In a surprising turn of events, both of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2's creative leads have been fired for no apparent reason. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is an upcoming action-RPG developed by Hardsuit Labs and, oddly enough, has faced many of the same issues that plagued the release of the original game back in 2004.
The first Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was developed by the now defunct Troika Games and published by Activision. It was praised for its writing and depth of choices offered to players, but had a troubled development cycle. The game was without a producer for almost a year, went way over budget, and suffered repeated delays until Activision finally forced the game to be released in 2004. Despite the many technical flaws and bugs the game released with, it developed a cult following thanks to its script which mostly written by Brian Mitsoda.
When the wheels began to turn for a sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, creative director Ka'ai Cluney recruited Mitsoda to be the game's narrative lead, recognizing the work he did with the original. However, much like the original, the sequel has suffered repeated development setbacks that have delayed the game to 2021. Perhaps fearing a repeat of past mistakes, publisher Paradox Interactive have announced that both Cluney and Mitsoda have been fired and subsequently replaced. On the game's official website, the publisher wrote,
"Lead Narrative Designer Brian Mitsoda and Creative Director Ka’ai Cluney are no longer part of the team at Hardsuit Labs. This was a joint decision made by the leadership of Hardsuit Labs and Paradox Interactive.
We appreciate, and value, the contributions of Brian and Ka’ai, which were instrumental in establishing the game's storyline and dark tone and have helped to ensure that we are making a true successor to the iconic Bloodlines. We wish them both the best in their future endeavors."'
The decision apparently was made back in July, but not publicly announced until now, after both positions were filled with new members. Speaking with Rock Paper Shotgun, Mitsoda said about his departure from the project,
"After almost five years involvement with the studio, I was suddenly terminated on 7/16/20.
That this came as a shock to me is underselling it. I’ve worked on Bloodlines 2 for almost five years. The story and main cast was initially conceived in my living room. I helped develop the pitch for Hardsuit Labs and helped pitch the project to Paradox in Las Vegas. I’ve been in charge of the narrative since the beginning, working long days and sometimes weekends to deliver a successor to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and I’ve never been led to believe that I hadn’t succeeded...
... I was not part of the conversations that led to the decision to delay production, and to my knowledge, there were no delays caused by the Bloodlines 2 narrative development. I am confident and proud of the work that I and my team put forward. When that work will be seen and what form it will take is unknown to me."
From the above statements, it appears that both Hardlsuit Labs and Paradox Interactive felt the game needed a drastic change in direction internally, but did not relay these feelings to those working on it. One of the replacements is twenty-year games industry veteran, Alexandre Mandryka, who has previously worked on several successful titles such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, the original Assassin's Creed, and several Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon games.
Still, even with Mandryka's impressive body of work, Mitsoda was a large part of what critics and fans both loved about the original Vampire: The Masquerade –-Bloodlines, so to see him let go from the project after this long is sure to be disappointing news, especially since not even he knows why he was let go.
It is hard to say how much this change will affect the sequel's development; there is already DLC planned post release so it is safe to assume Mandryka will play a large part in how that looks, but what about the game so far? Will large portions of it be rewritten or even scrapped, or will Mandryka build off of what is already there? Clearly, there are still many question marks in terms of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2's development. Unfortunately, there also are not many answers. For the sake of fans and everyone involved with the game, this will be the last of any drastic changes or setbacks.
Source: Paradox Interactive, Rock Paper Shotgun