Spend 30 minutes in the company of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
Revamped
Last night I met a guy, who knew a guy, who told me about a girl, who said she was penpals with some sort of rat thing, who wrote a URL down for her, all so I could get this footage of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 to you. I was up all night, and it turned out all I needed to do was Google. Anyway, here’s some footage of the RPG straight from a developer’s claws. It’s so raw it’s almost blue.
It’s a mission in which the player is tracking down a gnarly little uggo called Slugg. He has info that Tremere—one of the factions eyeing their batlids at the character—would like to get ahold of. You don’t know what info, because you’re nothing but a dancin’ fool, but the mission to get it takes you through a few recognisable parts of Seattle, the homeland of developers Hardsuit Labs, and down into what’s called The Jungle, which is the underground's basement of horror.
There’s a hearty amount of chatter, all leaning the player in different confrontational stances. The beast you’re there to meet prompts up to seven opening gambits, which seems excessive, and knowing that Cara Ellison is working on Bloodlines 2 I was sad one of the responses wasn’t just threatening with a broken bottle.
But the wordy sparring shows there’s plenty of ways to chat yourself both in and out of trouble. A quiet and friendly word in the Nosferatu rep’s ear gets a lot of help in future, but flubbing a line with Slugg kicks off a battle. The action is a tad underwhelming. It feels like it's being picked through to show a range of moves, like the telekinesis, shooting, punching, and more. As do some of the chat sections, where there are long pauses as the right phrase is plucked from the list. It's demonstrative of the whole game, not a single playthrough.
But there's enough here that shows your choices are going to tilt the game in any number of ways, and I'm still looking forward to the March 2020 release.
Our Gamescom expedition have been to see Bloodlines 2 and will have more to tell us soon.
Disclaimer: Cara Ellison, one-time friend of RPS, flatmate to Alice, and couch-surfer to me, is a senior writer of Bloodlines 2.