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

[The President]

I did think the weird part of the thin blood was how in the demo, they’re fighting an army of thugs with guns and weapons.

How much stronger is a thin blood supposed to be than a human? I would expect several determined and armed people to be a real threat.

 

[Harthwain]

I did think the weird part of the thin blood was how in the demo, they’re fighting an army of thugs with guns and weapons.

And how exactly is this different from Bloodlines 1?

 

[True Ukrainian]

I did think the weird part of the thin blood was how in the demo, they’re fighting an army of thugs with guns and weapons.

And how exactly is this different from Bloodlines 1?

The bloodlines 1 guy was a low generation fledgling. Probably 9th generation. That puts him in the same seniority tier as most modern elders.

The thin blood guy is 14/15th generation and depending on how you interpret the rules, he would have trouble mending wounds or sustaining extended discipline use.

 

[True Ukrainian]

nobody wants to play a fucking "thinblood" (gay), get real

Survival games are a thing.

 

[Jaesun]

Well the game already states "Fight your way through a modern-day Seattle on the brink of an open war as an elder Vampire."

I AM very curious how that is going to work...

 

[True Ukrainian]

Well the game already states "Fight your way through a modern-day Seattle on the brink of an open war as an elder Vampire."

I AM very curious how that is going to work...

All disciplines and skills unlocked, no need to worry about builds, make narrative choices that matter.

 

[Irxy]

I wouldn't trust Paradox employees like Outshill.

I have no idea why people like her - people employed in PR/community manager/shill-in-charge - were ever taken seriously to begin with. She gets paid to tell you it's gonna be good.

True, but she said what she said some time after already quitting the PR job, afair.
It's not like we a have a lot of sources to choose from. She is a fan of the original game and one of the few who played the HSL version and commented on it.
All opinions are subjective, especially when one cannot contractually go into details to explain theirs. Still, if the game was a total shit, she could always have said nothing or use more neutral terms to describe it.

 

[0wca]

You guys still think this game's gonna be playable, huh?

 

[Irxy]

You guys still think this game's gonna be playable, huh?

I 90% expect to get a shitty & cheap combat focused "rpg" with a preachy woke shit for a story, something in between the Vampir and Swansong.
Doesn't matter what one may think of the modern day Mitsoda, but he sure had a better chance to make a decent Bloodlines games, than a bunch of nobodies who had the game basically forced upon by the owners, all under Paradox supervision lol.
those fuckers even say they are not taking the original for the inspiration too much, seriously.

 

[0wca]

You guys still think this game's gonna be playable, huh?

I 90% expect to get a shitty & cheap combat focused "rpg" with a preachy woke shit for a story, something in between the Vampir and Swansong.
Doesn't matter what one may think of the modern day Mitsoda, but he sure had a better chance to make a decent Bloodlines games, than a bunch of nobodies who had the game basically forced upon by the owners, all under Paradox supervision lol.
those fuckers even say they are not taking the original for the inspiration too much, seriously.

I guess we can count that 10% as fabulously optimistic.

And I fear that Mitsoda is not the developer he was 2 decades ago. It probably would have been better with him in charge but with the kind of retards he surrounded himself with in that studio it would have been nothing more than a polished turd.

 

[BruceVC]

You guys still think this game's gonna be playable, huh?

Im cautiously optimistic but there have been far too many delays with this game for me to commit to an official BruceVC " this game is going to be epic "

I am going to wait till its, hopefully , finally released and then comment further

 

[Wesp5]

True, but she said what she said some time after already quitting the PR job, afair.

Outstar is not working for Paradox anymore? That is news to me. Do you have a source?

 

[sosmoflux]

It's too hard to make good videogames these days at the best of times

Let alone 9-5 millennials working at some broke, woke, hipster ass company on a sequel to a game that may as well be Mein Kampf to these people

Never ever

 

[Sarathiour]

Video games?

You are in the wrong thread if you want to talk about this topic, this is a bloodline 2 thread.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

There is a certain appeal to being a thinblood and choosing your clan by actively plotting to commit diablerie on a Kindred of a specific clan. It's a more active, in-game approach to obtaining a clan as opposed to passively waiting for the sire to choose you. Somewhat reminiscent of WoD Dracula not being Embraced by Ruthven's choice, but by capturing the elder vampire, turning him into a bitch, and forcing him to do the Embrace.

There's no way that's how it would've gone down in the HSL game, though.

Most straightforward implementation would've probably been something like diablerizing some Sabbat elder in torpor and getting to pick the clan that he's supposed to have once you do that. And since that iteration of VtMB2 would've (presumably? confirmed?) featured only playable Camarilla-affiliated clans akin to the original game, it also explains why other vamps would take less of an issue with your act of diablerie since you'd be diablerizing a despised antitribu.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Tremere don't have antis so the only acceptable way to become one would be the diablerize a neonate from a rival sect that had been supplied for you by the local chantry.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Tremere don't have antis so the only acceptable way to become one would be the diablerize a neonate from a rival sect that had been supplied for you by the local chantry.

You still have Tremere in the Sabbat,

As of 1998, the original Tremere antitribu were considered extinct thanks to a mysterious ritual, undertaken by Tremere in Goratrix's body, that burned the antitribu to ash in a single night. As far as the original Tremere and the Camarilla were concerned, that was the end of the traitors; while any Tremere could in the future defect from the Clan and undergo the Vaulderie, these were not explicitly considered antitribu. Rather, they were just seen as Tremere with Sabbat allegiance.[8]

However, contrary to Tremere propaganda, the antitribu were not entirely destroyed: some antitribu avoided the acquisition of the cursed mark entirely, and a few of those that did have the cursed mark also survived the ritual that killed the others. While their numbers were few at best at the turn of the millennium, the Tremere antitribu lived on, even if many of these "survivors" were actually Telyavelic Tremere that had, from the start, faked having the cursed mark and masqueraded as regular Tremere antitribu.

 

[Wesp5]

You still have Tremere in the Sabbat,

There even is a Tremere firemage in the original Bloodlines. I always guessed that after finding the originator of the illegal mass embrace you were allowed to Diablerize him in Bloodlines 2...

 

[Roguey]

True, but she said what she said some time after already quitting the PR job, afair.
It's not like we a have a lot of sources to choose from. She is a fan of the original game and one of the few who played the HSL version and commented on it.
All opinions are subjective, especially when one cannot contractually go into details to explain theirs. Still, if the game was a total shit, she could always have said nothing or use more neutral terms to describe it.

Paradox flew her out to PAX West to promote Bloodlines 2, she never quit anything. She has community dev for World of Darkness right there in her twitter profile.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

True, but she said what she said some time after already quitting the PR job, afair.

Outstar is not working for Paradox anymore? That is news to me. Do you have a source?

By the way, what were her job qualifications other than being a hardcore fangirl?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You still have Tremere in the Sabbat,

There even is a Tremere firemage in the original Bloodlines. I always guessed that after finding the originator of the illegal mass embrace you were allowed to Diablerize him in Bloodlines 2...

That would make sense as well, although you still need some way to obscure their clan so that it doesn't feel too gamey when you get to pick your own clan by diablerizing them.* Perhaps they'd go into torpor after committing the mass embrace in order to regain their strength and/or to remain undetected until things settle down and you end up stumbling upon them as such.

*In an ideal scenario, you could have proper gameplay & story integration with narrative branching by having several vamps representative of the various playable clans being behind the mass embrace hence your choice of clan being reflective of whichever of them you choose to go after first (and thus end up diablerizing). Doubt that was on the table though.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

True, but she said what she said some time after already quitting the PR job, afair.

Outstar is not working for Paradox anymore? That is news to me. Do you have a source?

By the way, what were her job qualifications other than being a hardcore fangirl?

I think she did something for CD Projekt Red or GOG on The Witcher 3 but I think she got it because she was the only one who put out a palatable YouTube channel on World of Darkness that wasn't a total cringefest. Like applesauce. Relatively speaking.

 

[Wesp5]

I think she got it because she was the only one who put out a palatable YouTube channel on World of Darkness that wasn't a total cringefest.

Maybe that is the main criteria, because the new community manager of Bloodlines 2 has a YouTube channel too. Reach the audience !

 

[Delterius]

Tremere don't have antis so the only acceptable way to become one would be the diablerize a neonate from a rival sect that had been supplied for you by the local chantry.

You still have Tremere in the Sabbat,

while any Tremere could in the future defect from the Clan and undergo the Vaulderie, these were not explicitly considered antitribu. Rather, they were just seen as Tremere with Sabbat allegiance.[8]

Not only that, but the Tremere pyramid was broken. In V5 the opening act of the Second Inquisition was to attack the Tremere Big Chantry, and now there's Tremere sects everywhere. And the problem is that what happened to the Tremere is also happening on a bigger scale, everywhere else.

Political realignment in the wake of Gehenna seems to be a big theme of V5, where clans are swapping sects en masse. But, also, the other big theme is political fragmentation. Many elders are disappearing, the Sabbat is fighting the Gehenna War, the Camarilla is bunkering down in face of government surveillance, and so on. So new/old Clan allegiances are never absolute. Not all Lasombra joined the Cam. Not all Brujah joined the Anarchs. And so on. Clan-sect allegiance seems to be no longer on the basis of assumption but ascertained on an individual basis.

The only exception to this are Clan Hecata and their family reunion.

 

[The President]

You don’t exactly need a PHD to be a community manager.