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World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025
- Thread starter Leorgrium
- Start date
ferratilis
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2019
- Messages
- 3,059
If they're taking inspiration from a game that released just a few months ago, it can only mean that they started from scratch. This game is not coming out for at least another two years, if ever.
https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the...rrative-design-as-well-as-its-tabletop-roots/
https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the...rrative-design-as-well-as-its-tabletop-roots/
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 seeks to take inspiration from Baldur's Gate 3's narrative design, as well as its tabletop roots
By Harvey Randall
published about 4 hours ago
I spoke with a narrative designer at The Chinese Room, Arone Le Bray, earlier this week.
(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
Heavy hangs the crown of expectation. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a sequel to the 2004 cult classic RPG by the now-buried Troika Games, and it has a lot to live up to. It needs to fight off the first game's powerful air of nostalgia, while also stepping into the daylight during an outstanding year for RPGs.
I interviewed The Chinese Room (TCR)'s narrative designer Arone Le Bray, who has a lot of experience under his belt. Before TCR, Le Bray was a narrative quality designer at Bioware for nearly 15 years—which means he's worked on games like Dragon Age: Origins, the Mass Effect series, the whole works.
Far from just feeding on games past, Le Bray says TCR's been looking towards current games for inspiration. "Sarah (one of our writers) is a huge fan of Baldur's Gate 3 … we're looking at how we can borrow aspects [from it], or how we can make sure we're not taking giant steps backwards in terms of stories."
Specifically, TCR is looking towards the sheer evolution of RPG narrative Larian Studios put on display earlier this year. "I absolutely classify narrative as an aspect of gameplay," says Le Bray. "How can we make the player feel like they've owned their outcomes? How can we make the player feel like they have the agency we want them to?"
That's a high bar, considering Baldur's Gate 3—Gale's uncanny thirst notwithstanding—has done some staggering things with narrative design. There's a hitch here or there, but we're talking about a game which devotes two whole hours of wordage to a single spell. A seasoned studio given a popular licence at the absolute top of its game.
The Chinese Room, however, faces a much steeper wall. For starters, Bloodlines 2 has suffered from an epic tangle of development hell, even changing studios entirely. This is also TCR's first foray into the action RPG genre, their past games being narrative-focused stuff like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.
Le Bray also says they've looked to Vampire: The Masquerade's (VTM)'s tabletop origins. He mentions wanting to avoid breaking the contract between player and "Storyteller", VTM's version of a D&D Dungeon Master. "The tabletop gaming stuff comes in handy, too. Because a lot of VTM is about the storyteller … 'How do you tell that fun story?' Ultimately, you're trying to make sure [your players] are getting the best version of the story you can tell."
Just to cross-reference, VTM's latest edition describes the Storyteller's role in much the same way. "The Storyteller's primary duty is to make sure the other players have a good time. You do that by telling a good story. Unlike novelists or film directors, however, you don't simply tell the story from hook to climax." Open-ended storytelling is a lot easier when you're sitting around a table conjuring worlds with your words, though—code is far more set in stone.
"For us, it was about looking at Phyre and making sure their character feels believable in this time and setting … 'is this character acting in a way the player expects that they would act?'" Le Bray later says he wants the player to feel like they're making decisions in ways that aren't misleading, earning their outcome.
"We never want to make it feel like the player could make the wrong choice," says Le Bray, but he also wants "the choices to feel like [they could start] forum arguments. Like, 'How dare you make choice A, clearly the right thing to do was choice B!'"
We also get talking a little about moral choice in video games, and how a lot of RPGs have moved away from the 'look at how many good points I have' Paragon/Renegade systems and into the morally grey—which the VTM tabletop game happily inhabits. "If there's a clear right and wrong, that's less interesting to me."
"This is another way that VTM really helps us as an IP, because one of the first things you learn is that kindred are monsters, you are literally a monster. You have to be a predator to exist … there's humanity versus 'the Beast' in the tabletop game, where you can go closer and closer to hunger, which makes it harder and harder to do the things you want to do."
Le Bray's talking about some mechanics enshrined in VTM's rules—a character's humanity has a sliding scale. At 10 humanity, you're a saint, something the book calls rare for humans, "and [for] the vampires who have achieved it even more so." At 0 humanity, you fall under the sway of the Beast, and your character becomes a ravenous NPC. For Le Bray, that tension is part of the story: "One of the great things about [Phyre] being an elder is that being a human was so long ago … what does it mean to not remember what sunlight feels like?"
"In short, yeah. We're big nerds and we look at a lot of different things … there are nerds in the team that are super passionate about games, and the elements [from them] that you wouldn't think would make it into our version."
I don't think Bloodlines 2 is going to be another Baldur's Gate 3, obviously, even if the tasks involved creating both—like translating tabletop storytelling to the digital world—are similar. The Chinese Room just doesn't have the same access to the resources. I am curious, though, to watch it tackle those challenges in its own way. I wonder if we'll feel that DNA from the RPG greats when this long-overdue sequel rises from the grave.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 37,073
BG3 has been out in early access for years.
Delterius
Arcane
I also think its a filthy marketing lie devoid of any concrete examples.
Dishonoredbr
Erudite
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2019
- Messages
- 2,535
They sure talked a lot to say ''yeah , the game going to be a RPG, truste us'' without giving any solid example.If they're taking inspiration from a game that released just a few months ago, it can only mean that they started from scratch. This game is not coming out for at least another two years, if ever.
https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the...rrative-design-as-well-as-its-tabletop-roots/
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 seeks to take inspiration from Baldur's Gate 3's narrative design, as well as its tabletop roots
By Harvey Randall
published about 4 hours ago
I spoke with a narrative designer at The Chinese Room, Arone Le Bray, earlier this week.
(Image credit: The Chinese Room)
Heavy hangs the crown of expectation. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a sequel to the 2004 cult classic RPG by the now-buried Troika Games, and it has a lot to live up to. It needs to fight off the first game's powerful air of nostalgia, while also stepping into the daylight during an outstanding year for RPGs.
I interviewed The Chinese Room (TCR)'s narrative designer Arone Le Bray, who has a lot of experience under his belt. Before TCR, Le Bray was a narrative quality designer at Bioware for nearly 15 years—which means he's worked on games like Dragon Age: Origins, the Mass Effect series, the whole works.
Far from just feeding on games past, Le Bray says TCR's been looking towards current games for inspiration. "Sarah (one of our writers) is a huge fan of Baldur's Gate 3 … we're looking at how we can borrow aspects [from it], or how we can make sure we're not taking giant steps backwards in terms of stories."
Specifically, TCR is looking towards the sheer evolution of RPG narrative Larian Studios put on display earlier this year. "I absolutely classify narrative as an aspect of gameplay," says Le Bray. "How can we make the player feel like they've owned their outcomes? How can we make the player feel like they have the agency we want them to?"
That's a high bar, considering Baldur's Gate 3—Gale's uncanny thirst notwithstanding—has done some staggering things with narrative design. There's a hitch here or there, but we're talking about a game which devotes two whole hours of wordage to a single spell. A seasoned studio given a popular licence at the absolute top of its game.
The Chinese Room, however, faces a much steeper wall. For starters, Bloodlines 2 has suffered from an epic tangle of development hell, even changing studios entirely. This is also TCR's first foray into the action RPG genre, their past games being narrative-focused stuff like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.
Le Bray also says they've looked to Vampire: The Masquerade's (VTM)'s tabletop origins. He mentions wanting to avoid breaking the contract between player and "Storyteller", VTM's version of a D&D Dungeon Master. "The tabletop gaming stuff comes in handy, too. Because a lot of VTM is about the storyteller … 'How do you tell that fun story?' Ultimately, you're trying to make sure [your players] are getting the best version of the story you can tell."
Just to cross-reference, VTM's latest edition describes the Storyteller's role in much the same way. "The Storyteller's primary duty is to make sure the other players have a good time. You do that by telling a good story. Unlike novelists or film directors, however, you don't simply tell the story from hook to climax." Open-ended storytelling is a lot easier when you're sitting around a table conjuring worlds with your words, though—code is far more set in stone.
"For us, it was about looking at Phyre and making sure their character feels believable in this time and setting … 'is this character acting in a way the player expects that they would act?'" Le Bray later says he wants the player to feel like they're making decisions in ways that aren't misleading, earning their outcome.
"We never want to make it feel like the player could make the wrong choice," says Le Bray, but he also wants "the choices to feel like [they could start] forum arguments. Like, 'How dare you make choice A, clearly the right thing to do was choice B!'"
We also get talking a little about moral choice in video games, and how a lot of RPGs have moved away from the 'look at how many good points I have' Paragon/Renegade systems and into the morally grey—which the VTM tabletop game happily inhabits. "If there's a clear right and wrong, that's less interesting to me."
"This is another way that VTM really helps us as an IP, because one of the first things you learn is that kindred are monsters, you are literally a monster. You have to be a predator to exist … there's humanity versus 'the Beast' in the tabletop game, where you can go closer and closer to hunger, which makes it harder and harder to do the things you want to do."
Le Bray's talking about some mechanics enshrined in VTM's rules—a character's humanity has a sliding scale. At 10 humanity, you're a saint, something the book calls rare for humans, "and [for] the vampires who have achieved it even more so." At 0 humanity, you fall under the sway of the Beast, and your character becomes a ravenous NPC. For Le Bray, that tension is part of the story: "One of the great things about [Phyre] being an elder is that being a human was so long ago … what does it mean to not remember what sunlight feels like?"
"In short, yeah. We're big nerds and we look at a lot of different things … there are nerds in the team that are super passionate about games, and the elements [from them] that you wouldn't think would make it into our version."
I don't think Bloodlines 2 is going to be another Baldur's Gate 3, obviously, even if the tasks involved creating both—like translating tabletop storytelling to the digital world—are similar. The Chinese Room just doesn't have the same access to the resources. I am curious, though, to watch it tackle those challenges in its own way. I wonder if we'll feel that DNA from the RPG greats when this long-overdue sequel rises from the grave.
J1M
Arcane
- Joined
- May 14, 2008
- Messages
- 14,780
Carna. Probably best if you don't look it up.
Xelocix
Learned
ROFL LOOK AT THIS LIKE TO DISLIKE RATIO!! NOT EVEN 100K VIEWS TOO. IT'S SO FUCKIN OVER.
Tyranicon
A Memory of Eternity
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2019
- Messages
- 8,333
I think the most telling part of the recent stream is how out of touch with the fanbase the devs are.
The only thing missing from this is "our devs are HUGE fans of the original" which they probably said at some point.
The fact that they led their marketing push with two short scenes with bad animation and lackluster dialogue... it's not looking good bros.
- Fixed protagonist
- Limited customization options
- Fully voiced
- Standard 3 dialogue choices
- 4 clans at launch
- Ugly Lou
- Etc
The only thing missing from this is "our devs are HUGE fans of the original" which they probably said at some point.
The fact that they led their marketing push with two short scenes with bad animation and lackluster dialogue... it's not looking good bros.
S.H.O.D.A.N.
Learned
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2020
- Messages
- 493
BG3 is the new Dark Souls of Insert Subgenre.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 14,439
fantadomat
Arcane
Unrelated, but I'd love to see a Bloodlines-type game based on Demon: The Fallen. It'd still be a story heavy game, but allow for a far more personal story in the form of a fallen angel's search for redemption, purpose, answers or lashing out against the world.
Lambach
Arcane
Going through the last 10-15 pages, I'm getting a distinct impression this is gonna be this:
with a VtM cosmetic skin like you can buy in Fortnite for 4.99$.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 - FOREBLOODED
with a VtM cosmetic skin like you can buy in Fortnite for 4.99$.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 - FOREBLOODED
OttoQuitmarck
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2023
- Messages
- 439
Oh my fucking god this game looks way worse than I ever expected. What the FUCK.
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2020
- Messages
- 17,656
Yes. It's ok though.
You can select zher gender.
According to Roguey there's a going to be a
Post-alpha btw.
BlackheartXIII
Educated
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2022
- Messages
- 106
Correct observation.
Last edited:
Lambach
Arcane
I don't know how many times I went on a mouth-foaming rampage in this Thread shitting on the Antitribu Mod for original Bloodlines, but holy shit, this is gonna make it look like a masterpiece in comparison, and in that Mod Grout's wife was a Boss Fight. 
Plenty. Each case was a sight to behold.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
- Messages
- 4,000
I'd like to know what he wants to do that isn't in his power. That would be telling than anything
Delterius
Arcane
I'm guessing Carna would be a secondary plotline at most, as their powerbase is nowhere near Seattle. That said all the tremere splinter groups seem very keen on acquiring support among the larger clan, the more heterodox the more desperate they'd be.
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