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Vampire The Masquerade seriesWas this game rushed out of development?(7 posts)(7 posts)
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Posted April 15, 2015
**Spoiler warning**

I finished Redemption again today and I've had a question burning in my mind that I've wanted to ask for some time now. Has anyone got the inside scoop on the development of Redemption? I feel that as soon as the game switches from Dark Ages to Modern Nights that it drops a lot of the storytelling, lore and other interactive elements and it feels super rushed. I mean during the dark ages segment the maps were bigger, there were more places to go and some quests did not just incorporate cleaning a three-story dungeon. Think of the Nosferatu Tunnels puzzle, getting the wine for Joseph, patrolling the streets, the golem and getting to know the characters of Prague.
In the modern nights, and especially in London, it just feels like we're going from one dungeon to the next, with next to no dialogue complimenting the quests at hand. Important story twists like Wilhelm belonging to the Sabbat and Pink being an Assamite spy are just brushed over and not given a second thought. We're not even given a good explanation if Vudoklak (going by the good ending) is really gone, or what happened to him afterward. The game just kind of ends and a lot of the lore set up during the dark ages seems futile. Why didn't we get a glimpse of Archbishop Ecaterina the Wise in New York? What happened to Serena when the Giovanni started hunting the remaining Cappadocians? There are so many loose ends and the greatness that is the first Prague chapter is never really matched.

So was VtM: Redemption rushed towards the end? Could it also perhaps explain the extremely lacking AI? Was there no time left or did the devs lose interest? Perhaps they had focused more on the multiplayer aspect during this time? I think it's kind of a pity, for the engaging story of Christof and Anezka kind of loses its momentum, literally and figuratively, when we are buried beneath Vyzherad Castle at the halfway point.

Please, discuss :)
Post edited April 15, 2015 by Nickcronomicon
Posted April 15, 2015
Short answer; yes. The game felt rushed.

The Christof and Anezka love story was kind of a shoe-horned concept that kept derailing everything else. I basically loved it, but felt tunnel visioned by it. There is a lot of mechanical errors, some unbalanced disciplines, and half-working items [serenity item set doesn't actually work]. This game is capable of having a ton more content.

The Multiplayer for VTMR was actually a bigger selling point for the game to begin with since it was built to be a sandbox storyteller environment. Along with an official SDK that allowed the community to make plenty of content for the game, fix existing content, as well as the ability to make serious modifications to the original single player story. The Nod Engine by Nihilistic was likely worked on more than the single player campaign and its content.

And with that, there is a mod working to make the game feel less rushed. It's called the Age of Redemption mod. This mod has been going through a lot of iterations since its 2012 launch. Mostly in the area of mechanical changes and a ton of work to make the Redemption SP campaign to work in full glory within the MP environment. Unfortunately, the direct connections once established by Won.net are no more, but we have an alternative to our multiplayer woes; Tunngle. Tunngle allows us to connect to other players via VPN then we can use the LAN option of the game to play with our friends.

There has been a lot of private discussions within the Age of Redemption team about what can be done about the plot. Unfortunately, plot changes are really the last thing on the Age of Redemption agenda. A lot of mechanical changes have been done already, including fixing the AI. There's a lot more awesome things that can be done to the mechanics that truly make the game feel completely fleshed out.

You can check out the mod here:

http://e-mods.net/modules/mods/about_aor.php

You can also view the public Age of Redemption content planner(s) here:

[The Recent Planner for this year]

http://e-mods.net/forum/index.php?topic=1518.msg7574#msg7574

[Last years planner including mark off for what's been finished in the launched mod]

http://e-mods.net/forum/index.php?topic=1497.msg7439#msg7439
Posted April 15, 2015
avatar
Javokis: Short answer; yes. The game felt rushed.

The Christof and Anezka love story was kind of a shoe-horned concept that kept derailing everything else. I basically loved it, but felt tunnel visioned by it. There is a lot of mechanical errors, some unbalanced disciplines, and half-working items [serenity item set doesn't actually work]. This game is capable of having a ton more content.

The Multiplayer for VTMR was actually a bigger selling point for the game to begin with since it was built to be a sandbox storyteller environment. Along with an official SDK that allowed the community to make plenty of content for the game, fix existing content, as well as the ability to make serious modifications to the original single player story. The Nod Engine by Nihilistic was likely worked on more than the single player campaign and its content.

And with that, there is a mod working to make the game feel less rushed. It's called the Age of Redemption mod. This mod has been going through a lot of iterations since its 2012 launch. Mostly in the area of mechanical changes and a ton of work to make the Redemption SP campaign to work in full glory within the MP environment. Unfortunately, the direct connections once established by Won.net are no more, but we have an alternative to our multiplayer woes; Tunngle. Tunngle allows us to connect to other players via VPN then we can use the LAN option of the game to play with our friends.

There has been a lot of private discussions within the Age of Redemption team about what can be done about the plot. Unfortunately, plot changes are really the last thing on the Age of Redemption agenda. A lot of mechanical changes have been done already, including fixing the AI. There's a lot more awesome things that can be done to the mechanics that truly make the game feel completely fleshed out.

You can check out the mod here:

http://e-mods.net/modules/mods/about_aor.php

You can also view the public Age of Redemption content planner(s) here:

[The Recent Planner for this year]

http://e-mods.net/forum/index.php?topic=1518.msg7574#msg7574

[Last years planner including mark off for what's been finished in the launched mod]

http://e-mods.net/forum/index.php?topic=1497.msg7439#msg7439
Just curious: what happened to Hitashi (or however it was spelled?). Is Tungle just better?
Posted April 15, 2015
Hamachi ended up being a disaster shortly after Vista came out. Few could get it to work for VTMR and even less could make any decent use out of the horrible limitations [16 user limit].

Tunngle has a much larger VTMR lobby size [255 user limit], and allows custom lobbies to be built. Tunngle is also much more robust, functional, and secure in comparison with Hamachi. So yeah, Tunngle is definitely better.
Posted April 16, 2015
Yes I am very much aware and thankful for the Age of Redemption mod :) I was just wondering from the viewpoint of the game's initial release in 2000. It seems like Redemption ultimately suffered the same fate as its sibling Bloodlines, and that's just a damn shame.
Posted April 16, 2015
The only difference between Redemption and Bloodlines, is that Nihilistic gave up content for better engine stability, sdk, and a storyteller sandbox mp mode. Troika's Bloodlines has way more content for singleplayer as well as lore accuracy and choices, but the engine was horribly bad in its Alpha state.

Activision has not been in good standing with me for long time now. Seems that nobody can save us from these ambitious half-finished vampire games. Now CCP [who has the World of Darkness rights] doesn't give a crap about video games and wants to go out of their way to assure that no one makes any good vampire games.
Posted April 23, 2015
^ Yes I'm familiar with CCP's ways of handling the IP and it really annoys me, as it does many many fans of the oWoD and nWoD alike.
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Vampire The Masquerade seriesWas this game rushed out of development?(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)