Welcome Kindred to another Bloodlines 2 Dev Diary from the team at The Chinese Room.

In this diary, we want to give you some further insight into the choices we’ve made when building our version of Seattle (see Dev Diary 8 for my previous statements on building Seattle for The World of Darkness). Seattle is at the heart of the game, which you will return to again and again between quests or sometimes during them. It is the most human location in the game where you are vulnerable to being exposed as a vampire (aka breaching The Masquerade) resulting in swift and violent justice from the vampires of the Camarilla that rule the city. It is also a kind of vampire playground where you can feed on humans in order to restore your vampiric powers or just for the thrill of the hunt. We hope this diary gives you a taste of what you will experience when stalking the streets and rooftops of the Emerald City.

- Project Creative Director Alex Skidmore

Building the player’s movement through Seattle, we really wanted to create traversal that interacted with The Masquerade and reinforced the vampiric experience. Phyre has some absurd movement from the get-go, being able to immensely fast, dash and glide through the air, and can move faster while still using discipline abilities later- but of course, do any of this on the streets without obfuscation and you’ll quickly find yourself breaching the masquerade.

Dark alleyways don’t just give you a quieter place to feed on prey, they also provide routes up to Seattle’s rooftops- up here there’s fewer prying eyes, so you can really let your capabilities loose, moving fast and leaping between buildings. The local Anarchs won’t be thrilled about you moving through their rooftop turf though, so it’s a dangerous place for the weak or uninitiated.

This means, there’s a choice to be made at any point between danger to the masquerade and danger to yourself! Finding yourself drawn to the kinds of places vampires would lurk is the goal of this arrangement. As you regain your powers as an elder, you’ll also be more capable of moving as you please- I’m really looking forward to seeing people master it!

- Senior Game Designer Max Bottomley

Since joining the Bloodlines 2 team, a key responsibility I’ve undertaken is bringing life to a key area of the game – our Seattle. 

Working closely with the Environment team, I wanted to make sure that as players explore the world it feels both alive and reactive to what they are doing. Players will discover a wide variety of people going about their daily (or nightly!) lives. We’ve crafted a personality for the city that compliments its unique setting, mood and layout. Time has been taken to map out city districts that favour different types of NPCs – you’ll be able to sit back and watch the world move on around you.

When you walk round a corner you never know what you’ll find; maybe it’s a businessman arguing on his phone, or a graffiti artist improving the local artwork, it could be a car thief struggling to break into a car, or even a sex worker making good on their promise with a client.

We’ve been filling the world with characters that actually do things; taking breaks on seats, telling the police about crimes they’ve seen, or seeing the police chasing down a criminal. The world turns without you, it should feel like you’re just passing through – and as the player, you can interact or just sit back and watch!

Working on this stuff and building out a believable world where bikers drink outside bars or start fights with you has been a hell of a lot of work, but I hope people will find it a fun place to explore.

The city isn’t all combat, it’s also home to exploration and interactions with the inhabitants of Seattle.

As with many other areas of the game a large part of what we wanted to give players was choice; some of that choice comes down to what conversations you’ll have with some of the NPCs and characters you’ll meet in the city. Use your Vampiric charms to seduce someone, proposition a sex worker, or flip off some angry bikers with a Brujah-approved hand gesture.

The first time you try to flirt with a Sex Worker in the game and get turned down because your choice of clothing didn’t impress them will be an eye-opener!

- Lead Game Designer Gavin Hood​