I don’t think there’s anything stopping White Wolf from adapting to modern action-rpg trends; the modern urban setting lets them import tons of big studio design just fine and superpowers are the ultimate narrative excuse. I think Troika had the right idea in Bloodlines.
Problem is that it’s seen as a niche license and trying to do it as an action-RPG implies a much bigger scope and fidelity target, while the brand won’t be served if you’re not doing hardcore politicking and dialogue trees. What BioWare did in transitioning to action-RPGs was super-expensive and difficult and they’ve since collapsed. What’s re-blossomed are these smaller, traditional CRPGs that have cheaper RPG combat and better fit their budget to their market. Divinity: Original Sin can do ok selling 2 million copies, but Bloodlines 2 would have had a 4m+ sales target to pretend to compete in that sphere. And Hardsuit was not a big enough studio to pull it off…
yeah, this is kinda what i was getting at. Between that and the morality system that goes beyond the BioWare Good/Evil spectrum into “if you kill too many people you lose your character forever” (basically), mean that there is no way you can be loyal to WW design while also making a game that sells that well. You need non WW fans to buy it to justify the cost to do it, and that kind of stuff does not sell super great.
It’s really tough. Of course, we’re in a period of RPG cross-pollination; the monoculture character action design is trying to follow BioWare and CD Projekt into progression systems and rich worlds and I think a White Wolf game given the Witcher love would hit it just as big; there’s just so few games making it out at that level.
Clearer, it’s the mid-budget squeeze blocking this that all products are undergoing. I don’t see any reason a big-budget take wouldn’t work, except there aren’t very many big-budget takes on anything.
I still think a strategy game about vampires fighting over a city for centuries would be fun, but even with the VtM license I imagine that’d be a pretty niche product.
I don’t think HSL pitched the game, though. Like Paradox bought White Wolf specifically to make video games with the license, so I’m just baffled by how badly mishandled its been, even knowing everything wrong with the tabletop side of things (which was… everything starting from the moment they hired swedish dracula)
I say, “Hardsuit probably pitched this” because, generally, these studio deals happen as conversations around bars and restaurants at conferences like GDC, long-term relationships bearing fruit…standard biz dev stuff that results in studios working with external publishers and an income that can support a studio before they launch a game
Squadrons is lowkey a miracle considering everything else coming out of the property and EA AAA studios lately, and it seemed like they really didn’t know how to market it