The World of Darkness has been a big part of my life for decades, be it as a D&D-like tabletop game in a fascinating vampire-filled world, or as my first contact with it in Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines in 2004.
For about the same amount of time, I have been waiting for a proper sequel. Replaying the spiritual predecessor Redemption — while being a great RPG — didn’t give me the same feeling the first Bloodlines did. Yes it was broken, yes it had some duct-tape design due to Troika’s difficulties with the publisher and successive demise, but it had some of the best writing and world-building of any video game I’ve ever played – and that continues to this day.
The first Bloodlines wasn’t beloved because it was flawed, it was loved despite it being a buggy mess at launch, which is a huge feat. And we’re not talking about a niche game here either, I’m almost 100% confident just these lines will lead some of you to click the “install Bloodlines” button right now – what a feat for such an unfinished game.
All the more reason to wish and hope for a true sequel, where the lucky and ambitious developer took their time and ironed out all of the little things that kept the original from being truly great.
Skip to the year of 2019, where finally Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 was announced – 15 years after the release of the first game.
Who else but Troika, who hasn’t been around since the first Bloodlines was released, could pull off something so momentous, so nostalgic? The first studio to take up the mantle was Hardsuit Lab and my positive, warm and fuzzy feeling immediately turned into dread. These guys had absolutely no catalog to speak of and have since only worked on 3 games, so how the hell were they going to pull off reintroducing The World of Darkness to a new generation of hemoglobin addicts?
Fast forward to 2025 and we all know now how that went – badly.
Taken over by The Chinese Room, a mostly narrative-driven studio responsible for immersive titles such as Dear Esther or some of the Amnesia titles.
Looking at the titles The Chinese Room developed beforehand, my careful optimism turned into pessimism faster than you can say Malkavian. How could these guys take over a branching RPG, when their whole catalog basically consisted of walking simulators?
So let’s get into it and talk about why Bloodlines 2 will never meet expectations of every VTMB fan out there.
Nostalgia Is a Double-Edged Fang
Bloodlines 1 wasn’t some flawless masterpiece. It was janky. It was buggy. It launched half-broken and was held together by fan patches for years. But, you only have to read my Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines review to uncover an intoxicating blend of atmosphere, writing, and character work that elevated it above its technical failings.
Jeanette, the Malkavian dialogue, the seedy clubs, the constant tightrope walk of politics – it all stuck in our heads long after the credits rolled.
And that’s exactly where the problem with Bloodlines 2 began. We forgave Bloodlines 1 because it felt magical despite its flaws. That forgiveness morphed into nostalgia, and nostalgia morphed into impossible expectations.
What fans wanted wasn’t a game – they wanted to feel the same way they did in 2004, discovering the World of Darkness in digital form for the first time. But feelings can’t be recreated on command, and certainly not by a studio caught between corporate deadlines and fan fantasies.
The Nine Year Blood Curse That Is Development Hell
If there’s one thing that doomed Bloodlines 2 before it even had a chance, it was the sheer length and instability of its development. Nine years of shifting visions, staff turnover, and public uncertainty. It started with Hardsuit Labs in 2016, a studio with promise but little experience tackling an RPG of this magnitude.
For years, they showed vertical slices and made promises, but delays piled up and fan confidence eroded. Then, in early 2021, Paradox pulled the plug, cutting ties and removing Hardsuit from the project entirely. That alone was a death knell for many games, but somehow Bloodlines 2 stumbled onward.
Enter The Chinese Room, inheriting not just assets but the baggage of nearly a decade of hype and a fanbase that had already written their own perfect sequel in their heads.
They tried to put their stamp on it – combat changes, a new narrative focus – but by then the ship had already sailed. No game can survive two major shifts in creative leadership and still feel cohesive. Bloodlines 2 became less a game and more a patchwork of abandoned ideas, and players could sense it.
A Small Misstep For A Game – A Huge One For Bloodlines 2
The thing that baffled me most, is the developers apparent obsession with the combat system of Bloodlines 2. Let’s face it, combat was never what made Bloodlines great, and if you mention the sewers to any Vampire The Masquerade fan, chances are, their eyelid might unwillingly start twitching. Yet, for some strange reason, The Chinese Room decided to swing hard in the opposite direction, but with a twist.
Guns? Gone. Melee weapons? Who needs those. Combat was rebuild around vampiric powers and hand-to-hand combat, in order to really make you feel like the elder vampire you are.
And therein lies the issue; the Bloodlines 2 gameplay system looks more like Dishonored with vampires than the choice-driven RPG rooted combat of the original. Hacking is gone, so is crawling through vents, looking for clues to find alternate routes and even lock-picking just isn’t a thing.
On paper, the whole combat system sounds pretty cool, but for me it missed the mark entirely. I doubt most fans wanted flashy animations just for the sake of it, they really wanted their choices to matter and along with that goes their clan, their individual playstyle and their rooted place in the World of Darkness.
The soul and spirit of Bloodlines was never about being this cool, moody, supernatural superhero – it was solely about roleplay, feeling like you belong, immersing yourself in this bleak world. By chasing spectacle over choice and substance, I can’t help but feel, that Bloodlines 2 inevitably lost touch with that foundation.
A Legacy’s Final Rest
This isn’t an opinion based on hate or disdain for the developer, but one from someone who absolutely adores the World of Darkness. I’ve rolled dice in vampire campaigns, argued endlessly over clan politics, and replayed Bloodlines 1 more times than I can count.
I wanted Bloodlines 2 to succeed – God, did I want it. But I also understand the desire of any studio to make a game their way, not just reskin a 20-year-old RPG as well, so don’t take this as pure pessimism.
And yet, by branding it as Bloodlines 2, they chained themselves to a ghost. Fans weren’t waiting for a new story, they were waiting for the story they’d already written in their minds. And no developer, no matter how talented, was going to win that fight.
If Bloodlines 2 had been freed from the sequel baggage, it might have been judged on its own merits. Maybe we’d be praising The Chinese Room for daring to take vampire RPGs in a bold new direction. Instead, it wore the name of a cult classic like a crown of thorns, destined to disappoint. So was it doomed?
Doomed not by laziness, not by incompetence, but by nostalgia, branding, and expectations no studio could ever realistically meet, without at least alienating a big portion of VTMB enthusiasts. As a fan, it hurts. As a realist, it makes sense. And as someone who will probably go reinstall Bloodlines 1 tonight, I know that the sequel we’ve been dreaming about for 20 years never really existed anywhere but in our own, bloodsoaked imagination.
