Coelacanth

Could be, could be. I think your suggestion would make for a better game with less conflict between what the main story is saying and what the game is presenting in the open world. Having the story emphasize how fast V is dying, only for the player to then fuck around with car races and random merc contracts and whatnot really doesn't work all that well as far as immersion goes.

Jackie's death would have also been much more impactful if we'd have spent all that time with him playing through those six months.

I mean... maybe? Those are nice things of course, but if I wanted to start using an alternative to TikTok I would never consider something without an algorithm. The whole point - for me at least - is to waste time eating digital slop served to you by an algorithm so that you don't have to know what you want to watch when you sit down and open it up. If I already knew what I wanted to watch I wouldn't be on an app like this, I'd be searching up the video or subject on another platform.

I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it's as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase.

That's my take on it too. The story they wanted to tell does not mesh well with an open world game, but since the people loudly wanted something like "RDR 2 but Cyberpunk" they felt obliged to attempt to shoehorn it in.

The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.

Completely agree. I think having you play through that part would have made a huge impact on how you connect with Jackie. Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?

I've been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.

They've added some touches to the open world, but I think it was too fundamentally broken to be easily patched. The new skill tree from 2.0 is actually good though and I think the combat is pretty fun in its current state, even without going to mods.

This was awesome, the audio restoration was absolutely top notch and despite including both presentations and the audience reactions it all felt completely seamless.

It's also just incredible watching the footage and thinking about what an insane leap HL2 was in its day. Hell, many current games struggle to produce as expressive facial animations as it did 20 years ago! And that's not even getting into the interactivity of the engine and level design combining.

Not really for what I was envisioning I think: I want an actual remake where the second half of the game would be rewritten, along with new scripting and voice acting and cutscenes etc etc.

For stuff like upgrading assets and adding ray traced lighting etc the Nvidia RTX Remix stuff is great, though. So you could use it for more of a remaster, like they are doing with Half-Life 2.

At least that's how I understand it.

Track opinions are a lot like driver opinions where a lot of times they're "as good as their last race" in the public eye.

There is some of that, to be sure. There is also a fair bit of outright bias towards classic European circuits. Hence the Imola example, as that is often talked of as one of those great tracks but it hasn't produced a great race to watch in ages. It's possible how fun and/or challenging a track is to drive factors in for some people, too. Everyone loves Spa but it's mostly been boring races there in recent years.

Changing external factors like the track surface play tricks too - Interlagos has always been reliable for amazing action, but the new tarmac seemed to ruin the possibility of taking alternate lines which made the sprint much less exciting than I thought it would be (the race was wet so let's put that aside).

True enough. Just look at Imola, for instance. Though I suppose it goes back to what the definition of a "great track" is.

Since the dream of a true sequel is dead, getting Mitsoda et al involved in a proper remake would be the next dream. Imagine the setting and locations with modern ray traced lighting and having Mitsoda rewrite the weak second half of the game into something better?

The gameplay is janky at best and pretty bad at worst - partly because they really went for including all facets of the tabletop and maybe bit off more than they could chew: they wanted FPS gun shooting, third person melee combat, stealth with takedowns and a magic system. As such all those are fairly clunky and unpolished as a result.

Baldurs Gate is weird combat wise with its Real Time With Pause system and you really kind of have to like that slower tactical aspect to get into those games. Bloodlines is still action combat - though not exactly smooth.

Picking Tremere and relying on blood magic to get through combat might be the best bet if you're unwilling to engage in the unbelievably clunky melee.

It's inspirational what they've done. I really hope the launch goes well.

Are you working on the STALKER 2 team?

If all this talk of Bloodlines and Bloodlines 2 is inspiring you to go try out the original, please remember to install the unofficial patch. Seriously. You're more or less incapable of finishing the game otherwise due to multiple potential hard locking bugs. Plus it fixes a ton of other minor stuff.

The game itself is great though and worth your time. It devolves a bit in the second half as you get into the parts that were thrown together by the rushed production, but the writing, OST and atmosphere alone are worth experiencing.