If somebody had asked me coming into this year what my most anticipated game is, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 would not even be in my top 10, despite being the sequel to what I consider one of my favorite RPGs of all time. A game I can still sink 100 hours in when the mood hits me just right. One could chalk this up to so many high-quality games looking poised to release this year, or me being unsure that a game delayed this much would release, but the truth is, Chinese Room lost me when they showcased their first gameplay demo.
It feels weird to point out that nearly two decades after the release of the original Bloodlines, Baldur’s Gate III received massive praise for something that Vampire: The Masquerade got right back in 2004. Even if you point out it was heavily criticized (rightfully so) for a lack of polish, its use of the tabletop that spawned it received a lump sum of praise. A multitude of vampire clans to choose from, all changing how you interact with the world, and an experience that felt like you were living a campaign. This was something that, at the time, even the far more popular Dungeons & Dragons struggled with, given the limitations RPG games had. Yes, it took several unofficial fan patches to declare the game what it always could have been, but the parts that make the experience special were always there.
Since Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was announced, I had been following it, having had a literal freakout when that first trailer came out of nowhere to change a random day in January into what I thought would be a great day, but just capped off a string of disappointments. I thought the first two demos looked fine, though I know some people criticized the graphics. My argument to that remains that I think it looks less polished now than it did then, from a graphical standpoint, so all that was accomplished because people demand perfection, you end up trading something good for something potentially less so without a hint of irony, but here we are.
The issue becomes that then we had a diverse demos, one showcasing the, at the time, fledgling protagonist fighting another vampire in a homeless encampment. This part was on all the sizzle reels, so people might have forgotten there was a whole start to this demo that involved the player wandering around Seattle. The first gameplay showcased since The Chinese Room was taken over from Hardsuit Labs was the player fighting their way through a metaphysical state in a warehouse. To be fair, it caps itself off with a dialog tree which at least feels reminiscent of VTM. With previews coming out of Gamescom 2025, though, one thing is clear: this was not a misrepresentation of the upcoming game, which finally has a release date after 6 years of waiting. It just doesn’t sit right with me.
It’s not like the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodline didn’t have action in it. There were guns, and blades, and a lot of people trying to kill you. It also had depth. One of the most remembered missions was when the game played into the horror as the player entered the Ocean House Hotel. The game always felt like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, less of a horror and more of a very dark that might feel horror-esque, right up until this moment, and then suddenly all bets are off. With the game’s release only two months away, my hope would have been to hear anything, anything at all, that indicates that the core of the experience is not going to devolve into these linear moments of action. They announced that you play as a second character beyond the one you have some creative control over, now an elder god. Even the dev diaries that developer The Chinese Room would release really didn’t offer any clarity on the subject, leaving the hope that this was just an artistic choice and they were holding back these details for later. Clearly, they were not.
It’s hard to tell what even happened in the interim with Bloodlines 2 because, for all intents, the game releasing on October 21st isn’t the game we were pitched in 2019. It’s hard to believe we are in this situation (the sarcasm is palpable) since Hardsuit Labs was largely an untested studio, at least where a big RPG was concerned, that pitched that type of game in 2018, announced it in 2019, and said they would release it in 2020. In their defense, this was the tens, when every developer was promising their games years before they knew it would be ready, so that followed the pattern. You can’t really blame The Chinese Room for this either; they were brought in years later to fix a game that had missed milestones and lacked fundamental leadership for years.
There were always supposed to be DLC clans in Bloodlines 2, even under Hardsuit Labs, but now this has become what I would argue is the constant issue. Hardsuit had stated there would be five clans at launch, with one being the only class I play as, the Malkavian, which is now not even set to feature in the game. Well, that’s not true; the secondary protagonist you get to play as will represent the clan, but I would consider this incidental. As people were quick to point out at its new trailer and release date, the title is now set to feature four clans and two DLC clans available day one, this is compared to the seven available in the original Bloodlines. No Malk, no Nosferatu, and yes, the Toreador available as part of the DLC bundle was intended to be a clan available at launch in the Hardsuits base game. While the whole thing is annoying, I can understand a DLC post-clan release; this was always an ambitious game for the developers and the money involved. If I needed to buy a clan months later because it wasn’t finished yet and needed to be added, fine. If it changed a lot of dialogue, even better. Now, it’s hard to argue that the game requires an additional payment to actually make it complete. It makes you wonder just how much oversight publisher Paradox is exerting over The Chinese Room.
What is absolutely the worst part of this is, I still want the game to succeed. Vampire: The Masquerade has an amazing universe that lends itself to open-world games incredibly well. Instead, we end up with titles like Coteries of New York or Swansong, and while I enjoyed both despite any flaws, they represent just how much of a risk World of Darkness was willing to take with their prized flagship tabletop title. It’s hard not to look at Baldur’s Gate III and Cyberpunk 2077 and ask the question, is it so hard to connect vampire fiction with a large audience that Vampire: The Masquerade can’t get the same treatment? To the credit of The Chinese Room, it does sound like the Demo at Gamescom is good, turning some less confident heads back on board, and this is a good thing, but the debate is what players actually want, and despite the fact that I am all in on supporting, I am still questioning this myself. Credit to Hardsuit Labs as well, who pitched what should have been an obvious choice for a game, and yet took this long to get a glimmer of hope. Hopefully, this is another Dead Island 2 situation, but even then, was that actually a great game, or better than what a game in development hell is expected to turn out? With Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, we will find out on October 21, when the full game is finally in our hands.
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