Bloodlines 2 - Rewind

[Jorlaan]

Using the man's name as a draw for the game then kicking him aside with absolutely no advance warning, no apparent prior issues and then outright lying about the entire situation has completely turned me off this game. I was never planning to pre-order, I find it bad practice these days; however I was likely going to buy it shortly after release, give it a patch or two ya know.
Now if it somehow manages to be decent the most that'll happen is I might buy it at the deepest discount I can find can find a few years after release.

 

[Nyrael]

Dear Lord, people here act like the fired people are innocent sunshines, and couldn't possibly brought this upon themselves.

The fired HSL director is more likely than not the main culprit here, as Bloodlines 2 wanted to be a more complex RPG than any other other, with Dishonored combat and gameplay but with many more abilities than Dishonored 2 had (developing locations for so many abilities is a nightmare), the faction-oriented story with countless paths and resolutions, and all done by a studio with practically 0 experience at making AAA games, yet alone releasing them, supported by a publisher who mostly publishes niche games (so they are unable to give the necessary financial support), and having done such a good job at this that BOTH its presentations would make even the poorest Indie developers snicker at the game's lack of quality (and by the time of first presentation, most of the game should have been done, and not look like it was made by three teenagers in a basement). Mind you that firing is a pretty radical solution, so it happened for one of two reasons: 1) he refused to make cuts necessary to actually finish the game in acceptable timeframe or 2) he lied at how badly the development progressed, which also tends to happen in the Software Development industry (more often than you think), and is a very valid reason to get you fired. The fact that he and Mitsoda pretend they don't know why they were fired (there's no damn way in hell someone so high up doesn't know why he was fired, you say this when you don't want to give the real reason) suggests that it's Number 2 as it's not something they would want to confess doing. It's also something Paradox wouldn't want to talk about, as it could ruin these men's careers.

Mitsoda was brought into the project by this man because they were buddies, and more likely than not stood by him during all this and shared his fate. Since he makes the story, he probably also defined all these countless choices and resolutions, which may have been too much for HSL's developers to implement as well (and really, when they talked about what you can do with factions, it felt like they wanted way more than necessary).
Mitsoda was also NOT the sole write of Bloodlines 1, he is NOT the only writer capable of making a WoD story, and he is most certainly NOT the only fan of Bloodlines 1 on this project. To act like the whole project is doomed is borderline ridiculous. Will the new lead writer be better or worse remains to be seen. Either way, it's confirmed that Mitsoda's work will remain in the game, so he was not fired for his writing. Heck, is he even the main writer, or is Cara Ellison the main writer?

How true the above is remains to be seen, but looking either Paradox or them with rose-tinted fanboyish glasses is ridiculous. Something very bad happened for Paradox to fire these people, one of whom was their own employee and another who was an advertisement. And when after five years you have nothing to release, than you have fucked up royally. Both the Devs, and the Publishers who did not react in time.

As for the OP's main question... for the love of Cain, don't pre-order games. From anyone, especially not so early when you don't even know if the game's development will progress smoothly. And especially not from developers who basically lack any high quality works to show off

 

[xTodenx]

How true the above is remains to be seen

You typed allot to just cast your own doubt at what you typed. Nothing more to see here.

 

[Pyoro]

The fact that he and Mitsoda pretend they don't know why they were fired

I feel you mischaracterize what Mitsoda said. He said he hadn't gotten any information until he was fired, and he says nobody complained about delays being caused by the writing department. So "at worst" he says he had no reason to assume that any of the problems the project had were specifically down to him, so the firing came out of the blue, which is perfectly possible. He doesn't say he doesn't know now (and given that he's talking about the delays it's probably overall something to do with those, but maybe it's not quite so clear why that's his fault).
Haven't seen anything from Cluney anywhere.

And when after five years you have nothing to release, than you have fucked up royally.

Where you got that figure from? From the dev diaries:

Hardsuit Labs began in 2015 with Andy Kipling, Russell Nelson, and a team of about 20 people. (...)
Two years later, Ka’ai Cluney, our Creative Director, burst into Andy’s office with an idea he and his friend Brian Mitsoda had come up with. (...)

Yeah, HSL began 2015. But it's only 2017 when they pitch BL2 to PDX. And yes, this does show how close Cluney and Mitsoda were, and how that might be a factor in firing them both (instead of just one of them).

I find it perfectly plausible that Cluney might have overpromised on what they can deliver in such a rather short time with such a small team. But you'd also gotta ask some question of PDX/HSL leadership when they buy into "we can do this complex RPG in 3-ish years" when you regularly see RPG projects with 5+ years (GreedFall got done in 3 years with a team that was already in place (~20 people) and you can see how unambitious that game ended up being by genre-standards, but how ambitious it was for a team that size!).