Welcome, Kindred, to this Bloodlines 2 Dev Diary from the team at The Chinese Room.  Tonight, we want to talk to you about our Blood Resonance feature. For those unfamiliar with Vampire: The Masquerade, this is blood that is emotionally charged. A valuable commodity for an experienced elder vampire like Phyre.

Our vision of Phyre as an elder is that they have accrued many clan abilities over their 400 years as a vampire, but the incident that brought them to Seattle has locked away their connection to them. By using resonant blood and drinking the blood of the Clan Contacts you can restore Phyre’s connection to the abilities that aren’t native to your chosen clan. For more on the specific clan abilities, please read our previous Clan Highlights: Brujah, Tremere, Banu Haqim and Ventrue.

- Project Creative Director Alex Skidmore

Determining what Resonance a vessel has makes feeding more than just a pit stop. Most vampires observe their victims from a distance or engage them in conversation to feel them out. -Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition

Blood Resonance Mechanics

Blood Resonance is an important part of your journey when exploring the city. It feeds (pun intended) into how you tailor Phyre’s abilities to match your vampiric playstyle and fantasy.

When exploring Seattle you can find pedestrians with one of three potential blood resonances: Melancholic (feeling anxious or afraid), Sanguine (feeling aroused/sexual attraction), and Choleric (feeling annoyed or angry). This is something only a vampire can know so you need to use your Heightened Senses to identify these pedestrians. Once found, you need to “turn” these pedestrians fully resonated. This is done through conversations, in which you will attempt to manipulate your victim’s emotions as needed.

With this feature, it was important to us that roleplaying affected the outcomes of these conversations, so the way you act throughout the game determines what conversation options are available. Also, your appearance is an important factor in these conversations, so choose your wardrobe wisely!

If you manage to “turn” the pedestrians, they will become fully resonated and react accordingly. This means they might start a fight with you, run from you in terror, or even find you irresistibly attractive, all of which increases the resonant blood of that type gained from feeding on them.

Whilst these are great ways to gain resonated blood, they aren’t the only way! You can find events happening around the city - highlighted on the map - where NPCs are already fully resonated allowing players to skip the conversation and jump straight into the feeding.

Either way, you are attempting to accrue enough blood of different resonance types to ultimately increase the range of the abilities you can use, and this is where Clan Contacts come into the mix.

Once you are Sheriff of Seattle, Clan Contacts, such as Mrs Thorn (clan Tremere) at Wake The Dead Café, will offer to aid you in restoring your connection to the abilities of their clan by drinking their blood. A pre-requisite is collecting the required amounts of the resonant blood for the ability you wish to “re-learn”. Once collected you can drink the Clan Contact’s blood, adding the ability to the Ability Tree to unlock with Ability Points.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your reactions to the pedestrian conversations and can't wait to see what combinations of abilities you all put together! See you in the dark alleyways of Seattle.

- Lead Game Designer Gavin Hood​