As teased a couple of weeks ago, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was featured in today’s PAX West event. First, we learned that the new developer is The Chinese Room, the studio known for Dear Esther, Korsakovia, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and Little Orpheus.
A few developers talked about their work on Bloodlines 2 in the studio reveal trailer.
Fans are going to find a lot more that we haven’t done before that is still true to us
and true to our DNA, and hopefully it exceeds their expectations. Our game is powerful, dark, violent, thrilling, twisty, visceral, visceral is a word we use a lot in the studio.
Then, we also learned the game’s release date: Fall 2024 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Bloodlines 2 was first announced in March 2019 after an elaborate ARG campaign where users were asked to sign up for a so-called ‘Tender’ dating app that supposedly matched people based on their blood type.
The news immediately generated excitement for the sequel, mainly because Brian Mitsoda would be returning from the original game to write the story of the new installment. The original target release date was Q1 2020, but the developers pushed it back to late 2020 and then again to 2021.
This was only the beginning of the game’s troubles. Not long after the delay to 2021 was announced, the project lost Brian Mitsoda and creative director Ka’ai Cluney, reducing the community’s confidence in the final game. A couple of months later, publisher (and owner of the World of Darkness IP since the 2015 acquisition from CCP Games) Paradox Interactive halted the development of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 after deciding to replace developer Hardsuit Labs.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was at serious risk of being canceled at the time, as Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester would later acknowledge in late 2021. Fortunately, another studio sold Paradox on a new pitch, and development recommenced.
Originally, the developers had partnered with NVIDIA to add ray tracing and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) support on PC. It is unclear whether the partnership remains standing with the overhauled project.
