Publisher Paradox Interactive and developer The Chinese Room have published a new dev diary for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The dev diary goes into how The Chinese Room will be picking up development for the game.
The studio states that one of the most important aspects of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will be to allow players to “feel like a vampire”. According to the studio, the game’s non-combat gameplay will revolve around doing things that regular humans can’t do.
“With non-combat gameplay, we found early on we were doing the RPG tropes: find a keycard to open a door, turn on a generator to restore power to a lift,” said the studio. “We put in a rule that the non-combat gameplay should be about something only a vampire could do; keep it aspirational.”
On the combat side of things, The Chinese Room hopes to inspire a feeling of letting players “play with their food”, rather than keeping it restricted to simple action RPG combat. While the studio hasn’t revealed too many details about how Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will play, it has stated that the game’s two pillars will be “visceral, immersive combat” and “exploring the World of Darkness”.
The Chinese Room was revealed as the new studio working on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 earlier this month after the game went through quite tumultuous period of development hell with other studios. The game is being developed on Unreal Engine 5, and the publisher is confident that it won’t be delayed again.
The game is due out next year for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.