News Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 - Announcement Trailer

[lashman]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will be sim-shipping on PS4, Xbox One and PC. You can pre-order on PC right now (Pre-order will come a bit later on console).

Sired in an act of vampire insurrection, your existence ignites the war for Seattle's blood trade. Enter uneasy alliances with the creatures who control the city and uncover the sprawling conspiracy which plunged Seattle into a bloody civil war between powerful vampire factions.

♞Become the Ultimate Vampire Immerse yourself in the World of Darkness and live out your vampire fantasy in a city filled with intriguing characters that react to your choices. You and your unique disciplines are a weapon in our forward-driving, fast-moving, melee-focussed combat system. Your power will grow as you advance, but remember to uphold the Masquerade and guard your humanity... or face the consequences.

♝Descend into Seattle’s Dark Heart and Survive the Vampire Elite Seattle has always been run by vampires. Hunt your prey across Seattle locations faithfully reimagined in the World of Darkness. Meet the old blood founders present since the city’s birth and the new blood steering the tech money redefining the city. Everyone has hidden agendas - so choose your allies wisely.

♚Enter into Uneasy Alliances Choose a side among competing factions, each with their own unique traits and stories, in the war for Seattle’s blood trade. The world will judge you by the company you keep, but remember no one’s hands stay clean forever.

♛Experience the Story Written by the creative mind behind the original Bloodlines, Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2 brings the ambitions of the first game to life and sees the return of a few fan favorite characters.

 

[MonthOLDpickle]

So, I am grabbing the unofficial patch for the first one, how do I play with 1080 reso or in windowed?

I have access to first one via family share on steam.

 

[prudis]

Spoiler

 

[Alextended]

Looks amazing but to me it looks like even the FPV parts aren't truly in game, just a target render type deal. Still, the premise is great and Paradox is generally good so I'm definitely excited as fuck. Bit curious why they call it Bloodlines 2 and not Bloodlines something or other so long after the first. Original writers?

 

[Stevey]

Neat, but £51?

 

[lashman]

Neat, but £51?

brexit tax

 

[Routa]

 

[lashman]

i can see you're excited good!

 

[RionaaM]

Never played the first one, despite owning it on Steam for years. I'm still curious about it, and about this sequel too.

 

[lashman]

Never played the first one, despite owning it on Steam for years. I'm still curious about it, and about this sequel too.

play it!

 

[prudis]

Despite being permitted in the city, very few thinbloods survive any length of time. With little understanding of what they are or the rules of Kindred society, they face a struggle to simply exist in a city carved up by established political factions. How will you fit on the grander stage of Kindred society?

 

[Alextended]

Is that "sneak peak pre alpha gameplay" window all we have from the actual game beyond those screenshots and announcement trailer prettied up CG?

 

[prudis]

oh didnt even noticed ... seems to be all we have now

 

[Alextended]

Ah well. Looks okay, who knows how it'll end up. I just hope the sense of place is good. For all the original's qualities the city/urban areas really felt just like tiny weird levels. It's not that it wasn't all seamless, just the way it was designed. I felt similarly about that style of area in Deus Ex: Human Revolution for example...

 

[Dandy]

I really cannot wait for this game. I really liked the PnP RPG as a teenager, and loved the original as well. It being first person only is disappointing, but I can get passed out.

 

[Mivey]

This looks super interesting, as someone playing through the first game right now.
The portrayal of Thinbloods in Bloodlines 1 already hints that they can have various abilities, albeit in weaker form (like the mystic thinblood). It makes sense, and seems to be consists with the rules of the pen and paper RPG to give them weird powers. As for the higher blood requirement, that's a non issue in a video game as they can just balance it to work out fine.

Btw, on an unrelated note, does this game use UE4? Asking for my friend Sim Tweeney.

 

[prudis]

The Pacific Northwest has a long history of attracting outcasts and drifters, those looking to keep some level of anonymity and independence. The Brujah have never been a large part of the Seattle Kindred community, but when they do show up to a party, they make their presence known immediately.

 

[Alextended]

More thumbnail gif level gameplay window at the end of that video. Promising.

 

[prudis]

and another one

Tremere were not allowed in significant numbers throughout Seattle's history, though that has changed recently. After the fall of the Pyramid, Tremere have sought allies wherever they can find them, offering services and secrets that were once only kept to themselves. At least a few Tremere have managed to settle in the Pacific Northwest. However, not all Kindred in Seattle warmly welcome the warlocks into their city, citing historical precedent and general distrust of their ways. Still, the blood magic of the Tremere cannot be denied as a force to be respected. Whether or not the Tremere are here to stay is another matter entirely…

 

[Mivey]

I find it interesting to introduce the clans in detail in a game where you play as thin blood, who by definition do not have clans. Unless they allow you to diablerize?

 

[prudis]

TObsessed with beauty in all forms, there are those Toreador who would claim that their Clan only chooses the most accomplished artists of each generation - whether they wielded the brush, the pen, their voice, body or mind. It'd only be half a lie. Influencing the political, social, and cultural elite, the Toreador have been well entrenched within Seattle's power structure since its days as a pioneer settlement. .

 

[prudis]

Historically, Seattle has been the site of many industrial booms, and of course, the Ventrue have been there to capitalize on its fortunes. As more and more billion-dollar corporations shape the local and global landscape, enterprising Ventrue have entrenched themselves in the businesses of the 21st century, paving the way for a prosperous future for their clan… and making enemies of the residents who preferred the way things used to be.

 

[Alextended]

Hope the thumbnail gameplay gif at the end on the next one will have some environment wandering, not just more battle skills while static.

 

[prudis]

Malkavians have been traditionally ostracized by the Seattle Kindred. While a few managed to claim territory in less desirable districts, very few have ever managed to rise to the levels of the other clans. Because of this, there is a persistent bias against the Malkavian clan that still exists into modern nights.

 

[Dandy]

I'm honestly shocked, but in a good way! I was convinced Malkavian would be DLC.

 

[prudis]

well season pass is call "Season of the Wolf" ... so i bet the more bestial clans are saved for that with maybe story about werewolves

 

[Dandy]

Stream is live now.

Or should be shortly...

I love this remixed original song.

Edit: It's started. Mitsoda's on the stream!

Gameplay being shown on June 10. No other details.

 

[Arulan]

I think they made good choices on the selected clans. I expect Nosferatu will be one of the early DLC clans. I really hope they branch out to some of the more obscure clans too.

 

[Dandy]

We should be seeing more of this at the PC Gaming show today! I'll be watching it... 4 hours late

 

[prudis]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is the successor to the cult-classic Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and features reactive storytelling, fast-paced combat, and compelling characters with their own hidden motives. Created in an act of vampiric insurrection, players start the game as a fledgling Thinblood whose existence ignites a war among the vampire factions in Seattle. To survive in vampire society, players will enter into uneasy alliances with Seattle’s factions and join one of the full-blood vampire clans while stalking the city streets for prey, maneuvering complex political relationships, and balancing the need for blood against their withering humanity.

 

[Alextended]

Can't wait.

 

[texhnolyze]

Gameplay looks solid!

 

[Mivey]

That's what counts as an "extended gameplay" trailer these days? Barely five seconds of uninterrupted gameplay snippets with tons of cutscenes.
Still, it does seem to go for lots of vertical movement and feature quite a few novel abilities.

 

[Kuro]

Somehow missed the new gameplay, gotta take a look.

 

[texhnolyze]

Full gameplay demo.

 

[Arulan]

We've got dancing!

 

[didamangi]

Shades of Polygon trying to play Doom on that video. Can't wait to play this day 1.

 

[texhnolyze]

We've got dancing!

 

[ISee]

Whoever is playing this hasn't hold a controller in his life, at least not long.

Game looks amazing, I'm as excited for this as for cyberpunk.
2020 will be good.
By the way, bloodlines 2 is also getting the RTX treatment.

 

[Kuro]

Just me or does the player look like Dennis a little, especially those dance moves lol

 

[prudis]

 

[Dandy]

It's not much, but I'll take it!

 

[beep boop]

Here I am, hoping my old 970 will serve me well at modest settings for one more big release

Looks phenomenal. Hopefully it'll scale well too!

 

[Mivey]

I think I will hold off on this until I get a new PC. My current PC is nearing the 7 year mark (though with an upgrade to 970 about 4 years ago, which is keeping up with modern games surprisingly well)
It's amazing that Bloodlines is getting a sequel, I absolutely loved it when I played it earlier this year.

 

[Alextended]

To me the RTX trailer shows the difference is negligible enough to not worry about it tbh

The materials and lighting were nice and shiny even without it, some additional reflections here and there, nothing I'll care about during gameplay.

Not to mention the performance hit even on expensive gear and I'd probably still opt to turn it off and enjoy 1440p/144fps and/or downsampling instead.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Mivey Did you not play Bloodlines until this year?! Wow. You lucky sod! You haven't been waiting as long as the rest of us for a sequel then.
Smart plan.

 

[Mivey]

Mivey Did you not play Bloodlines until this year?! Wow. You lucky sod! You haven't been waiting as long as the rest of us for a sequel then.
Smart plan.

I started playing it much earlier, but never finished it. I think I changed PCs and lost my save state, and then life happened. Didn't really catch up to it until this year.

 

[prudis]

A developer provided extended Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 gameplay demo from Gamescom 2019.

 

[Trisolarian]

Holyleee Fuckk that's unintentionally hilarious. The more things change the more they stay the same.

RTX is nice, hopefully its implemented well. We're at the ground floor of raytracing so I'm behind any game that wants to support it.

Its been 11 years since I finished VTMBL, I'm ready.

Also, gameplay looks a LOT like the recent Deus Ex games. Which is good.

 

[prudis]

Hey there #vamily.

My name is Cara Ellison, and I’m the senior narrative designer on Bloodlines 2. I’m responsible for co-designing how the minute-to-minute story and characters in the game feel, what the player’s relationship is to characters, and specifically what you can say and do to characters. The awful jokes that radiate from the narrative department sometimes make Ka’ai suddenly choke and splutter at his desk, and I’m sure that at some point Luke Dodge, our Art Director, is going to have to call the police. Or maybe the CDC.

Today I want to write a little bit about what I've learned about building and writing a World Of Darkness Seattle to be a sequel to the first Bloodlines.

1. You are locked in the game with them

What is compelling about the original Bloodlines is that it is very interested in power relations encroaching on your ‘territory’ in a way that most RPGs are not. Most RPGs try to present you with systems that soup you up like a tanked-up space marine and expel you out into space to explode things and mess with civilizations and make your spaceship very shiny. Like a kind of settler model.

Bloodlines 1 and 2 are games that are much more interested in how its NPCs might fuck with you than how you might fuck with them. It is claustrophobic. As Watchmen’s Rorschach might say, you are locked in the game with them. You start the game already a political pawn in other people’s chess. Vampire relations in Santa Monica in Bloodlines 1, for example, were already a tense and volatile political mess before you started the game.

In Bloodlines 1 as well as in Bloodlines 2, every vampire you encounter in the game has been a vampire for longer than you. You are in their realm. You are not the hero of the tale, and neither are they. You are merely trying to make a mark on a world that got fucked up without you. And for characters that are weaker than you – mortals, for example – you have the ability to rope them into your nightmare, but what is certain is that there will be very little good outcome for anyone involved with a monster. Try to be ‘nice’, and it will backfire. Try to be ‘kind’, and you might have to be cruel. Try to help out, and you might help out the worst of the World Of Darkness. But what is certain is that this neo-noir set of characters is not going to give you a bunch of vampire powers and then let you do whatever you like. Someone created you for a reason; The Masquerade is all-encompassing. The characters in this neo-noir world are there to be a big, entertaining pain in your ass at every step. The original game - Bloodlines 1 – was the same way.

2. Choose Who You Hurt

In Bloodlines 1, and therefore Bloodlines 2, you cannot achieve anything without hurting people or making them angry. You can only choose who you hurt. You can choose between one vampire political reality, or another. Everything is seen through vampire eyes – when you’re immortal, you do not work on mortal time. The politics is long-term. You have to stay undead and stay powerful. And in order to do that, you have to start manipulating.

For example, if humans are dying out en masse, how will you feed? If the humans stop free movement from happening, where will you live, will your reality become more difficult? How do vampires use technology to manipulate their food supply? What’s the lowest effort way you can stay alive as a vampire? How can you stop humans from knowing that you exist… and yet keep them sweet on you so that you can feed on them easily? How do mortal politics interfere with your unlife? When the city bans sex work… is that good or bad for you and those you know? Does perpetuating mortal trauma make an undead existence easier… or harder to deal with? If you suck blood at a particular bloodshop, what happens when another vampire takes it over? Does what you were doing before the Embrace impact how people react to you now? Is there anything that…scares you as a vampire? And …can you make mortals more likely to turn up when you want by getting really good in bed?

3. Navigating the World of Darkness

We ask ourselves a lot of questions while writing and we try to give you a reactive world where you can figure out some of the answers to these questions. This means that whatever difficult choices we force you to make, the world will give you consequences that are always as equally interesting as each other. We try to open up every conversation so that you have a number of ways you can get through it – by negotiating, coercing, or seducing, for example. We also make bribery an option – even starting a fight or finding a way to avoid people is a viable way to get by. If you are a Malkavian, perhaps your options are more terrifying than usual. Or, you can merely ask a bunch of questions until you are forced to choose what to do.

A lot of our characters are assholes. A lot of people who exist in the real world are assholes. But just like in the real world, the way that characters in Bloodlines 2 talk about others provides a social fabric that gives you a better context and understanding of what that does to the world, what the consequences are, and how characters are affected by those attitudes and actions. No one character will be ‘just’ a category of person. If you laugh at a joke an asshole makes, it doesn’t make them any less a bad person who will screw you over at a moment’s notice. For example, in HBO’s Veep, we know that the characters are all some of the worst people we’ve ever seen. But what makes you understand that they are doing or saying something bad is that other people react to them in the way that they do. In our game, if you keep one asshole alive, maybe some other bad people will be really mad about it. I mean in the first Bloodlines, did you really, completely like Damsel? Or was there something naive about her? Was she just necessary for the fireworks to happen? Depending on who you hung out with, maybe you’d have a different perspective on her. Or maybe you’d be more impressed with what she does than what she says.

4. Unsanctioned Vampires

At the forefront of my mind in Bloodlines 2 is the crossover from being mortal to being a vampire. Around the time your character was created in an event called the Mass Embrace, a small number of other vampires were also created. Unlike you, they were abandoned and they did not get to choose who they were when they were Embraced. There was no character creator for them. Their lives were interrupted and they were made immortal, and all their relationships with the world were frozen in time. They are your brothers and sisters, in a way. And perhaps they are not having as privileged a time as you are. They had no guidance on the crossover. They had no support as to what was happening to them. They have to deal with their unlives as is. If you suddenly got thirsty for human blood and couldn’t stand sunlight, what exactly would you tell the people you know? How would you get through vampire puberty? And uh… what are the rules?

We let you figure out what to do with the messiest vampires. But I am not going to make it easy on you.

Dev Diary #4 : Writing Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines 2

Senior Narrative Designer Cara Ellison gives an insight on her writing process to build a World of Darkness Seattle to be a sequel of the first Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines.

www.bloodlines2.com