World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025

[S.torch]

Bloodlines 2 has vampires and somehow it doesn't look cool.

Now imagine how bad would it be if it didn't have any. I probably wouldn't even bother to post in this thread, lol.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Bloodlines 2 has vampires and somehow it doesn't look cool.

Now imagine how bad would it be if it didn't have any. I probably wouldn't even bother to post in this thread, lol.

As for me, I would love to play an RPG about the Italian mafia or at least some gang. Especially if it was in the style of the first Bloodlines.

 

[S.torch]

I've played and completed Mafia II, where an Italian war veteran migrates to America and joins the mob. Fun game, interesting setting. But I don't think I'd put it above Bloodlines 1.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

But think about it - don't you perceive Mafia as worse because it doesn't have the style of Bloodlines? Because the strength of Bloodlines comes from the street, its ruthlessness and stupidity. 2004 was filthy, vulgar, dark. Styling enhances it and brings out what is most interesting. When styling, it's easiest to escape into fantastique, but I think it's also possible without overtly fantastic elements.

 

[S.torch]

don't you perceive Mafia as worse because it doesn't have the style of Bloodlines?

No, because Mafia and Vampires are two different themes. And you can't take the theme from something and pretend it will be the same. These Bloodlines 2 guys seem to think this isn't the case, and when talking about inspiration they mentioned 0 vampire inspired media.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

But think about it - don't you perceive Mafia as worse because it doesn't have the style of Bloodlines? Because the strength of Bloodlines comes from the street, its ruthlessness and stupidity. 2004 was filthy, vulgar, dark. Styling enhances it and brings out what is most interesting. When styling, it's easiest to escape into fantastique, but I think it's also possible without overtly fantastic elements.

No, because Mafia and Vampires are two different themes. And you can't take the theme from something and pretend it will be the same.

If you wanted to go the non-vampire route, I think a broader criminal underworld angle could work. Kind of like in GTA games, but with a night life focus. Otherwise with a pure mob game, even if you'd include multiple families and/or competing ethnic mobs, it'd still be too culturally uniform and it'd also have the wrong angle for showcasing the sort of tropes and stereotypes that VtMB went for with its NPCs. Having a drug dealer protag would work much better in this regard rather than you playing some mobster. You get to naturally interact with colorful people and various lowlives in a way that blurs the lines between socialization and business rather than being some professional outsider as a mobster. And from there you can take it to more high level criminal stuff in the same way Breaking Bad did as you start playing for higher stakes and mingling with more dangerous people. Basically what the natural progression for the street kid origin should've been in Cyperpunk, but set in the real world.

 

[Tyranicon]

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Is this thing dead yet?

 

[J1M]

What is this Mafia cope about? A motivated sniper can end any crime family in an afternoon.

Where's the existential dread for the player in that? I guess it could work in a setting where saints and angels are real, but that's not what you are talking about.

Plus good luck recording something on par with The Deb of Night with sensitivity readers.

 

[Harthwain]

Now imagine that the original Bloodlines was not a game about vampires but about the mafia and its branches. Still sounds cool, right?

Not really?

What makes Bloodlines interesting is becoming the part of a secret society that exists beneath the fascade of a normal world. The whole deal is to uphold the Masquerade and work behind the scenes as an insider. Modern-day "mafia and its branches" is too mundane by comparison. You could make mafia more interesting by placing it in the Prohibition era, which is probably why most "mafia" games are set in that time period (and most of them are strategy games, by the way). GTA is the exception here, but I'd attribute its popularity to being an open world game than anything else.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Vampires are also cool because their existence is rooted in transgression. A vampire parasitically feeds off the people around him and sets himself up as their better. It's an inversion of the natural order.

 

[Wesp5]

I think that a game only about humans wouldn't have cut it. Bloodlines needs the supernatural aspect and being a vampire yourself is only part of that. The same would probably have worked if you were a human hunter, but in the end a game having vampires, werewolfes, ghosts, ghouls, zombies and more in it was what made it special for me!

 

[Hace El Oso]

I think when you drift too far away from religion and the supernatural, even just culturally rather than personally, you lose the heart of the vampire genre.
Multigenerational cultural atheists are eventually going to end up making self-insert maladapted mutant junk with a ‘vampire’ label on it, like this. You get something similar with new-school D&D.

EDIT: Wesp5 beat me to it.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Vampires for me is about tragedy. These creatures are forsaken monsters, forever cursed. Any god that exists has forsaken them and no matter how long they live they arent ever going to face a saviour. Cursed with both monstrosity and humanity, they cannot forget what they were, they are completely alone immortal predators with no hope of either salvation or contentment because the hunger can never be sated.

I think it was Anne Rice who coined the term 'the last sunrise' and while she is not the greatest writer this captures it well because eventually you have learned every language, every instrument, read every book - and the world has nothing left to give you as it passes you by and changes far faster than you can truly adapt to as an immortal. Eventually, if not slain by your enemies - which is literally everything - suicide is the last option you have. To see the sunrise one last time makes a certain romantic sense.

 

[Storyfag]

The argument wasn't if it would have been as great as Bloodlines. It was whether it would have also been cool.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

don't you perceive Mafia as worse because it doesn't have the style of Bloodlines?

No, because Mafia and Vampires are two different themes. And you can't take the theme from something and pretend it will be the same. These Bloodlines 2 guys seem to think this isn't the case, and when talking about inspiration they mentioned 0 vampire inspired media.

A theme does not create a game, it is not a novel or a movie.

What is this Mafia cope about? A motivated sniper can end any crime family in an afternoon.

Where's the existential dread for the player in that? I guess it could work in a setting where saints and angels are real, but that's not what you are talking about.

Plus good luck recording something on par with The Deb of Night with sensitivity readers.

After all, crime stories are the basis of what has been called film noir. The really good films in this genre are full of existential angst.

Now imagine that the original Bloodlines was not a game about vampires but about the mafia and its branches. Still sounds cool, right?

What makes Bloodlines interesting is becoming the part of a secret society that exists beneath the fascade of a normal world.

Just like being in a mob

 

[The President]

A bit off topic here, but I always felt the mafia style games always got it wrong. Classic case of them not knowing or consulting anyone who actually knew anything about the life. As someone who’s of Italian background with a few family members on both sides who were very high profile, and born and raised in a mafia neighborhood in NYC, they missed a lot of stuff. The prohibition era is even before the mafia as it’s understood today, the real heyday was probably between 1950 and 1985. The RICO statutes, the sentencing act, the bail reform act etc, did a real number on the life. I had a family member do roughly 50 years total before being released as the oldest inmate in the federal system. You don’t see any games tied to that time period though when all the best stories are actually from that era.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

A bit off topic here, but I always felt the mafia style games always got it wrong. Classic case of them not knowing or consulting anyone who actually knew anything about the life. As someone who’s of Italian background with a few family members on both sides who were very high profile, and born and raised in a mafia neighborhood in NYC, they missed a lot of stuff. The prohibition era is even before the mafia as it’s understood today, the real heyday was probably between 1950 and 1985. The RICO statutes, the sentencing act, the bail reform act etc, did a real number on the life. I had a family member do roughly 50 years total before being released as the oldest inmate in the federal system. You don’t see any games tied to that time period though when all the best stories are actually from that era.

Mafia was made by Czechs who took all their knowledge about Italian mafia in 30s from American movies filmed in 80s.

 

[Semiurge]

This game was so cool not because it was about vampires

Nope. One of the reasons Bloodlines was cool was because it's about vampires. And I would say every single piece of fiction gains a few points if they include vampires too. Vampires are a cool archetype that borrow themselves for a different type of story from the ones we're so accustomed to see today. They're suited for a darker tone, reminiscences of the past, and the presence of strict hierarchies.

Take them out and what you've left is some cheap worldbuilding and milquetoast "capitalism bad" takes. Precisely what these guys are doing with this "sequel".

Bloodlines 2 has vampires and somehow it doesn't look cool. What can be said about every new game in this universe.

Now imagine that the original Bloodlines was not a game about vampires but about the mafia and its branches. Still sounds cool, right?

Honestly I never paid much attention to this because I don't think Bloodlines needs or deserves a sequel and I could care less - but I'm now just finding out Malkavian and Nosferatu aren't playable in the sequel? What the fuck are they thinking? Those two clans being playable is one of the main reasons Bloodlines is worth playing.

Nosferatu are too much work and hardly anyone played one (most people don't want to be an ugly vampire). Malkavian is probably a DLC clan.

Nosferatu was not only interesting to play in Bloodlines, but I never laughed harder in any game I have ever played. If you haven't played as a Nosferatu in Bloodlines, you haven't lived.

OH SWEET LORD JESUS! <drops dead>

Hold on, that's problematic right there - featuring playable characters so ugly, that their mere presence can cause heart attacks. This is oppressive towards all those 1-3 people in the attractiveness scale. Some of them play games too, and have the right to a safe space within World of Darkness.

You don't need life experience for creating a fun game, in fact most historically succesful game writers/designers were very young and thus lacking in experience. You just need a working imagination, a passion for the art and the lack of a IQ90 committee of DEI-tokens hampering your efforts.

Experience is always needed when you create. The trick is to transcribe your inner experience into fiction. Victor Hugo was not a hunchback bell ringer in medieval Paris, nor had he seen medieval Paris. But his novel is true in the sense that it is saturated with the life truth that only art can convey.

I realize that no one at Troika had the experience or inner life to write "Notre-Dame de Paris", but they had enough of them to make a cool game about vampires, tits and shooting. These guys from the UK seem like human shells. There's nothing inside there. Just a little woke.

That's just what Bloodlines 1 is - a cool and fun game, but not high art. For high art or literature you will need this wordly wisdom, but not for games. For them it's just an extra that gives something to an ever-diminishing minority of consumers who have maybe read a book sometime.

 

[Tyranicon]

You know what's depressing? I always assumed that creatives would have more opportunities since the inception of the internet, but instead of creating new art, they mostly just make memes, even more braindead media (streaming), and knockoffs of corpo slop.

It's a race to the bottom.

 

[Baron Tahn]

There has been some good creation...there just exponentially more opportunity for trash too. With no regulation on advertising or interest in education then what we get is ads and tiktok influencer shit. It pays. Humans are what they are.

 

[Harthwain]

Just like being in a mob

Not really. Everybody knows that a mob exists. It is more a game of cat and mouse with them.

 

[Cohesion]

VTMB was a shit overrated popamole game (made by competent people), what do you expect from VTMB2? Even fucking disco is better than VTMB.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Just like being in a mob

Not really. Everybody knows that a mob exists. It is more a game of cat and mouse with them.

In practice, the NPCs of Bloodlines seem to be rather at peace with many supernatural phenomena. If we add to this the belief of some people ( I'm talking about the World of Darkness), that vampires exist, Masquarade it is not that different from mobs.

 

[Harthwain]

In practice, the NPCs of Bloodlines seem to be rather at peace with many supernatural phenomena.

Most NPCs in Bloodlines you interact with are not normies. Hell, even the few normies you do talk to are absolutely shocked by seeing a Nosferatu (the player), nevermind talking about any "many supernatural phenomena" of larger magnitude.

If we add to this the belief of some people ( I'm talking about the World of Darkness), that vampires exist, Masquarade it is not that different from mobs.

Some people can believe in the supernatural (the same way people believe in aliens) but that's different from KNOWING that something exist (and there are some people who actually managed to get a peek of what's behind the curtain. Not that it did them any good). That said, nobody is going to deny that a mob exists. Drug cartels or mafias in Italy are subject to mainstream news. Try the same with vampires and see what you'll get. So "not that different" is actually a pretty big difference.