World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming Fall 2024

[Vincente]

they can only feed well from the wealthy and well-bred IIRC.

Only from a specific group. This can mean pretty much anything, like "the wealthy", "those who fear death", "those who know you", "catholics", etc.

*laughs in Pieterzoon*

 

[Semiurge]

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...rade-bloodlines-2/news/clan-highlight-ventrue

Clan Highlight​

The Clan of Kings, Blue Bloods, Tyrants, Warlords, Patricians, Borgias​

Ventrue vampires usually choose their progeny from mortals familiar with power, wealth and influence. Seeing themselves as the rightful leaders of vampire society, Kindred of clan Ventrue take up the mantle of leadership wherever possible, often in the form of high positions in Camarilla Courts.

Playing a Ventrue in Bloodlines 2​

Ventrue are blue blooded tyrants who incite obedience in both their allies and their foes. Focusing on the Discipline Dominate, Ventrue forces their prey to obey their command to fight their friends, forget what they’ve seen or even kill themselves. Feeding builds up Fortitude, allowing the Ventrue to soak up more damage in case any enemy is powerful enough to resist their force of will.

Abilities​

When you choose your clan, you will start out with a passive ability unique to each clan. You are then able to unlock abilities from the Ability Tree, starting with your chosen clan. Each ability requires spending Ability Points to unlock which are earned from completing missions, combat and exploration. At the peak of the Ability Tree, you can unlock the clan Perk, a reward to those dedicated enough to unlock all of the abilities for a clan, giving a permanent passive upgrade.

Flesh of Marble​

Clan Passive: Feeding hardens your skin, making you highly resistant to damage.

Cloud Memory​

Cause a target to forget you were there, putting them into a relaxed state.

Possession​

Possess an opponent, allowing you to see through their eyes for a period. While possessed, the target can be commanded to attack another person.

Terminal Decree​

Use your powers of Dominate to command someone to kill themselves.

Mass Manipulation​

Subdues enemies within your gaze, preventing them from attacking. Dominate abilities will affect all subdued opponents while Mass Manipulation is active.

Thirst​

Clan Perk: Increases the amount of health restored by feeding.

ABILITIES

Screenshots​

Customizing your playstyle​

There are many different ways to play your character in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Venture rely on the rise-and-fall mechanics of their Layered Fortitude, building up a defense to take on stronger opponents, while using abilities to dominate weaker foes and make them fight their friends or even kill themselves. Each clan has a straightforward way of playing, and does not require ability optimization. At the same time, if you want to, you can customize your playstyle by visiting certain important vampires throughout Seattle, who are sworn to assist you by offering their Blood to help you unlock abilities from their Clan.

Abilities from other clans may cost more AP depending on how well they align with your clans Disciplines. The Ventrue Disciplines are Dominate (the supernatural ability to control others) Fortitude (the ability to resist physical and mental attacks) and Presence (the supernatural ability to attract, awe, or terrify). If a Ventrue would try to unlock the Brujah ability Taunt, which is part of the Presence Discipline, it would cost less AP, than if they attempt to unlock an ability from a Discipline they don’t already have, such as Obfuscate. Unlocking additional Clan Perks will make them stack, so you can collect them all if you wish, elevating your power much closer to elder level.

Activated abilities and the Clan Perks can be learned from the other clans, but your clan passive can not. This means that while you can combine abilities and features from other clans in hundreds of different ways, your Ventrue playthrough will remain different from playing as another clan who branches into Ventrue abilities.

Image: Ability tree for Ventrue with all clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. The Banu Haqim ability Split Second has been equipped, replacing Possession.

It would be great if you could be in full control of the possessed opponent, so you could make them jump off rooftops or do some other kinds of creative self-destructive shit with the environment, like a kamikaze. But alas, this would leave your body a sitting duck so I doubt they even bothered to consider these possibilities because they'd have to solve that problem somehow. That, and the environments will have a minimum amount of interactivity.

 

[Fedora Master]

It would be great if this was actually a good game.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...rade-bloodlines-2/news/clan-highlight-ventrue

Clan Highlight​

The Clan of Kings, Blue Bloods, Tyrants, Warlords, Patricians, Borgias​

Ventrue vampires usually choose their progeny from mortals familiar with power, wealth and influence. Seeing themselves as the rightful leaders of vampire society, Kindred of clan Ventrue take up the mantle of leadership wherever possible, often in the form of high positions in Camarilla Courts.

Playing a Ventrue in Bloodlines 2​

Ventrue are blue blooded tyrants who incite obedience in both their allies and their foes. Focusing on the Discipline Dominate, Ventrue forces their prey to obey their command to fight their friends, forget what they’ve seen or even kill themselves. Feeding builds up Fortitude, allowing the Ventrue to soak up more damage in case any enemy is powerful enough to resist their force of will.

Abilities​

When you choose your clan, you will start out with a passive ability unique to each clan. You are then able to unlock abilities from the Ability Tree, starting with your chosen clan. Each ability requires spending Ability Points to unlock which are earned from completing missions, combat and exploration. At the peak of the Ability Tree, you can unlock the clan Perk, a reward to those dedicated enough to unlock all of the abilities for a clan, giving a permanent passive upgrade.

Flesh of Marble​

Clan Passive: Feeding hardens your skin, making you highly resistant to damage.

Cloud Memory​

Cause a target to forget you were there, putting them into a relaxed state.

Possession​

Possess an opponent, allowing you to see through their eyes for a period. While possessed, the target can be commanded to attack another person.

Terminal Decree​

Use your powers of Dominate to command someone to kill themselves.

Mass Manipulation​

Subdues enemies within your gaze, preventing them from attacking. Dominate abilities will affect all subdued opponents while Mass Manipulation is active.

Thirst​

Clan Perk: Increases the amount of health restored by feeding.

ABILITIES

Screenshots​

Customizing your playstyle​

There are many different ways to play your character in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Venture rely on the rise-and-fall mechanics of their Layered Fortitude, building up a defense to take on stronger opponents, while using abilities to dominate weaker foes and make them fight their friends or even kill themselves. Each clan has a straightforward way of playing, and does not require ability optimization. At the same time, if you want to, you can customize your playstyle by visiting certain important vampires throughout Seattle, who are sworn to assist you by offering their Blood to help you unlock abilities from their Clan.

Abilities from other clans may cost more AP depending on how well they align with your clans Disciplines. The Ventrue Disciplines are Dominate (the supernatural ability to control others) Fortitude (the ability to resist physical and mental attacks) and Presence (the supernatural ability to attract, awe, or terrify). If a Ventrue would try to unlock the Brujah ability Taunt, which is part of the Presence Discipline, it would cost less AP, than if they attempt to unlock an ability from a Discipline they don’t already have, such as Obfuscate. Unlocking additional Clan Perks will make them stack, so you can collect them all if you wish, elevating your power much closer to elder level.

Activated abilities and the Clan Perks can be learned from the other clans, but your clan passive can not. This means that while you can combine abilities and features from other clans in hundreds of different ways, your Ventrue playthrough will remain different from playing as another clan who branches into Ventrue abilities.

Image: Ability tree for Ventrue with all clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. The Banu Haqim ability Split Second has been equipped, replacing Possession.

Is it just my imagination or are they trying to make the graphics a bit nicer and the game a bit more RPG-like?

But why does one of the NPCs look like Phyre?

 

[Vincente]

But why does one of the NPCs look like Phyre?

It's through the eyes of Dominated kine.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

But why does one of the NPCs look like Phyre?

It's through the eyes of Dominated kine.

Quite a peculiar procedure. What is it for? Can we lead the dominated like a puppet?

 

[Semiurge]

But why does one of the NPCs look like Phyre?

It's through the eyes of Dominated kine.

Quite a peculiar procedure. What is it for? Can we lead the dominated like a puppet?

If only.

Imagine taking control of one and making him suicide by cop. Or making him jump off a high ledge, or making him shoot a canister of fuel when he's standing next to it - no, wait - there are no guns because guns kill people and they're not "visceral" enough.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

But why does one of the NPCs look like Phyre?

It's through the eyes of Dominated kine.

Quite a peculiar procedure. What is it for? Can we lead the dominated like a puppet?

If only.

Imagine taking control of one and making him suicide by cop. Or making him jump off a high ledge, or making him shoot a canister of fuel when he's standing next to it - no, wait - there are no guns because guns kill people and they're not "visceral" enough.

Let's think what we could achieve with modern technology if the industry and society were in a different state of mind than they are now!

Why did something that was naturally destined to be a gorefest full of naked women and dark humor turn into something like this?

 

[Vulpes]

I wonder if they'll include Ventrue's weakness: they can only feed well from the wealthy and well-bred IIRC. Considering nowadays' hate towards the wealthy and the competent, I'm not sure how is this going to be portrayed.

That was only true in Bloodlines 1. Unless they've changed things since V20, most Ventrue desire to feed on Kine that in some way reminds them of themselves or someone they deeply cared about during their mortal life. A good example of this would be Jan Pieterzoon, a "good" guy Camarilla elder that's sympathetic towards the Anarchs. He almost got raped when he was a kid and it traumatized him so much that can he only feed on rape victims since his embrace. Fun fact: despite all that, he still has a relatively high Humanity score for a 300+ year old vampire

But, of course, neither Paradox nor TCR are cool enough to implement such an interesting feeding system

Imagine taking control of one and making him suicide by cop. Or making him jump off a high ledge, or making him shoot a canister of fuel when he's standing next to it - no, wait - there are no guns because guns kill people and they're not "visceral" enough.

Did you even look at the article? One of the enemies in the screenshots is holding a drum-fed shotgun

 

[Roguey]

Did you even look at the article? One of the enemies in the screenshots is holding a drum-fed shotgun

First gun spotted, but it's being wielded like a club.

 

[Caim]

Did you even look at the article? One of the enemies in the screenshots is holding a drum-fed shotgun

First gun spotted, but it's being wielded like a club.

Nah, that is shoddy programming where an enemy reacts to some kind of power and takes that pose, but the gun remains glued to their hand.

 

[Roguey]

Nah, that is shoddy programming where an enemy reacts to some kind of power and takes that pose, but the gun remains glued to their hand.

Perhaps, but none of the other characters are making a pose like that.

 

[Caim]

Nah, that is shoddy programming where an enemy reacts to some kind of power and takes that pose, but the gun remains glued to their hand.

Perhaps, but none of the other characters are making a pose like that.

Maybe it's distance or you can only affect one target like this at a time, which would make sense to use on the target with a gun.

 

[Roguey]

Maybe it's distance or you can only affect one target like this at a time, which would make sense to use on the target with a gun.

This screenshot is a demonstration of the Mass Manipulation ability.

Subdues enemies within your gaze, preventing them from attacking. Dominate abilities will affect all subdued opponents while Mass Manipulation is active.

 

[Vulpes]

First gun spotted, but it's being wielded like a club.

You can also see some vampire hunters firing their guns in the Assamite trailer around 0:30

 

[normie]

Nah, that is shoddy programming where an enemy reacts to some kind of power and takes that pose, but the gun remains glued to their hand.

Perhaps, but none of the other characters are making a pose like that.

do you even play games? it's immediately obvious to anyone who does that that's what's happening

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Peak soulless slop. Bleh.

 

[Child of Malkav]

First gun spotted, but it's being wielded like a club.

You can also see some vampire hunters firing their guns in the Assamite trailer around 0:30

At 0:32-0:33 is he crawling on the ground?

 

[Semiurge]

Peak soulless slop. Bleh.

Terrible design. The chains are just part of the textures, completely flat like it's still the year 1999.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Terrible design. The chains are just part of the textures, completely flat like it's still the year 1999.

Bad graphical fidelity I can excuse, but it's the design direction itself (esp. of those NPCs) which doesn't fit a Bloodlines sequel at all. Shit looks more like Saints Row than VtMB 2 electric boogaloo.

 

[Lambach]

What's going on over there in Seattle? Why are Starbucks baristas carrying baseball bats and trying to fight Vampires or whatever?

With that plaid shirt, that early-2000's emopunk haircut and tricycle kneepads, Caine himself couldn't possibly look like a credible threat, let alone intimidating.

 

[Tyranicon]

I feel like I should refrain from posting here because at this point, it's punching down.

 

[Raghar]

Would modern 2026 young people clothing and hair styles look better? GTA V Trevor killing hipsters looked great and it felt in character of Trevor.

Young retards that wanna cheat or rob what they think is some middle age idiot (aka main character), might feel realistic and they can claim it was an artistic representation of degenerate modern society. They can add some mafia, and hordes of FBI agents, and they would have decent combat encounters.

 

[NecroLord]

Did you even look at the article? One of the enemies in the screenshots is holding a drum-fed shotgun

First gun spotted, but it's being wielded like a club.

Holy fuck, that looks horrible...

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

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.