Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Combat Interview
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Even though there's a lot to like about Troika Games' Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, combat isn't one of those things. And right now, Hardsuit Labs together with their Paradox Interactive publishers have plans to rework that game's combat system into something more enjoyable for the upcoming sequel. This recent Gamasutra interview with Paradox Interactive's senior producer Florian Schwarzer sheds some light on how they plan to achieve this.
An excerpt:
On top of addressing the issues fans had with the first game, Hardsuit Labs needed to make first-person combat fresh for a player base that's used to a new standard of quality. "Something we focused on very early in development was making sure that your attack would always go hand-in-hand with movement," Schwarzer said after I mentioned other games with first-person combat. "Kiting, that thing where you run a backpedal and keep hitting enemies as they come at you. That is one of these strategies that a lot of players form because it works, but it also makes combat feel quite floaty in the end.
"If you've ever done martial arts, you'll find that your body moves in the directions of your attack," he added, later adding that Hardsuit Labs was inspired by Dishonored's fast-paced combat systems. "That's been something we've taken into consideration from the beginning."
The development team wanted to avoid the typical pitfalls of first-person RPG combat, backpedaling shouldn't be a needed strategy since strong moves use that forward movement. Some moves may be more difficult to connect, but each movement is more meaningful.
Another big part of kiting is enemy attack behavior. In the original Bloodlines and other first-person action titles, enemies rush you all at once and bunch up right in front of you. "No human, even if they try to gang up on you, will behave like that because they have a chance of hitting each other," Schwarzer said. "Your AI needs to reflect that." He believes that AI is better this time around, but they are still working on it heading into 2020.
