It's been nearly a decade since Paradox Interactive acquired White Wolf and the World of Darkness, and nearly as long since it started working with Hard Suit Labs based on its pitch forAfter four years working in secret, Hard Suit and Paradox announced Bloodlines 2 in 2019. We'd be playing it in 2020, the pair said. Then it was delayed. And delayed again. The 2020 target became 2021, and then it was delayed indefinitely, with Hard Suit given the boot.
It's strangely tepid praise, but also refreshing. The reason for this interview was not the usual marketing-driven fare. No big announcements. No hype. Just a rather frank explanation about what's going on at Paradox, the reasons why it's been struggling recently, and what it's doing to change its fortunes. But even with that in mind, there seems to be a bit of nervousness about how Bloodlines 2 will ultimately be received.
Paradox has its own small-scale experimental label, Paradox Arc, where it can try different things, but a big RPG doesn't remotely fit that. It would have to be something"very different", says Lilja, like a CRPG, but even that's a"big investment", and nowadays expectations are higher than ever thanks to Baldur's Gate 3. So"regardless of outcome," he says, Bloodlines is a"dead end".
"I think some studios do strategic investments, long term things, because they feel that the cost of not doing it is too high. But, I mean, I think it's fairly clear, at least to me, and I think to you, even in the best of cases, Bloodlines does not have a super long shelf life. That's not the way these games behave. You have an influx of players, there's a bit of word of mouth, and they have a high peak, and then they trail off.