Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong delayed into May 2022
Big Bad Wolf want time for additional polish and QA without sacrificing work-life balance
I'm sure one day we'll get to masquerade as vampires, but it seems we'll be waiting a little longer than expected (again). Developers Big Bad Wolf have delayed Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong into May 2022. They say the extra three months will help ensure their team keep a healthy work-life balance, while having more time to add polish and go through QA.
"Swansong features lots of characters, choices, dialogues, and opportunities to decide how the story plays and our ultimate focus on quality," Big Bad Wolf posted on Twitter. "With this in mind, we've made the difficult decision to delay the launch of Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong from February 2022 to May 2022."
The blood-sucking World Of Darkness RPG was originally supposed to launch this year, before being pushed back into February. I certainly don't begrudge pandemic-related delays though, things are still pretty strange out there.
"This wasn't a decision we took lightly, but one necessary to ensure the highest possible quality while retaining a healthy work-life balance for our team," the devs add. "Granted, the pandemic also threw a couple of wrenches into our planning, but this delay will allow us to apply some additional polish and give us some extra time for QA."
Swansong's new release date is May 19th, 2022. At launch, it'll be exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Thinking about it, lots of big games are coming out in February (like Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Destiny 2: The Witch King, and more), so it makes total sense to get out of their way. It'd be nice if publishers coordinated so we could get a nice spread of games throughout the year, rather than one large clump.
Elsewhere in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, the upcoming battle royale Bloodhunt has also been delayed until "early 2022". And Bloodlines 2 continues to live in some sort of limbo - the game swapped developers early this year, but Paradox Interactive still won't say who the new devs are. Fine, keep your secrets.