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[Mech#4]

Well, it seems like this is a thing coming now. Developed by Hardsuit Labs and published by Paradox Interactive it appears to be a close sequel to the original including having the designer and writer from the first game Brian Mitsoda working on the team.

Trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2  Note: Not actual gameplay footage.
Steam page.
Release Date: Q1 2020.

Going from an article written up by Rock Paper Shotgun I'll make a list of details on the game.
- Set in 21st Century Seattle
- Turned then thrown out after a firebomb kills the trial. Similar to the first game.
- Has masquerade mechanic and humanity to look out for.
- Multiple hubs
- Customisable character including human background (Like cop, coroner or barista) that can affect situations. Also choosable pronouns for character.
- Can choose your clan. Tremere mentioned
- Start as Thinblood. Work your way up in the clan. Diablerie?
- First person combat.
- Options for avoiding combat by navigating environment.
- Branching narratives, side quests.
- Choose which faction you work for. Can annoy the other factions to the point they refuse to work with you.
- Humans have different blood flavours called Resonances. Based off of emotions (Fear, desire, pain, joy, anger, etc) these can give bonuses and you can end up aquiring a taste for specific resonances.
- Other clans added after launch for free.
- Likely DLC.



Um, oh boy! I lreally like the first game and hope this will be a suitable sequel. There's not much in the way of actual mechanics explained in the write up so I can't tell how much RPG elements this game will have.
Part of me is rather skeptical. The original game, for all the fun I had with it, is also really flawed and kind of a product of too much ambition and half finished ideas. Like one of their other games made by Troika Games, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. It changed a lot over it's three year development as whole areas and plots were added, changed and dropped.
I'm still looking forward to this. A great deal of enjoyment from the first game was the over-the-top gothic, gloomy mood of the game that knew not to take itself too seriously but also knew when to drop the silly and be quite scary at times (looking at you haunted seaside hotel).


Apparently the game is set in a rebooted version of the Old World of Darkness that White Wolf started up to run alongside the NWoD from Vampire: The Requiem. The first game involved end of the vampire world stuff with Gehenna and antediluvians waking up, bad stuff.
What this means is that this game should have a lot of the same clans and factions from the original game. That means Tremere, Malkavians, Toreador, Gangrel, Ventrue, Nosferatu and Brujah. If they're adding other clans later on we might also see some that weren't playable in the first game like Giovanni (Incestuous necromancers), Followers of Set (Egyptian god themed vampire powers) and Tzimisce (erudite, monsterous flesh crafters).

Edit: Added release date and note about trailer.

[Egan_BW]

Blood. Shiny.

If it can pull off what it appears to be going for, it'll be great. There's also a chance that this becomes a disaster of a game that we don't talk about.

I have not played VTMB... look, there are a lot of classic games out there, I'll probably play it at some point.


But yeah, vampire RPG. Fights, talks, magic powers, delicious blood... It sounds like what Vampyr wanted to be, which is good if they can do it and bad if they can't.

[Rolan7]

OMG PTW without even reading because it's 3AM
Blood blood blood yaaaay!

[deoloth]

I'll take sequel I was not expecting for 500, Alex.


Seriously though, This kind of hit me out of the blue, I only ran through the unofficial restored content mod a month or so back. Finally got to solve the serial killer quest that was originally half cut out. That has hung over my head for 15 years, lol.

[Akura]

Interesting. Will this take place in the Old World of Darkness or New?

Spoiler: Reason I ask is (click to show/hide)

The first game takes place at the endpoint of the OWoD - in fact what happens at the end of the game may actually have been the start of Gehenna, from what (little) I understand of the setting.

[LoSboccacc]

Interesting. Will this take place in the Old World of Darkness or New?

Spoiler: Reason I ask is (click to show/hide)

The first game takes place at the endpoint of the OWoD - in fact what happens at the end of the game may actually have been the start of Gehenna, from what (little) I understand of the setting.

yeah I was following closely the development to see if they would then advance the continuity, but everything got dropped and then I went out of the setting after I lost my play group. wonder where they are at now.

[Mech#4]

Interesting. Will this take place in the Old World of Darkness or New?

Spoiler: Reason I ask is (click to show/hide)

The first game takes place at the endpoint of the OWoD - in fact what happens at the end of the game may actually have been the start of Gehenna, from what (little) I understand of the setting.

yeah I was following closely the development to see if they would then advance the continuity, but everything got dropped and then I went out of the setting after I lost my play group. wonder where they are at now.

I was going to include this in the original post but it was getting a bit too waffly for my tastes.

While I'm not an expect, this is my understanding of everything from my readings.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 1 takes place in the Old World of Darkness. This involves the whole Gehenna plot with the end of the world being fortold by the appearance of Thinbloods (vampires who are so weak generationally they have no to little distint features of their sires clan), the awakening of the antedeluvians (ancient vampires who are the progenitors of many of the vampire clans) and appearances of Caine, the original vampire cursed by God for killing his brother and not repenting.

This all ended in the RPG in a book called The End Times where the Vampire world did end and all that. This made way for the New World of Darkness with the book Vampire: The Requiem.
Vampire: The Requiem is not connected to the OWoD, neither is it a continuation. It's more of a rewriting with more vague beginnings for why vampires exist while continuing the stories past Gehenna into the 21st century. I think there's only about 5 vampire clans (Ventrue, Nosferatu, Daeva, Gangrel, and Mekhet) who were also split into minor bloodlines (for example, the Malkovians (note spelling) were a subset of Ventrue).

Edit: (I realise I left a bit out here). Work begun a few years ago on writing a new 5th Edition for Vampire: The Masquerade that would make both OWoD and NWoD available to play, with the Old World being updated to continue beyond the Gehenna plot.
However, due to international issues caused by content in the 5th Edition splatbooks for Vampire: The Masquerade they were pulled from sale and White Wolf Publishing no longer exists with all their holdings going to their parent company since 2015 Paradox Interactive.


To put it simply. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 takes place in the Old World of Darkness with the same clans and factions of Bloodlines 1. As for whether Gehenna occured or not... I'm not too sure on that. I assume Paradox Interactive are rewriting content to replace the pulled books as there was quite a bit that fans weren't too happy about them.

[Hanzoku]

spoiler-ific ahoy, but...

my take on the ending of Masquerade is that while it's set during the end times (I am pretty sure the taxi driver is Caine), the events really don't do a lot to advance the Armageddon-clock. I think that despite everyone getting their vampiric panties in a twist, the corpse in the coffin was really just a (non-ambulatory) mummified human, and I distinctly remember Jack kicking back with a beer to watch the light show while his coffin full of explosives removed that twat of a Prince. The prophecies around the coffin basically became self-fulfilling because everyone ended up putting so much weight on them.

the PC is sort of an enigma from the first game, because in a few short weeks you basically go from newly embraced to being able to beat a Prince several generations ahead of you to a bloody pulp. Your (supposed) proginator wasn't all that impressive as he/she was captured and executed by the Sheriff, and you don't commit diablerie during the game, so where does the massive strength come from?

[scriver]

Narrative strength is strongest strength.

It's why every strength-obsessed barbarian should become a bard instead of a berserker.

[Mech#4]

spoiler-ific ahoy, but...

my take on the ending of Masquerade is that while it's set during the end times (I am pretty sure the taxi driver is Caine), the events really don't do a lot to advance the Armageddon-clock. I think that despite everyone getting their vampiric panties in a twist, the corpse in the coffin was really just a (non-ambulatory) mummified human, and I distinctly remember Jack kicking back with a beer to watch the light show while his coffin full of explosives removed that twat of a Prince. The prophecies around the coffin basically became self-fulfilling because everyone ended up putting so much weight on them.

the PC is sort of an enigma from the first game, because in a few short weeks you basically go from newly embraced to being able to beat a Prince several generations ahead of you to a bloody pulp. Your (supposed) proginator wasn't all that impressive as he/she was captured and executed by the Sheriff, and you don't commit diablerie during the game, so where does the massive strength come from?

Yeah, this is generally my understanding of things from Bloodlines 1 with Caine being responsible for your characters quick rise in power (Caine can basically do anything). Though I think I usually assumed the corpse in the coffin was an antediluvian but with new writing and the new game, eh, no problem if it's not. Writing a series out of an inevitable doomsday plot is quite difficult I imagine.


I do hope the new game explores some of the other factions and clans like the Sabbat and Tzimisce. Sabbat in Bloodlines 1 they were depicted as not much more than generic bad guys but there's also them trying to stave off Gehenna by killing all the antediluvians before they awaken, and it would be fun to play as a fleshcrafting Tzimisce.

[chevil]

spoiler-ific ahoy, but...

my take on the ending of Masquerade is that while it's set during the end times (I am pretty sure the taxi driver is Caine), the events really don't do a lot to advance the Armageddon-clock. I think that despite everyone getting their vampiric panties in a twist, the corpse in the coffin was really just a (non-ambulatory) mummified human, and I distinctly remember Jack kicking back with a beer to watch the light show while his coffin full of explosives removed that twat of a Prince. The prophecies around the coffin basically became self-fulfilling because everyone ended up putting so much weight on them.

the PC is sort of an enigma from the first game, because in a few short weeks you basically go from newly embraced to being able to beat a Prince several generations ahead of you to a bloody pulp. Your (supposed) proginator wasn't all that impressive as he/she was captured and executed by the Sheriff, and you don't commit diablerie during the game, so where does the massive strength come from?

Yeah, this is generally my understanding of things from Bloodlines 1 with Caine being responsible for your characters quick rise in power (Caine can basically do anything). Though I think I usually assumed the corpse in the coffin was an antediluvian but with new writing and the new game, eh, no problem if it's not. Writing a series out of an inevitable doomsday plot is quite difficult I imagine.


I do hope the new game explores some of the other factions and clans like the Sabbat and Tzimisce. Sabbat in Bloodlines 1 they were depicted as not much more than generic bad guys but there's also them trying to stave off Gehenna by killing all the antediluvians before they awaken, and it would be fun to play as a fleshcrafting Tzimisce.

Nope the corpse in the coffin is not a antediluvian. Everybody just assumes it is a antediluvian because Jack killed a lot of people on the boat transporting the coffin. And there was a prophecy.

In one of the endings you can see a cutscene where Jack talks with the Taxi driver while a mummy is sitting in a lawn chair.

[JimboM12]

ptw, the first one was one of my favorite rpgs ever (after patching, of course). The ability to play as a thinblood is interesting, so i can walk around during the day? Cuz honestly, that would be kinda cool. With the addition of blood types, i wonder if we can make our own ghouls too? So much to wonder and hope for.

[LoSboccacc]

Spoiler: the coffin and the ending (click to show/hide)

my understanding was that Caine wasn't in the coffin, but was the taxi driver at the end

[Mech#4]

ptw, the first one was one of my favorite rpgs ever (after patching, of course). The ability to play as a thinblood is interesting, so i can walk around during the day? Cuz honestly, that would be kinda cool. With the addition of blood types, i wonder if we can make our own ghouls too? So much to wonder and hope for.

That would be neat. VtMB had Heather who was a ghoul for the player and you had to deal with the ramifications of taking someones freewill away from them and the danger it put them in being associated with you.

Seeing the player character get more powerful over the game and losing more human aspects (walking outside, being able to eat a bit) would make for quite an interesting story arc.

[Iduno]

Interesting. Will this take place in the Old World of Darkness or New?

Spoiler: Reason I ask is (click to show/hide)

The first game takes place at the endpoint of the OWoD - in fact what happens at the end of the game may actually have been the start of Gehenna, from what (little) I understand of the setting.

I think it's like the 3rd or 4th version of new. White Wolf went out of business forever ago, got taken over by someone who just liked the darker parts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

you're a werewolf because one of your parents fucked a wolf, exalted being about superpowered barbarians raping and pillaging, or the child molestation metaphor for changeling

Somehow, that wasn't a great business, and they went belly-up. I believe that's when Paradox got the rights, but kept letting Onyx Path produce stuff until they were too obviously all Nazis writing about how nature should wipe out all of the undesirables (gays, trans, "inferior" races). They also managed to piss off a few governments.

I may be mixing up company names there (WoD was never my thing). Long story short, this is probably Paradox just throwing things together quickly so people remember the "halfway well-though-out world" parts of WoD, and not the "game by the shittiest people on Earth." Because they own the IP, and don't really want it to be worthless. They'll probably set it in the same setting as the original games to pull in as many of the video game players who don't know the out-of-game history so much.