It's like you read my mind. I'm still cautiously excited for the game, but I won't be pre-ordering any edition of it. Once it releases and reviews are out, I may give it a shot depending on what I see/hear.
Worst case, we'll get a Bioware-tier story with clearly defined 'right' and 'wrong' choices surrounded by a crude imitation of satire in which the writer merely pantomimes their political opponents.
Best case, we get a worthy sequel to VtM:B in which I clock in 1000 hours in the next 5 years.
What I'm expecting: A potentially good game, ruined by shitty decisons, that will eventually be saved by the modding community. Essentially, it'll be a sequel to VtM:B, in more ways than intended.

No, thanks. Aren't there enough RPG series which catered to this direction and were all the worse for it? But since the gamepage doesn't list it yet, there's definitely a chance your wish comes true.

Haven't people learned NOT to preorder games yet?

no point pre ordering games for a few crappy items, i learned the hard way of preordering destiny 2 cos i wanted the weapon and it sucked

I might be showing my age, but "pre-order" used to mean "put down money on something we've nearly finished" and not "fund our development, because we don't feel like it".

That + Paradox = a possibly-good game I won't be playing.

American Gods got similar treatment (even with Gaiman on-board, though reportedly he got seriously side-showed in most decisions related to the changes).

Outrage peddler crowd took a fantastic, highly nuanced, poignant, and most of all humanistic story and turned it into a medium of declaring their political views to the world.

Never mind that Gaiman's subtle story-telling created more thoughtful consideration than an episode full of the usual ham-fisted attempts at shock presentation the TV series seems hell-bent on.

And this is coming from somebody who thinks Bernie Sanders would, in a healthy society, be considered a center-left politician, not the radical leftist he is constantly branded as on our side of the ocean.

Completely ignoring such silly things as major changes to major characters absolutely affecting other elements of the storytelling, but that's OK because the TV series doesn't bother with the novel's story anyway in that regard, either.

I hate this timeline.

Annnnnnddddd no! At least not until i see a god damn gameplay.

Every piece on Bloodlines 2 I've read so far actually had Mitsoda credited as narrative lead and Ellison mostly writing side quests. Which makes me at least give the whole thing the proverbial benefit of the doubt for now.
Also when taking into account Avellone's contribution which if you look at his past work (Fallout 2, Planescape Torment, KOTOR 2, Alpha Protocol, POE) most likely will be all about "grey area"-characters with complex and intriguing personalities.

And frankly I couldn't care less if the gender selection during character creation had more than the traditional 2 options. As long as the two prevalent ones are there I don't really care at all.
Since modding apparently will be a thing right out of the gate I'm sure it won't take long for someone to figure out how to remove or hide anything "insufferable" and not to their particular liking.

Like I said, I believe in Mitsoda and Avellone; they'll most likely do a good job as far as they're allowed to. My worry is in how Ellison handled the interview and a few things that she said. I wasn't aware that she'll be mostly dealing with side-quests or minor writing, but I'm glad that you informed me.

Frankly the gender selection doesn't really bother me much either, even though it feels out of nowhere if it's well implemented I could see it working in the game's favor (it's modern Seattle after all, so they can definitely put it to good use). What worries me is how they considered the first game a "male power fantasy" and how they may tone things down or limit themselves so they don't offend, which can lead to a not so fleshed out experience. This said, I am glad that the character creation will have different body types, for instance, this is something that I'm interested in seeing; I hope we can find many different NPCs as well, and of course I hope we can be a dick to them and their appearance if we so desire (if I am a Nosferatu, I really want to be a dick one).

That is going to depend on the nuances of how they do it. For example, do we choose both the sex and pronoun of our character, or do they force us to only choose our pronoun? There's a big difference between the two. The former would be giving players more options, the latter is taking options away. It really depends on how they do it. Also the statements about how the first game was only a male power fantasy is weird, I'm not sure they understand the first game at all.

Is Wesp on the team? Has anyone notified him to see if he wants to do this for the next ten years in addition to VTMB1? Are we going to have to wait 15 years after the release of VTMB2 to get a playable game?

That's definitely the word that came to mind when I read that Angry Gamer piece. If anything, it made me more interested in the game just to piss those people off if nothing else, so job well done there.

That would have been an awesome idea to get Wesp on board. But somehow I doubt that they did. Otherwise they would advertise it.

How come does "soon" (to be released) equal over one year of waiting? :D