Game News Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 delayed to October 2025

[Infinitron]

Tags: Paradox Interactive; The Chinese Room; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/...rade-bloodlines-2/news/updated-release-window

Hello Kindred,

We would like to share an update on the development and release window of Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

As Marco explained in the video, Bloodlines 2 will not be ready for release in the first half of 2025.

Paradox Interactive and The Chinese Room are committed to delivering this game, and we believe that ensuring great technical quality is more important than sticking to a specific date.

The game is currently in a late development stage, and feedback from the community has been taken into account during this time. TCR is working hard on quality assurance to ensure it is stable and free of bugs that could disrupt the player experience.

Bloodlines 2 will launch in October 2025 when the game meets the technical quality standards that you, our fans, rightfully expect and deserve. Please stay tuned for the game’s exact launch date.

We want to ensure that the content we share with you is high-quality and showcases exciting game features. With this updated release timeline, we will pause our development diaries so that the team can concentrate on refining the game.

However, we will still be available online for questions and comments, and we welcome everyone to join the Bloodlines 2 Discord.​

 

[Poseidon00]

He looks like Julian Assange if he gained a hundred pounds.

It's a minor thing, but I do like the fact that we saw some nice ragdoll physics around the 45 mark. There has always been something viscerally satisfying to me about blowing someone off a cliff, into a pool of water, etc. It doesn't make or break anything, but when small details like that don't exist, I grow bored a lot quicker.

 

[Infinitron]

Extensive preview at PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/v...ower-fantasy-that-im-desperate-to-play-again/

Excerpt:

After I wake up in an abandoned Seattle building, I immediately murder a security guard—a violent statement of intent. After that, I'm in tutorial mode, accompanied by the voice in my head: former vampire PI, Fabien. Why is he in my head? Well, that's one of several mysteries that make up this surprisingly investigation-focused RPG. The tutorial is stealth-heavy and pretty standard, but once I'm out of the derelict building, things really pick up. Now I can flex my vampiric muscles.

You might roll your eyes at the whole ancient vampire sapped off all their power conceit, but The Chinese Room has gone to great lengths to ensure that you still feel like a supernatural apex predator—to a degree not even remotely attempted by the previous VTM games. So while you'll still need to go through the levelling process and deal with the city's other important vampires before you have access to all the clan-specific powers, you still have a lot of toys to play with from the get-go.

Right away you've got supernatural strength, speed and agility; you can scramble up buildings in the blink of an eye, glide for long distances, and pull off air-dashes. Even better: you've got unlimited telekinesis. And you better believe the team has littered the game with detritus that can be weaponised.

Fights are a trip. After last year's big gameplay reveal, I was pretty critical of how it looked. As a viewer, it's easy to brush it all off as jerky and messy. When you're in control, though, it all comes together. That messiness becomes gleeful controlled chaos as you juggle bodies, rip out throats and use your vampiric powers to make mortals and vamps alike explode in a shower of blood. And that jerkiness reveals itself to be the snappy, rhythmic flow of battle, letting you effortlessly bounce between victims, chaining powers and kills for maximum carnage.

After a couple of hours, I realised what it reminded me of: watching a turn-based game being fast-forwarded. This is even more evident if you choose to use your supernatural speed to slow down time and make tactical choices. To be clear, this is a 100% real-time game, but the rhythm definitely has turn-based vibes, as you slide from target to target, following the plan of attack that you settled on when you were spying on your prey from the rooftops. I'm also pleased to say that Paradox deputy CEO Mattias Lilja's claim that "people who have seen it talk about Dishonored" is not an idle boast. It really does feel like Dishonored.

Take, for instance, my first chat with Lou Graham, Seattle's big mover and shaker. Lou is actually a real historical figure, but while in life she was a brothel owner, in death she is a Ventrue vamp and former Prince of Seattle. She gave up her throne, but then she installed her own undead progeny on the big seat, so she remains extremely influential. In my Tremere playthrough, I mostly just pissed her off.

We got off on the wrong foot initially because of my clan. Most vamps don't like the Tremere because they stole their power and, even for vampires, can be a bit creepy. So Lou litters our conversation with barbs, suggesting that I smell bad, need a bath and that the Tremere are a bunch of loser nerds. She is every bit the arrogant, haughty Ventrue—a clan that sees itself as vampire society's natural leaders. But by asking her about herself, playing into her narcissism, I briefly manage to get on her good side. Until I ask some more questions—awkward questions—and irritate her all over again.

In my second playthrough, armed with more knowledge, things go better. Because I picked Ventrue this time, we're on more even footing. There's mutual respect. She compliments me rather than spitting venom, and I manage to avoid stepping on any landmines this time. Your choice of clan also opens up new opportunities during dialogue scenes, revealing new information or just helping you develop the relationship.

How characters react to you also goes well beyond them liking or not liking what you're saying. When I met a fellow Tremere, a scientist, I went down the flirty route. This made her a bit embarrassed, but she also enjoyed it, and her giggliness gave me an advantage in the conversation. The tactic worked because it was clear she was a Nomad fangirl, but it would have been a mistake if I'd tried the same thing with Lou—which is a shame, because I'm already a big Lou fan.

This becomes a bit more tricky to juggle when you're chatting to multiple people. When I flirted with my new pal in front of two other vampires, she reacted positively again, but her boss was annoyed, and the third vampire, a mischievous Nosferatu, found her irritation amusing. That one seemingly throwaway bit of flirting subtly changed my relationship with three characters.

The dialogue and relationship systems all elegantly reinforce the fact that Bloodlines 2 is an investigative kind of RPG—something it shares with my all-time fave, Disco Elysium. Imagine Raymond Chandler spliced with Anne Rice and you're getting it.

So these chats are puzzles, and in a lot of cases the game subtly fed me information about my conversation companions before I met them. Ahead of my chat with Lou, for instance, Fabien dropped some hints about her, and I witnessed a flashback showing me a meeting he had with her. And before I met my Tremere fangirl, Lou spat out some insults that gave me a rough idea of what to expect. The more I chatted to the vamps of Seattle, the more I learned about their allies and enemies—information I could squirrel away and exploit later.

 

[Necrensha]

>>>>The Chinese Room in charge of finishing the game
Pfffff, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

 

[Grunker]

lul

 

[rumSaint]

kek

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Project died when they fired Mitsoda. Simple as.

 

[Gruia]

i still wonder how bg3 came up unscathed from the woke grinder. it was so shitty philosophically

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It's a minor thing, but I do like the fact that we saw some nice ragdoll physics around the 45 mark. There has always been something viscerally satisfying to me about blowing someone off a cliff, into a poll of water, etc. It doesn't make or break anything, but when small details like that don't exist, I grow bored a lot quicker.

Or kicking people off cliffs, into water, or into spikes, as in Dark Messiah of Might & Magic:

 

[GhostInTheHell]

Project died when they fired Mitsoda. Simple as.

It was never properly conceived.

It seems they used Brian Mitsoda and also Chris Avellone just to generate hype.

They probably didn't intend on using anything they wrote in the first place:

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/what-the-fuck-happened-to-bloodlines-2-1ad557bf2284

I worked on Bloodlines 2 for almost 2 and a half years, from 2016 to mid-2018, then my contract came to an end. They didn’t use anything I wrote during that time, which was a number of major characters and side missions (...)

There is no indication that The Chinese Room went back and added Mitsoda and Avellone's writing back into the game.

I doubt if they had we'd see characters like this one that's supposed to represent the Hunter faction:



I think this user put it best: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...es-2-dev-diary-28-hunters.152796/post-9358132

 

[Roguey]

It seems they used Brian Mitsoda and also Chris Avellone just to generate hype.

They probably didn't intend on using anything they wrote in the first place:

Mitsoda and Cluney were the ones who used Hardsuit to take Paradox for a ride and Brian was the one personally rejecting all of Avellone's submissions (Paradox loved having him on board and were willing to pay big bucks for him, just like they did with Tyranny, but the contract ended when it was made apparent they were ultimately paying him to do nothing).

 

[luj1]

the contract ended when it was made apparent they were ultimately paying him to do nothing

chefs kiss

 

[GhostInTheHell]

It seems they used Brian Mitsoda and also Chris Avellone just to generate hype.

They probably didn't intend on using anything they wrote in the first place:

Mitsoda and Cluney were the ones who used Hardsuit to take Paradox for a ride and Brian was the one personally rejecting all of Avellone's submissions (Paradox loved having him on board and were willing to pay big bucks for him, just like they did with Tyranny, but the contract ended when it was made apparent they were ultimately paying him to do nothing).

Source?

 

[ind33d]

the main character is now Yasuke, the Black Vampire

 

[Roguey]

Source?

https://www.pcgamesn.com/vampire-th...vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-interview

Ka’ai Cluney: In late 2015, I saw that Paradox had acquired the World of Darkness IP. For a long time I’ve been friends with Brian Mitsoda, who was the writer on the original. So, maybe a little recklessly, I texted Brian and asked him if he would be interested in putting together a pitch. He said, ‘Okay’. Well, he was a little more excited than that, and probably within the first couple of hours I was at a bar, he was at home, and we were texting back and forth.

It probably took us about half an hour to come up with Seattle, and then maybe an hour and a half to come up with the major conflicts. Then it all went from there. That weekend, I went over to Brian’s house, drank a bunch of whiskey, and came up with basically the core plot of the game. Well Brian did, I just drank.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-preview

Paradox apparently regarded Bloodlines as the crown jewel in the portfolio when they bought the World of Darkness IP in 2015. Meanwhile, at Hardsuit Labs, creative director Kai'ai Cluney came into Kipling’s office and told him they had to make a pitch. Things started happening all at once. Kipling was sending emails to Paradox saying: “We’re pitching you a game whether you like it or not,” while Cluney started reaching out to Mitsoda. They had a meeting set up within a couple of days. Mitsoda reached out to Ellison later, and said it was fun watching her reaction when he told her, a reaction she described as a “weird goofy grin.”

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/what-the-fuck-happened-to-bloodlines-2-1ad557bf2284

So Paradox and Hardsuit were in Las Vegas for D.I.C.E. We, being schleps, went there without going to D.I.C.E. because we are not executives. I went because I wanted to help Hardsuit with the pitch, I had been working with Hardsuit for some time prior on the title, and to encourage the Paradox folks the pitch was a good idea because I knew the Paradox folks from years before. This “encouragement” was very selfish of me and in retrospect of all that was going to happen, probably kind of shitty.

Yes, selfish. Yes, shitty. Still, it wasn’t hard to rationalize.
...

I suspect I was brought on because I gave the project RPG validity (which the critics who hate me most should have a field day with and I agree — even I’m laughing as I write this), since Hardsuit Labs hadn’t done an RPG before — they’re mostly known for shooters (which isn’t the best fit for a game like Bloodlines, since, well, the franchise isn’t really about guns). I’d like to think I helped during the pitch, but that’s for others to judge.

 

[Skinwalker]

Can it be delayed to October 3025? TCR might learn how to make actual video games by that time.

 

[GhostInTheHell]

Roguey
I meant a source for this

Brian was the one personally rejecting all of Avellone's submissions (Paradox loved having him on board and were willing to pay big bucks for him, just like they did with Tyranny, but the contract ended when it was made apparent they were ultimately paying him to do nothing).

Also you just linked me to Chris' post on Medium which I got my quote from earlier in the thread.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey
I meant a source for this

Brian was the one personally rejecting all of Avellone's submissions (Paradox loved having him on board and were willing to pay big bucks for him, just like they did with Tyranny, but the contract ended when it was made apparent they were ultimately paying him to do nothing).

Also you just linked me to Chris' post on Medium which I got my quote from earlier in the thread.

The narrative lead was Mitsoda. He was the one deciding which writing stayed and which wasn't good enough.

 

[Infinitron]

Reminder: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/vampire-the-masquerade-–-bloodlines-2-from-hardsuit-labs.126124/page-401#post-6870599

 

[luj1]

Don't believe the jew

 

[luj1]

Effect: Inferiority Complex (Mr Chad Chaddelone)
Trigger: Whenever Mr Chad Chaddelone is mentioned.
Penalty: Rougey suffers -4 to all stats and gains the Shaken condition.
Description: Overcome with insecurity, Rougey trembles uncontrollably like a lost prostitute, barely holding it together.

 

[luj1]

I am in absolute AWE of the 4D-chess "connect the dots" mental gymnastics on display from RoGAY and Shillfinitron. Some random incel cuck's internet rambling about how BlOoDlInEs 1 wAs AlWaYs aBoUt MaRgInAliZeD gRoUpS gets a LIKE from Mitsoda, and... *drumroll* this autotranslates to "Cara" (literally who) is BrAvE and a good writer.

I have a better theory. I bet she isn’t. I’d sooner put faith in 20+ years of playing and following these games than in whatever agenda you’re peddling guys. She’s not a good writer, and this game is going to suck monkey balls. It's going to suck not only because of poor mechanics, but also because of inserted neoliberal sociopolitical diarrhea. And the Codex will see through this fakery, as it always had. Isn't Jesus great?

 

[Roguey]

Effect: Inferiority Complex (Mr Chad Chaddelone)
Trigger: Whenever Mr Chad Chaddelone is mentioned.
Penalty: Rougey suffers -4 to all stats and gains the Shaken condition.
Description: Overcome with insecurity, Rougey trembles uncontrollably like a lost prostitute, barely holding it together.

I don't know how you get "Mitsoda was passive aggressively rejecting all of Avellone's work" to be a dig at Avellone.

To be clear, me and Brian Mitsoda don’t get along.

He actually said this in the Bloodlines 2 blog entry before undercutting it with a silly joke and mentioning that he still respects him, but the statement itself remains true.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Having actually read the books written 30 years ago, I have to admit that tweet is correct. The IP was chock full of social justice themes before it was trendy and you would have to be willfully blind not to notice. Troika thankfully heavily dialed back on that when they wrote Bloodlines, putting LaCroix in a villainous spotlight and making Strauss look like an attractive option in comparison. One of the reasons I prefer the Vampire: The Requiem spin-off/AU/reboot is because it heavily dials back on those themes too.

If you want a game about voluptuous vampiresses, then this isn’t the appropriate IP for that and the owners will never approve any such game anyway. Move on and make your own IPs about voluptuous vampiresses. You don’t have any choice at this point.

Edit: Also, and I’m shocked I have to say this, social justice themes ring hollow when you’re playing a literal man-eating monster and are expected to find man-eating monsters sympathetic.

 

[Fenix]

When I saw the title
I though - finally, we got something good out of bad.
In the comments I got what expected.
I wish this game continue to be like this, as it's only good we will get out of it.