World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025

[Hace El Oso]

The truly forbidden element in modern ‘western’ culture isn’t sex, attractive women or big breasts, it’s female physical powerlessness and vulnerability.

 

[Harthwain]

The truly forbidden element in modern ‘western’ culture isn’t sex, attractive women or big breasts, it’s female physical powerlessness and vulnerability.

If this were truly the case we would have more attractive women/big breasts around (just look at Asians for comparison).

The general feeling is that women are prey and men are predators. Sweeping statement, I know, but it relates to our bio-psychology.

I understand what you're saying about bio-psychology, but vampires are basically undead (with natural bodily processes ceasing to function, unless specifically trained at expense of valuable blood) and they also serve as a fantasy (supernatural and sexual). I don't see the reason not to have vampire women who are predators preying on mortal men. They have everything they need to be the literal femmes fatales: they are forever beautiful, extraordinarily powerful and straight up deadly. In fact, they are bigger sex icons than male vampires.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Everybody knows that if a human being is ugly IRL, he/she creates an extremely beautiful/handsome character in video games. And vice versa, if a person is handsome or beautiful in real life, he/she plays as ugly characters.
That's why people mostly play as elves in World of Warcraft, or Toreador/Ventrue in VTM:B. Most of the human population is ugly as hell. If you're good looking IRL, you play as Nosferatu or Malkavian.

 

[Fedora Master]

Everybody knows that if a human being is ugly IRL, he/she creates an extremely beautiful/handsome character in video games. And vice versa, if a person is handsome or beautiful in real life, he/she plays as ugly characters.
That's why people mostly play as elves in World of Warcraft, or Toreador/Ventrue in VTM:B. Most of the human population is ugly as hell. If you're good looking IRL, you play as Nosferatu or Malkavian.

Last time I played Bloodlines it was as a low humanity Gangrel. What does that say about me?

 

[Vincente]

Last time I played Bloodlines it was as a low humanity Gangrel. What does that say about me?

YIFF IN HELL

 

[Child of Malkav]

Everybody knows that if a human being is ugly IRL, he/she creates an extremely beautiful/handsome character in video games. And vice versa, if a person is handsome or beautiful in real life, he/she plays as ugly characters.
That's why people mostly play as elves in World of Warcraft, or Toreador/Ventrue in VTM:B. Most of the human population is ugly as hell. If you're good looking IRL, you play as Nosferatu or Malkavian.

You didn't have to

 

[Roguey]

Also the fellow in charge of the license feels very strongly that your character should feel like a vampire all the time, and not use regular weapons like a regular person (even though that upholds the masquerade, look just don't think about it)

This is a really good observation. It's a simple disconnection with the setting but it really shows that the fellow in charge is conflating "feeling like a vampire" with superpowers and flowy combat, when in reality it's about luring hookers with a $20 bill to follow you to a secluded spot in the parking lot so you can suck their blood.

I was fairly ambivalent toward the game but this did a lot to lower my expectations. Being a vampire isn't about superpowers it's about being a politically correct caricature of a sex predator. No wonder good vampire games can't exist, since to accurately capture the feeling of playing a vampire chafes too close to predatorial behavior that modern writers of any kind would be too scared to portray.

Roguey, your seemingly simple observation actually blew my mind. There have been countless arguments on here on why vampire games or original vampire settings suck (no pun intended), and at last I finally see why. It doesn't matter how many clans there are or how closely the lore is or isn't followed. If the feeling of playing a predator isn't captured because it runs too close to an uncomfortable topic, then none of the new games will make you feel like a vampire.

It didn't seem like Night Road and Swansong shied away from this kind of thing though?

Bloodlines 2 does seem fixated on the superpowers-aspect which is a bit silly. Paradox itself approved of the status quo where vampires have to be incredibly cautious not to attract the attention of the Second Inquisition. The Camarilla should be run like a criminal organization: other vampires may be fair game, but killing anyone else is going to attract too much attention, so if it has to be done, it should be done using completely non-supernatural means with no blood-draining. And here we have a game where the core gameplay is smacking people around with your super strength and powers, guaranteed to get the notice of the SI.

 

[Harthwain]

And here we have a game where the core gameplay is smacking people around with your super strength and powers, guaranteed to get the notice of the SI.

This on par with Bloodlines 1 though, so I am not surprised. As long as no civilian saw that and you were the last man standing, it was fine.

 

[Bakir]

Realistically speaking, can a game based on Night Road work and be successful?

Night Road as an actual game would be the next best thing after Bloodlines.

 

[Roguey]

This on par with Bloodlines 1 though, so I am not surprised. As long as no civilian saw that and you were the last man standing, it was fine.

Bloodlines took place in a different era where there wasn't a big international well-funded coalition of humans actively hunting vampires. You had the Society of Leopold who were a problem, but not such a big problem that the vampires had to give up on SchreckNet. Now, any sign of supernatural activity is going to get your city swarming with hunters who won't leave until they've neutralized some vampires (though some vamps can/have used this to their advantage to eliminate their own personal enemies).

 

[Harthwain]

Bloodlines took place in a different era where there wasn't a big international well-funded coalition of humans actively hunting vampires.

Does Bloodlines 2 knows that? Besides, some people in this thread already mentioned that Bloodlines 1 itself was pretty much breaking the Masquerade by having vampires openly fight in the streets to create dramatic tension for the player when running away. So, again, I am not at all surprised that Bloodlines 2 is breaking the rules of the setting because of how gameplay is handled. You'd really need more mechanics to simulate the covert nature of the Camarilla and make players follow that in practice.

 

[Semiurge]

The truly forbidden element in modern ‘western’ culture isn’t sex, attractive women or big breasts, it’s female physical powerlessness and vulnerability.

IQ differences is a bigger taboo, especially the average IQ between races. Also the matter of "soul". There are certain peoples in the far east who are soulless bugpeople, who can only steal and copy what better men made. They once had souls, but lost them due to past political cullings.

 

[Roguey]

Does Bloodlines 2 knows that? Besides, some people in this thread already mentioned that Bloodlines 1 itself was pretty much breaking the Masquerade by having vampires openly fight in the streets to create dramatic tension for the player when running away. So, again, I am not at all surprised that Bloodlines 2 is breaking the rules of the setting because of how gameplay is handled. You'd really need more mechanics to simulate the covert nature of the Camarilla and make players follow that in practice.

Paradox has even greater control over this than the licensed games they've approved. In Night Road and Swansong, the Second Inquisition are a big presence and the primary antagonists. Second Inquisition hunters have also been featured in a few BL2 videos.

 

[Semiurge]

You can't have Jeanettes and VVs using the promise of sexual gratification to make the protagonist work for them.

This actually makes sense from a lore perspective, unless the protagonist is (still) kine.

 

[Wesp5]

Besides, some people in this thread already mentioned that Bloodlines 1 itself was pretty much breaking the Masquerade by having vampires openly fight in the streets to create dramatic tension for the player when running away.

There was basically only one critical map near the end of the game that openly broke the Masquerade and maybe they got people to stay indoors with some fake alarm. But the usage of firearms as shown in Bloodlines 2 means that every firefight that some other people notice is likely to break the Masquerade! My guess is that they just didn't have the time or resources to create proper weapon animations...

 

[Vincente]

Well the next dev diary will be about Masquerade.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Realistically speaking, can a game based on Night Road work and be successful?

Night Road as an actual game would be the next best thing after Bloodlines.

I think so.
Just putting NR in video game format, the same as BL would be good enough. Doesn't have to be open world.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Did Phantom Doctrine make CreativeForge a rich company?

You're missing the point.

Somehow it happens that most often people who accuse others of inability to read with understanding have problems with it themselves.


I didn't write that Phantom Doctrine was a bad or good model for a vampire game. However, I wrote that the crop failure on the games market forces creators to be very careful in managing the niches they target. And, in my opinion, the vampire theme, despite its popularity, is not as popular and safe as fantasy, and there is the need to choose other niches.

Didn't the most derivative setting in fantasy history contribute to Owlcat's success?

I don't know. Did it?

Yes.

It is not true that with so many games, originality counts, and everyone will find something for themselves. What matters is the good fulfillment of expectations based on stereotypes. A game about vampires seems to be a very risky solution in this situation.

Bullshit.

Apparently you believe that if someone makes a fully functional fantasy game with good mechanics, it will sell.

Bullshit! And for the reasons I mentioned. If someone made Vampire Doctrine, I have no doubt it would be very well liked here on Codex. But would the return they would receive from the market cover the investment costs? I doubt it because:

-people don't like new things, and such a game would be innovative. There are people who might pay a little attention to the odd game, but probably not much, and RPGs are famous for their length. It's not worth creating a long, strange game. Therefore, many of these strange hearts are short for this reason.

- people expect an RPG game to be fantasy (Owlcat took the risk of creating a game with complex mechanics, but paid for it by purchasing a license, i.e. something known, for the most banal setting in the history of mankind, thus marrying a smaller niche with a much larger one)

- believe it or not, going beyond certain RPG standards, such as classes, can be confusing for many and discourage interest in the game. Yes, replacing a warrior with a brawling vampire thug and a wizard with a superpowered wiccan vampire may be too difficult for some. Ergo - you only draw from part of the niche.

- many normies are still afraid of turn-based combat (and before you mention BG3, think how many more obvious niches they hit, including romance and graphics, for the average Joe to swallow turn-based combat!)
Game development is too risky now to experiment. Simply. From time to time, crazier creators emerge (Pinky ), but usually, when the fate of the entire company hangs in the balance, few people will decide to do something so bold.

I'm sorry

A game about vampires seems to be a very risky solution in this situation.

A game that lets you play a monster will never be succesful when made by people who don't have the courage to offend anybody.

Vampire media is notoriously edgy.

And that's why it's no coincidence that when the edgy 2000s passed, the fashion for vampires disappeared. The woke era, pardon my french, did not produce a single significant game, book, comic, or movie about vampires (I wonder if we can connect the premiere of Eggers' Nosferatu and Trump's win in the same way? :D)

 

[Atlantico]

TCR has never made anything that isn't shit.

That is the long and short of it.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

I understand what you're saying about bio-psychology, but vampires are basically undead (with natural bodily processes ceasing to function, unless specifically trained at expense of valuable blood) and they also serve as a fantasy (supernatural and sexual). I don't see the reason not to have vampire women who are predators preying on mortal men. They have everything they need to be the literal femmes fatales: they are forever beautiful, extraordinarily powerful and straight up deadly. In fact, they are bigger sex icons than male vampires.

You're right that it's more of an abstract caricature and not the real deal. Vampires aren't sex offenders, but there should be some overlapping motifs if they want to be genuine about the vampire experience. Primarily through the concept of "the hunt", which can be a sensitive thing to portray and I think most writers are very reticent to fully engage with.

Robert Eggers' latest adaptation of Nosferatu is a good example. The movie portrays Count Orlok as a deformed corpse, yet the movie makes it a point to sexualize his relationship with Ellen in every single scene they share together. But it's not just that, he hunts] her. He hunts her in her dreams, and then eventually physically as well. He stalks her. Bides his time. Terrorizes her surroundings. Isolates her. The biggest share of criticism I've seen for the movie is precisely due to the uncomfortable subject matter, which a lot of people took issue with. Now imagine a writer trying to introduce that concept as a course of action for the player character in a video game.

It didn't seem like Night Road and Swansong shied away from this kind of thing though?

Swansong definitely skirted around the topic with the Malkavian's blood doll experiments and the therapy program that the Second Inquisition provided for vampire victims, but it avoided the brunt of the issue by not having any of the player characters participate in hunting/stalking of prey. The humans were more so a victim of circumstance than any deliberate hunting by the player. You're right about the text games, though. Mainly Parliament of Knives because I don't remember the Night Road feeding scenes too well. Maybe they could get away with it because of the format and the limited popularity. I forgot about them.

Has there been any footage of feeding outside of combat in Bloodlines 2? Perhaps I was being too presumptuous. They have that blood resonance thing so I assume it actually does encourage the player to stalk around, follow some NPC in a deserted alleyway, and suck their blood when they go to pee behind a dumpster. If that's allowed, then my concerns were probably unfounded.

Bloodlines 2 does seem fixated on the superpowers-aspect which is a bit silly. Paradox itself approved of the status quo where vampires have to be incredibly cautious not to attract the attention of the Second Inquisition. The Camarilla should be run like a criminal organization: other vampires may be fair game, but killing anyone else is going to attract too much attention, so if it has to be done, it should be done using completely non-supernatural means with no blood-draining. And here we have a game where the core gameplay is smacking people around with your super strength and powers, guaranteed to get the notice of the SI.

I agree, although that alone isn't a dealbreaker for me because I assume that the player has control over the amount of magical force they can exercise. If the game doesn't force the player to spam disciplines and instead allows them to do things stealthily, with subterfuge, or otherwise "tame", then I'm ok with it. It would be nice if the game itself would provide consequences for a player that goes Discipline-happy, and so far I don't think they've mentioned anything of the sort. But having the option of going full Discipline-spam should be an option, just not a very smart option.

 

[Harthwain]

Somehow it happens that most often people who accuse others of inability to read with understanding have problems with it themselves.

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

I didn't write that Phantom Doctrine was a bad or good model for a vampire game.

I did. That was my point. And I wasn't even talking about "a vampire game", but the "Masquerade" aspect in particular (namely, the secrecy), because that is an important part of Phantom Doctrine as well.

However, I wrote that the crop failure on the games market forces creators to be very careful in managing the niches they target. And, in my opinion, the vampire theme, despite its popularity, is not as popular and safe as fantasy, and there is the need to choose other niches.

Your question was flawed to begin with, because Phantom Doctrine had many technical and balance issues at launch (cover being the most important one, particularly for a cover-base game), which led to it mixed reception. You know what other game had similar issues? Bloodlines. It was a buggy mess at launch and it was considered a commercial failure. It only became a cult classic later. It became so popular, in fact, that now it is getting a sequel. Not bad, for a niche.

Also, the vampire theme is popular enough to spawn books and movie adaptations worth millions. Whether it is less popular or safe than fantasy doesn't really matter when you're set on making a vampire themed game anyway, so you talking about "needing to choose other niches" is, once again, missing the point. Unless your point was to focus on something else than was discussed (I remind you that you answered to me, not the other way around). But then, you have the gall to accuse me of having the "inability to read with understanding"? Please.

- many normies are still afraid of turn-based combat (and before you mention BG3, think how many more obvious niches they hit, including romance and graphics, for the average Joe to swallow turn-based combat!)

I don't recall romance in the new X-COMs. A plenty of turn-based combat on the other hand... At this point it is reasonable to assume that "normies fear turn-based combat" is a myth. The same myth that the players don't like to be challenged, yet somehow Dark Souls topped the charts.

Game development is too risky now to experiment. Simply. From time to time, crazier creators emerge (Pinky ), but usually, when the fate of the entire company hangs in the balance, few people will decide to do something so bold.

Your point being...? The companies who play it safe aren't usually the ones to reach the heights of Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Ol' Willy]

On launch you'll be able to play Brujah, Tremere, Ventrue and Banu Haqim. There will be two more clans planned as DLC sometime after launch.

That is a new level of low.
I imagine it's something like this:
Fallout 2, almost 30 years ago, allowed for myriad of builds, most of them incorporated into the world, thoughtfully.
Nowadays it's: "But our game is soooo complex, you can't compare it to the game that's decades old. One that is not even the same genre. To have two more archetypes—that would take eternity to incorporate them properly. Sales would be lost!"
Their take on gaming complexity = team working 24x7 for 6 months to incorporate better DLSS and thinking that RPG stands for Really Perfect Graphics.

CRPGs naturally lend themselves to build autism. It's not difficult in them.

In action gaems that's not really possible even with lots of effort, whatever you do, you would have the same popamole combat, only with different flavors.

Just the natural inferiority of the genre

 

[NecroLord]

I don't see the reason not to have vampire women who are predators preying on mortal men. They have everything they need to be the literal femmes fatales: they are forever beautiful, extraordinarily powerful and straight up deadly. In fact, they are bigger sex icons than male vampires.

Not if you are a Nosferatu.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Thou hypocrite

Look buddy, you're telling us about your dream vampire game, and I was explaining to you that it's unlikely (but not completely unlikely) that something like this could be made due to market mechanics. However, you misunderstood me and continued the topic of Phantom Doctrine, even though I didn't write anything about the quality and "vampiric potential" of this game. Now again, I'm being a "hypocrite" (I don't think this is entirely the correct use of the term, but we already know that your language skills are not up to the mark) and you keep repeating the same thing.

Game development is too risky now to experiment. Simply. From time to time, crazier creators emerge (Pinky ), but usually, when the fate of the entire company hangs in the balance, few people will decide to do something so bold.

Your point being...? The companies who play it safe aren't usually the ones to reach the heights of Baldur's Gate 3.

My point was that if you want to play unsafe, don't play it too much and you have to balance it with playing safe in other aspects. An old truth of life.


I think this is the point where I leave the discussion, because I don't like repeating the same thing ten times to a person who won't understand the obvious ten times :D

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You can't have Jeanettes and VVs using the promise of sexual gratification to make the protagonist work for them.

This actually makes sense from a lore perspective, unless the protagonist is (still) kine.

It makes sense even in the context of VtMB since it tells you more about them as characters than about the PC. Simping for them isn't a compulsion like with Lacroix using dominate on you, so it's just them clinging to their sex appeal (and their capital H Humanity by extension) regardless of whether it's a good strategy or not when interacting with a fellow vamp. Whether you get influenced by that or not is up to you.