While I'm sad for Brian and Ka'ai, I also disappointed in the reaction from the fans towards the other 100+ people who have worked on the game for 5 years as well as if their blood, sweat and tears are worthless compared to Brian and Ka'ai. I can understand going from excited to spectical, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater because two out of likely 200 working on it is a disappointing reaction.
While there is truth to this, because games are not made by individuals but instead a collective, you must understand and appreciate the gravity of losing two extremely senior leads of a project and what that historically implicates within a project's production. There is no way to normalise this; losing your creative director
alone is a huge deal. It is uncommon and in an overwhelming majority of cases indicative of a project that is failing. The entire purpose of replacing your creative director is to position new talent in a role that by virtue of title will oversee major elements of the production pipeline and ensure the project is completed to the publisher's standard.
And I know you know that, but the issue his is that firing Mitsoda is also a huge red flag, as while he was also in a position of creative authority he was
not the creative director. He was the narrative lead, and most projects will not lose a narrative lead unless the their position in leadership for that role is compromising the workflow or scope of the project. As Brian said, he is under no belief that the narrative team was involved in discussions that lead to the recent delay. But Paradox removing him from the project implies that Brian's contribution was hindering the project and they'd be better off without him.
Naturally that's what most people are now very concerned about. Not that Hardsuit Labs isn't filled with extremely creative and talented people working hard to see this through, but the inherently bad news that two very senior, directorial, leadership positions have now been opened at the expense of two staff members that were, up until this point, integral to seeing the project and vision through. Not restructuring of their roles, not bringing in consultation, not even dismissing or negotiating the loss of a creative director or whatever, but terminating the contracts of
both your Creative Director and Narrative Lead.
This simply does not happen to this extreme in a standard production unless both parties are directly at fault for what is essential a disastrous project in dire need of either a total overhaul or new leadership in multiple areas, essentially a project so broken that the publisher has no confidence it'll ship in a desirable state or within budget unless major leads in multiple departments are replaced, or the publisher has intention to make major changes to the project that were rejected by the creative leads and the only way to see these changes implemented is to remove them from the project.
I don't think it's fair people dismiss the enormous amount of work put in by others. Cara Ellison is still there and in a major role, too, if we want to single out talented individuals in a position of a leadership. But the entire situation is still worrying due to the inherently volatile nature of the decisions and their timing. People have run this circus too many times where games lose creative leads and the project appears to change direction or ends up underwhelming. And while neither Paradox nor Mitsoda nor anyone else needs to give people the full story, fans are naturally going to be unsettled when Mitsoda's namesake holds so much sway. He was narrative lead on the original and shaped much of the tone, cast, and stories that fans grew to love. He was integral in forming the pitch and premise for this sequel. He's been working on this in some capacity for five years. And, as he noted, despite reluctance to take on PR duties was ultimately willing to do so as Paradox knew full well his namesake was important to sell this title.
And now here we are being told that Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again, the creative director has been fired, and the narrative lead who lead the original, pitched this project, and has been a centrepiece of marketing has also been fired. Either both of them screwed the pooch and the production was a mess because of their leadership, and Paradox is making a necessary call to see the game finished. Or Paradox was clashing with their leadership and vision and wants something else out of the title.
