Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Preview

There’s no way around it, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 has had a troubled development cycle. After it was announced that a sequel to the hugely popular Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines was in the works, fans have been anxiously awaiting the follow-up. Unfortunately, the game would go on to suffer several delays and eventually, new developers.

The Chinese Room took over development in 2021, with a formal announcement in 2023 that they would be finishing development of this much-anticipated sequel. It’s safe to say there’s a lot of worry about how this turned out, and the publisher has been keen to point out that it is a spiritual successor to the much-loved original.

We recently got the chance to take the game’s opening for a spin, and there are reasons to be both optimistic and cautious with the final release.

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You take control of The Nomad, Phyre, in Bloodlines 2.

The Nomad

After the initial intro sequence, you’ll be in control of The Nomad, awakening from Torpor, a deep sleep that Vampires can fall into that can last centuries. Shortly after your awakening, you discover that there’s another conscience living inside of you, Fabien, who has no idea how he got there.

The first quest helps you regain all of your Vampire sensibilities, such as how to feed, climb, and attack anyone who may be foolish enough to challenge The Nomad. It serves as a fine introduction as you look to escape your surroundings before the cops close in on you, all the while you maintain the Masquerade. This states that you must keep Vampire society hidden from humans, and it is punishable by death.

During your escape, The Nomad will take on the name of Phyre in this age, and you’ll soon get the chance to choose a bit of background for them. You can change your gender, hair, face, eyes, and piercings, along with, most importantly, what Vampire Clan Phyre belongs to. This is the first important piece of customization you get, as your Clan determines how people react to you, along with the abilities you can unlock.

Each Clan has five abilities you can learn using Ability Points (earned from accruing XP), and although you can learn abilities from another Clan, these are far more expensive and require you to drain blood from specific civilians (think 2 Ability Points vs 10 for one from another Clan). The abilities do help to change the playstyle up from each of the Clans, although there’s not a huge degree of choice. Although it’s early days, we’re hopeful there will be more cause to mix and match from other Clans as it seems a bit limited at this early stage.

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You’ll meet a lot of interesting characters, of whom your choices will determine how your relationship plays out.

Exploring Seattle

As soon as you’ve spent your first night at Fabien’s Haven, you’re free to explore a frigid Seattle set against the backdrop of Christmas. You have free rein over the city, along with the directive to not break the Masquerade. This can be easy to do if you’re not careful, such as feeding in public or using your Vampiric talents without a care for the people around you.

You will find civilians across Seattle, and you can feed off them to restore your health and abilities, along with accruing the points from specific civilians to unlock abilities from other Clans, something we’re hoping will become more of a necessity later in the game. There are three different blood types to track down, and you’ll also need to make sure you don’t feed out in the open, as it takes longer to feed on them than it does your enemies during battle.

While the city is beautifully created, there’s not too much to see and do, at least in our limited time with Bloodlines 2. You can freely scale the buildings and glide across rooftops, and there are a few collectibles to seek out, but for the early stages at least, it serves more as window dressing to reach the quest objectives. These are early days, so we’re hoping that as the game progresses, there are more optional activities to make better use of a gorgeous-looking city that has been created here.

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You have a number of tools you can use to get around the environment.

One cause of concern we did have in the preview was the lack of any kind of inventory system, outside of four different consumables you can find. There are still lots to find, but most go into the codex as a new entry. There are new outfits, however, that you get as you increase the abilities you learn from the ability tree; these are said to have an impact on your dealings with the denizens of Seattle.

There is, however, a lot of emphasis placed on combat, and the various Vampiric abilities you can unlock, along with the other basic mechanics, give you a lot of freedom. You have the standard light attack combo, along with a heavy attack which can be used to break an enemy’s guard. You can also kick an enemy away; this is especially useful as it’s easy to get surrounded, and as combat is fast and frantic, you’ll need to manage this with your positioning.

You can freely use Telekinesis at any point during combat, too. This will allow you to pull lighter enemies toward you and allow you to initiate an attack on them. Of course, you’ll also use this ability outside of combat to traverse the various locales you’ll visit. We also had a lot of fun playing around with some of the abilities you can learn, such as commanding lesser Vampires or Humans to kill themselves, or take control of them and direct them to attack their own allies.

It’s painfully apparent, however, that a lot of the main focus with Bloodlines 2 is centered around the various characters you’ll meet and the dialogue scenes you find yourself in. There are a lot of choices to be found here, some that were restricted to our choice of Clan at the start of the game, and most of our choices were met with a notification on how it impacted that character.

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There are plenty of abilities you can use to take down your enemies.

We’re led to believe that Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 will feature many endings, and your choices and actions will impact the final outcome of Seattle’s power struggle. Although there was no payoff in the early quests we had access to, it already set up interesting situations that we’re curious to see how they pan out later in the adventure.
It’s clear to see that The Chinese Room has taken what was there before and tried to put their own spin on Bloodlines while staying true to the World of Darkness feeling and vibe. The choice system seems promising, and we’re hoping the world opens up a bit more with optional activities to make better use of the world they’ve created. For now, we’re cautiously optimistic that there’s a lot more to come from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2.