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They've been throwing up a Dev Diary every couple weeks since the announcement talking about different aspects of the game, and just did a longer video interview type thing yesterday talking about the narrative and a little about game systems. I'm liking most of what I've seen so far, and the things I don't care for are far from deal breakers. Some of the main things revealed yesterday were that the main character goes by the name "Phyre", they've been in torpor for 100 years. You have some notoriety and legends about you that people are aware of and you can lean into that or skew peoples perceptions of you based on what they think they know. You woke up with your power suppressed presumably via a series of sigils branded into your body (probably via some Blood Sorcery or Thin-Blood Alchemy shenanigans) and are trying to find out what the hell is going on. To top it off, you have a constant companion in the voice in your head, belonging to a Thin-Blood named Fabian. It has not been revealed how you got stuck with him, but likely it relates to the aforementioned Shenanigans, or you ended up eating him when you were first woke up and you didn't completely absorb his soul. Or possibly both. You will be able to choose some background/origin stuff for the character, their clan, gender, and it seems like at least some stuff will be customizable for the character based on in-game and concept stuff shown. Outfits for sure though, and they mentioned that the outfit you where can affect how some people treat/talk to you. It sounds like they've cut back more on clans though. It will be 4 at launch now, with at least 2 added via DLC. It was mentioned that the 4 still in don't necessarily match up with everything that was there in the first iteration, so we could see something different than what's been done before which would be nice. Dev Diary #1: Introducing the company and giving some basic info on the game. https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/welcome-to-the-chinese-room Dev Diary #2: Narrative Atmosphere & Themes https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/narrative-atmosphere-and-themes Dev Diary #3: Neo Noir Art Style https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/neo-noir-art-style Narrative & RPG video interview:

I'm tentatively looking forward to it, but what they show in the coming months will be a big part of it. The trailer doesn't really give us much to work with. What they have shown certainly looks better than what HSL had though in terms of actual in-engine stuff, so that much has improved at least. The story is something we'll have to see on, but at the very least I like the elder awakening from torpor starting point better than the Thin-Blood one, personally.

New developer is The Chinese Room, which was rumored a ways back, but most people wrote it off since they're typically known for walking simulators, but it seems like they've expanded a lot since the last couple games of theirs I've played (which I liked, to be fair, walking simulator or no). Seems like they've completely retooled the story from what they were doing before though. No more Thin-blood starting point. You're a reawakened elder now. Could be fun, but RIP Brian Mitsoda's work I guess. Here's everything they've basically put out, mostly on the refreshed Website: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/about Fight your way through a modern-day Seattle on the brink of an open war as an elder Vampire. Meet the power-players, ally yourself and decide who will rule and what the city will become. A three-front siege on Seattle, a power vacuum in the vampire court and an awakened elder at odds with the voice in her head, realized by BAFTA award winning studio, The Chinese Room. You are the Monster Blood sustains you and powers your vampiric Disciplines. You’ll stalk and feed on the city’s population by night. Use your supernatural powers or raw persuasion on civilians and lure them into deep, dark alleys to sate your Hunger. Beware of breaking the Masquerade though: do not reveal what you are or you risk reprisals - at first from law enforcement and then, well, remember you are not all that goes bump in this night. Explore visceral, immersive combat rewarding entirely different playstyles and approaches based on your choice of vampire clan. Will you wade into the fray with supernatural fists, harangue from afar or rebalance your odds by thinning the herd like the apex predator you are? Clan choice supports these playstyles and more. A World of Darkness Enter the World of Darkness and rise through vampire society or rail against it. Experience Seattle - a city full of alluring, dangerous characters and factions, not to mention the mortals at stake in the clash of powers beyond their knowing. In this sequel to the cult classic, your choices, plots and schemes will determine the balance of power and what becomes of the city and its people. Between today and the end of 2023, we will reveal all playable clans in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. In the opening months of 2024, we will reveal gameplay and go into depth on disciplines, playstyles and the experience of playing the game as each clan. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will release Fall 2024. We’ll be back with a precise date when we open pre-orders.

So, how has everyone been the past 2 years? Since I last posted in here, Bloodhunt released and I actually really liked it despite it being a Battle Royale, to the point that I started making lore/story videos centered around the game since nobody else was doing it, got to know a number of the developers, was able to do a recorded interview with the writing team, and now the game has stopped development and is in maintenance mode because they kind of biffed their launch and took too long to fix the nastier bugs the game had and lost most of their concurrent player count. Swansong also released and it was decent. Nothing standout, but I enjoyed it a lot. And in all that time there was no real news on Bloodlines 2 other than "We're happy with the progress the team is making on it." from Paradox. Still no idea who the developer is. They never ended up saying because they didn't want them to have to deal with all the shitty people the last team had to deal with who were sending threats and what not. Understandable, but frustrating. HOWEVER, there is finally a light a the end of the tunnel. They announced not long ago that real news would be coming in September. They dropped all their physical preorders if people had bothered to keep them due to changes to their contents incoming (digital preorders were left alone though), and they purged the website and their discord channels of anything referencing what had been shown before (including emojis). They just announced today that the World of Darkness brand team will be appearing at PAX West, Sept. 1-4. Considering the game is set in Seattle, PAX is one of the bigger gaming conventions anymore, and they said news would be coming in Sept. I assume this will be where they announce everything, including who the new developer actually is and what form the game has now taken. I'm mostly interested in seeing if anything of the original story remains since the writing had supposedly been completed, and one of the big draws was the game having the writer from the original on board. I imagine the game is all but done though, so we may even get a release date. I seriously doubt Paradox would risk trying to hype this game up again without being sure there's actually a functional game to hype this time. XD

A teaser for that leaked a few months ago, was waiting for them to say more about it. Don't much care for battle royale games but I'll probably give it a look when it comes out since the setting is interesting. Looking forward more to VTM: Swansong at this point. Should get more info on that one before the end of the weekend too. Side note since I forgot to update this with the last actual Bloodlines 2 news: Hardsuit Labs has been completely removed from the project and Paradox has passed it over to another (as of yet unnamed) developer. With the turn the development of the game appeared to have been taking, it's probably for the best honestly. They're apparently going to announce who's taking over once all the legal shit is settled and everything signed and squared away, but they're getting full access to all the work that HSL had done so hopefully it'll just be a matter of cleaning it up and fine tuning everything and they're not going to take an axe to the story (which had been completed already).

WHELP Honestly after how the last year has gone, this is probably a good thing. Paradox isn't a publisher who generally axes or pulls the rug out from under projects without good reason. Get someone who can clean up the animations and push it across the finish line. Maybe the new studio will even pull Mitsoda and whoever back into it. Just sucks that it's going to push the release back another year or so to give a new dev time to acclimate to all the work that's already there (they have a dev already, they just can't announce it until all the details are hammered out on paper, and all the work already performed on the game is being passed along to them). Ultimately, I'm sure Paradox is feeling like they should have not bothered to even announce the game at this point. XD

A'ight, now I'm fucking concerned. Apparently they (higher ups at Hardsuit Labs and Paradox) have fired Brian Mitsoda (lead writer and writer of the original game) and Ka'ai Cluney (Creative Director) and they have been replaced with a "Creative Consultant" to fill the role that the Creative Director previously performed. Official Statement: https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/an-update-on-the-organizational-changes-for-bloodlines-2 Rock Paper Shotgun has a statement from Mitsoda. This was not a "my job was done and I wasn't needed anymore" kind of thing it was out of the fucking blue and the writing team was on schedule with their portion of the game and he was not consulted about the delay. The firing appears to have actually happened PRIOR to the recent delay announcement which is even more worrying if I'm being honest. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/19/brian-mitsoda-has-been-fired-as-narrative-lead-on-bloodlines-2/ Brian's Statement:

Indeed. Every time it moves I panic because it's always loomed around where Bloodlines 2 was likely to hit at the time and that series knows that kind of pain already (first one released same day as Half Life 2. )

The games release has now been delayed until 2021. Guessing Q1 probably. Have been expecting this since the announcement that Cyberpunk was being pushed to Nov. since that seemed the likeliest time frame for this game and they're going to avoid releasing anywhere near Cyberpunk like it was the plague.

New trailer from the Next Gen Xbox showcase thing: I've been keeping up on Dev diary stuff as well but figured most people aren't that invested so haven't really posted anything but here's the general gist of where they're at since I'm posting the trailer anyway: They're closing in on the 'content complete' stage of the game and are mostly working on side quests and stuff like that now. They did some new mocap in Feb. to clean up some of the clunky animations we saw in the gameplay demos shown off last year, and have reworked some game systems. Namely, the 3 traversal options you got when picking a Thinblood discipline at the start have all been unlocked for use regardless of the Discipline you go with to open up to give more player agency about how they move through the game. Overall things sound like they're still progressing steadily even with the work at home set up they have going.

Game has been pushed back. Honestly the right decision and kind of figured this is what would happen after they announced they wouldn't have a playable demo at PDXCON anymore last month. No concrete date just that it will for sure still be in 2020. Probably a good move even if they didn't need the extra time with all the other big stuff coming out in Q1. Here's the statement:

New short trailer. Mostly just serves to show some of the scenery comparisons with the Ray tracing from the Nvidia RTX cards on, but I'll take what I can get. >_>

Saw that today. The person playing seems like he has no idea what he's doing half the time. XD

Gameplay trailer from E3:

Yeah, I've heard a lot about it. My wife watches it. I don't have the time right now to commit to it though. 2+ hours per episode is pushing what my free time allows right now. X_x

Final clan for the base game is Malkavian. Disciplines are Dementation (ability to drive people mad) and Auspex (6th Sense/Projection). Legitimately surprised they went went them. Using Dementation helps (in V5, Dementation has been rolled back into Dominate like it had been in a couple previous editions), as it gives them something unique. At this point I was honestly expecting Nosferatu or Gangrel since they both have unique disciplines (Obfuscate and Animalism/Protean respectively), but I guess not. Malk's also have Obfuscate traditionally, but with the 2 discipline thing they're doing I wasn't expecting them to get it since it's the least defining part of the clan and Dementation and Auspex are far more signature for them. Malkavian is easily my favorite clan and I really enjoyed them in the first game (though some people didn't). The experience playing as one changes the game pretty heavily and it sounds like that will apply this time though a lot of people should be happy with it. Sounds like they're trying to move away from the "goofy gibbering idiot" sort of crazy, and into more of a darker tone and pushing more of a paranoia angle. Should be interesting. Not much else to say really. They said there would be gameplay revealed June 10th (there will be a playable demo at PDXCon), and they said they will continue doing streams going forward, just covering different topics obviously. I'm expecting the first DLC clan we'll get will likely be Gangrel at this point. The title of the first "Season" they're doing (Season of the Wolf) kind of leans in that direction for sure. Stream was kind of shitty this time around. They had video conferenced in Brian Mitsoda from Seattle (streams take place in Europe) and there was some pretty horrendous lag so it was hard to tell what he was saying a lot of the time. Videos:

This week is indeed Ventrue. For disciplines they'll have Dominate (Force of Will style mind control) and Fortitude (super resilience). They didn't do a live stream this time due to scheduling issues so they have a pre-recorded segment but still answer questions gathered from previous streams and such that they didn't get time to answer (mostly general questions about how the game will work and what not). They also go in depth about why the went with the clans they did and reinforcing that they want to support this game for a long time and want to add more clans to it. Even mentioning things outside the traditional set clans, such as the Antitribu clans and things like the Daughters of Cacophony. Would really be cool if they take it that far. Really like how blunt they are with some things too. They don't shy away from saying they changed things because as great as they can be in a table top game, they're garbage for a video game, or that there are some things they just aren't going to do or will do differently because it's how they need to do it from a business standpoint. Videos:

Yeah, they're one of the ones I'm hoping to see sooner rather than later as DLC. Hell, maybe even shake things up and actually make them a launch clan. In terms of lore, they've started joining the Camarilla now so it wouldn't cause any massive shakeup in the story and Obtenibration would be a really cool power for a video game. Expecting the next one to be Ventrue, and then PROBABLY Gangrel last, but I sincerely wish it would be anything BUT Gangrel, because I find them kind of boring but we'll see. They're being tight lipped on how many they'll actually end up adding post-launch, but that's probably because they want to see how the game does long term. Paradox is known to support their games for fucking ever though (they have games that released 6+ years ago that still get expansions even) so it would be cool if we eventually get all 13 of the main clans at the very least.

Today is Toreador. Their disciplines will be Celerity (Super Speed) and Presence (Crowd Control for lack of a better simple description. Like, LITERAL crowd control. Can make people follow you and stuff like that). These streams have been pretty informative. They go into more than just the particular clan and are starting to give little bits of information otherwise. I also like how the one guy goes pretty in depth about the way each clan works from a story standpoint and tries to give examples from well known vampire based movies that match the "style" of a particular clan for those that don't know anything about VtM. One cool thing they call out in this one is that the game will have auto-saves, and specifically, it will make a SEPARATE auto-save at the point where you pick your clan so you can start off of that point if you want to try something else or don't like the clan you picked without completely starting over. Videos:

Today's reveal was Tremere. Their disciplines will be Thaumaturgy (Blood Magic) and Auspex (6th Sense/projection). Looks like they are going 2 per instead of 3 so no Dominate for them I guess. Unless this is rolled into normal social interaction as well like was insinuated with the 3rd Brujah one. Tremere have also had their clan weakness reworked a bit for this and they will be a sort of 'hard mode' for the game as they will take more damage from vampires than other clans (kind of comes from the innate hatred for the Tremere from most other clans due to their origins). Videos:

Forgot to post last week, but they've started revealing clans. They're doing 1 each week starting last week with Thin Bloods, and today they revealed the Brujah. Looks like there's only going to be 5 normal clans to start but they'll add more as free DLC down the road like I said before. Speculation is that it's likely that Nosferatu and Malkavian will be left off the starting set from what the first game had because those two change the experience so much. They're doing a short animated video for each as well. When you start as a Thin Blood you pick between one of 3 disciplines specific to them that you will keep even after you choose a clan, and then you'll get two additional disciplines for the clan you pick. The Thin Blood disciplines you pick from are: Chiropteran - Ability to glide and summon a bat swarm Mentalism - Ability to pull objects and people with telekinesis, and levitation Nebulation - Power over mist. Can turn into or shroud yourself in mist and even suffocate people by filling their lungs with mist. These aren't normal disciplines from the table top game (though some are taken from classic disciplines or inspired by them), but the traditional way Thin Bloods work is a bit screwy so it's honestly not a bad decision. For Brujah, the disciplines you're given are Potence (super strength) and Celerity (super speed). It sounds like presence is going to be a more general thing that is worked into the social side of the game though they were really vague talking about it so it's hard to say if that's coming more from a RP perspective or if it's an intended thing that will modify how a Brujah can interact with people innately. Here are the trailers and links to the streams for each for people interested in the first hand info: Thin Blood Brujah They've also started adding unlockables for the game on their website (so far clothing options and decorations for your "house". There are hidden objects on the the pages of the site and stuff like that or you can get people to sign up to get points via a referral link. There's enough stuff I imagine they'll add way to get things unlocked as time goes on though. At least I would hope so. At least it's more interesting than just locking a bunch of shit behind pre-orders (though they have that too. ? ).

Found a good list of stuff that's been confirmed/talked about for the game. Really liking the sound of pretty much all of it. https://www.reddit.com/r/vtmb/comments/b5io9j/heres_a_list_of_details_that_are_currently_known/

Worst case scenario, depending on your clan and skill point choices, you can just make everyone in a fight kill each other. Still need some regular combat skills for boss fights and stuff, but they managed a pretty close representation of how you can do things in the TT game all things considered. Speaking of clans, it sounds like the new one might be missing a couple from the first game. Website only has 5 "sections" for clans (all listed "Coming Soon" or whatever) so there's a lot of speculation we won't be getting Nosferatu or Malkavian right away. They have said they will be adding more through DLC though so hopefully that will expand past 7 playable ones they used in the original. On the plus side, though there will be DLC "seasons" of paid content, all Clans added through DLC will be free. Really sad if that's true though. Malkavian is my jam. Apparently the first game is quite a bit different playing as one too. That's what the game picked for me from the questionnaire thing so I went with it and my wife was flipping out because of how differently people react to you and how different your choices are with them.

Honestly, the first holds up pretty well even by today's standards (leaves a little to be desired graphically, but I've seen worse from around the same time). I tend to have trouble playing older stuff anymore too, but really enjoyed the experience and didn't have many complaints with it. It's on sale for like $5 if that's a price you're willing to risk to give it a try so no time like the present. If you give it a shot, just make sure to get the patch that KK was talking about. I believe the GoG version (which is also $5 right now) actually even comes with already so you don't have to put any extra work into it.

Saw a bunch of people worrying about that. Made the mistake of looking at the forums for it on Steam. It's like 10% worrying about that, 25% refusal to pre-order because "NEVER PRE-ORDER" 15% refusal to ever touch the game because it's 1st person only, and 50% "IT LETS YOU PICK YOUR PRONOUN AND THE SJWs AND GAYS ARE RUINING OUR VIDYA". Did pre-order it for the wife though. Don't know if there's too much worry since they'll have it on their own launcher too, but I guess if you're offered enough money, anything can happen. XD Saw an article talking about DLC a bit. I know their "fancy" edition of the game comes with the 'Year 1' DLC, but a cool thing I read was that they will also add more clans through DLC beyond what they start with, and those will be free. So basically, story DLC will be paid, but (to term it like regular RPGs) any new classes they add will be free.