires in “The World of Darkness.” My understanding of vampires, pertaining to this world, was limited and lacking. Here are a collection of my assumptions about vampires, and how they correlate with vampires in the World of Darkness:
Vampires despise garlic – Incorrect
Vampires are burned by holy water – Nope
Vampires are threatened by crucifixes - No
Vampires always sleep in coffins – False
Vampires breathe air – Wrong again.
Vampires do not reflect their own image in the mirror – While true for a subset of the most powerful of vampires, you shouldn’t count on it.
Prior to gathering all this new intel, I had an idea of how we were going to set dress and decorate the living spaces of vampires. When properly onboarded however, much of this went out the window as we started laying the foundations of our visual language.
Set Dressing in the dark
If you were randomly bitten by a vampire on the street at night, you would probably be in a daze for a while. When you finally come to your senses, you would likely head home, rather confused, since you did not have any considerable visible marks of your attack. You would wake up to the most confusing day of your life. The rays of the sun would burn and irritate your skin, food is no longer appetizing, and water is not quenching your unbearable thirst. The realization that breathing isn’t even necessary anymore is probably the most alarming aspect of your new life. Going to bed during the day and being awake all night might not seem so strange to many of us in this age of electricity, but after a while, it will take its toll.
As a newly turned vampire becomes more accustomed to their fate, their living space is likely to change to reflect this. Since food and water are no longer necessities, dishes, drinking glasses, pots and pans, and random snacks are either gathering mold in the sink or trash hidden away. As they progress they realize that there is really no need for a fridge anymore. If the vampire has been around long enough, they might get rid of their it to make room for something else, space being a premium in a small city apartment. (Not all vampires live in huge mansions.) Blocking out the sun becomes an early and urgent affair. They would likely use whatever is available to keep the burning rays at bay; pizza boxes, cardboard and duct tape. One could assume that after some time, they would upgrade that haphazard looking window into something more refined, depending on the interest in and sense of style, some might appreciate the finer things in life - making unlife that much more manageable. If not neatly arranged in bookshelves, you would likely find books and literature on vampyrism and other occult topics strewn about as the thinblood tries to make sense of their new reality.
Aside from the furniture and design of a vampire’s haven, there are some other opportunities to tell their story. Their newfound thirst for blood likely put a dent in the neighbourhood population of stray cats and dogs. A small animal does not offer much sustenance, so it is likely you would find remains of pets and other critters littering the apartment
New Powers Lead to New Areas to Explore
In Bloodlines 2, we are pushing the idea of vampire powers used towards vertical traversal. If a skilled parkour practitioner can scale up a building wall, so can a thinblood vampire. Vampires inhabit spaces in the shadows and areas least traveled by normal humans. Barely lit rooftops of buildings are great areas for the vampire to dwell in, but trying to set dress an area to show what a vampire leaves behind is difficult. Since they don’t eat or drink, they don’t leave food garbage lying around. Other than wet footsteps and other small clues, there is not much to go by. Instead, we decided to use other gameplay methods that enabled the use of heightened senses to find traces that vampires leave behind. These traces are often found as tags, similar to how gangs mark their territory with spray paint.
Christmas!
The storyline of this game takes place during on of the most festive season of all in Seattle - Christmas! Christmas trees, tinsel, ornaments, stringed colored lights, salvation army donation boxes - that the player can steal from - stockings, and joy for all. It is imperative that we drive the mood of this game towards a holiday theme and that it is clearly evident to the player. Not everything that happens during Christmas is all cheery and joyful. We have some goodies in store!
Blind spots
A major aspect of this game is that breaking the masquerade has severe consequences. Causing havoc and trouble in a well-lit open area will alert the police and be a detriment to your health as a vampire. Where can you be free and enjoy your new vampire superpowers? Where is the “dark web” of these city environments where the lawless can run to? We are introducing areas in the game called blind spots that will allow the player to escape to when they need to run from the police after a dirty deed has been done. Blind spots are alleyways, dimly lit back parking lot areas, or even rooftops. To the normal eye, these areas feel dangerous and unsafe. You definitely notice that the blind spot areas will feel unkempt. Garbage might be piling up, rats are scattered about, and the walls are tagged with graffiti. The casual human would generally avoid these areas, but to the vampire these areas are freeing and feel like home.
Rain
A major misconception about Seattle, is that it is always raining. It might not always be raining in Seattle during the winter months, but it is always drearily wet and misty. If one were to stand outside in December, they would notice the ground is always damp and it seems to stay that way for vast amounts of time. We decided to have the exterior environments in Bloodlines 2 to always be wet to be faithful to the weather in Seattle during the winter months.
Horror
An aspect of vampires in the World of Darkness compared to the current climate view of them is that they are monsters. There is no teenage vampire angst happening here or a coming of age scenario. They are monsters and shall remain monsters. Without giving away too much, if there are scenes of death and dismay, there will be quite a bit of blood and horror. We want to set the narrative mood of this game to be dark and disturbing. To attain that through environment art, we tend to stick to colors that are neutral and not overwhelming. Allow the lighting team to set the mood of the given scene and allow the colors and hues of death to dominate the space. The more realistic Environment Art can make a space look and feel, the more unnerving it will be when death and horror present themselves.
New World vs Old World
In Bloodlines 2, a major storyline is that there is a power struggle between the Old World vampires and the newer generation of vampires. I won’t go into much detail about this since it might reveal too much of the story, but the current reality in Seattle is that there is an economic and cultural shift happening with the massive rise of tech companies and an influx of new people moving to the city looking for job opportunities. We have included aspects of this dynamic into our game. One way is through the set dressing of cranes dotting the Seattle skyline to help denote new construction happening next to older architecture. Different neighborhoods with drastically different looks and feel in this game assist with the story of change in Seattle.
I hope this environment art dev diary helps give some insight on how we approach the Bloodlines 2 story through set dressing and environment cues. We often ask ourselves what would someone working in the field of Crime Scene decipher from our set dressing and choice of materials and colors in a given space. Could they guess the narrative of the scene from the story we tell with the environment? The World of Darkness is hidden in an underlying area of reality. Things are not always what they seem and we have tried to push that narrative through various locations in the game. The hope is that the players can see some of those underlying themes through Environment Art when they get a chance to play the game.
Of all the new facts I have learned about vampires in the World of Darkness, I’m surprised about how much they care about their image.. As I mentioned, vampires don’t breathe air, but quite a few of them still smoke!? So because of this, you might notice quite a few cigarette trays in this game. The older more refined vampires prefer to drink blood straight from a victim’s warm neck, anything else would be considered vulgar. So If you see a glass of blood it is likely another way for that vampire to show off for the player. A good example of a more flamboyant vampire in this regard is Lou, who really takes the idea about image to a new level. Lou is often shown smoking and drinking in her mansion when the player shows up, although she really doesn't get anything out of either, at least in the more traditional sense.
Faction: The Unseen
Hello everyone!
Up next, our last faction release, The Unseen. For as long as there has been a Seattle, there have been some that didn’t suit the Pioneers’ vision of a place made of art as much as brick, glass and iron. The misshapen members of clan Nosferatu never had a chance to fit in. They were encouraged to stay out of sight: In the outskirts, the shadows and - as the city grew - its Underground.
The Unseen
“THERE IS ALWAYS TIME.” - The Council of Three
For more than a century, the Unseen have been led by the Council of Three - or "The Speakers" to the Nosferatu. These resourceful Kindred helped their people survive among the homeless and loners of the city. While the rest of Seattle’s vampires took pains to ignore them, these Unseen grew into a faction, began trading secrets… And grudges.
Today, the Council has left much of the Nosferatu’s operation to younger vampires more adept at gathering intel in modern nights. Where the Unseen used to be composed of thieves, frauds and homeless, they now also include journalists, engineers and hackers. While the older Nosferatu are used to an existence of survival, the younger ones have begun to look for ways of making a mark on their city.
The Unseen have been here for a long time, and they see everything. They’d be a potent ally to the vampires of any other of Seattle’s factions - if they can be found.
Tight-Knit
No other faction of vampires in Seattle looks out for their own like the Nosferatu. What else can you do, if nobody else will even look at you?
Information Brokers
It’s amazing what the Nosferatu’s peculiar skills and a few decades of being ignored will unearth, if your home happens to be one of the tech hubs of the world. The Unseen know what you did, why you’re trying to hide it - and who’ll pay to find out.
Unnoticed
Seattle has been a city of drifters, transients and homeless for almost as long as it has existed. By and large, people just look the other way. The Unseen walk among these unfortunates, hidden in plain sight to vampire and human alike.
