When Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 comes out on October 21, it returns players to a world first explored more than 20 years ago in the cult classic original Bloodlines game.
A lot has happened in both the fictional canon and real-world history of the World of Darkness during those intervening decades.
The original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines would become a highlight of the game line and one of its best-known codas. But just months before it hit computers in 2004, the fictional universe of the tabletop role-playing games temporarily ended and then fractured into two distinct versions. The TTRPG survived that moment, continuing to thrive, with an updated fifth edition hitting in 2021.
The computer game, though, had to wait two decades, and its new protagonist 100 years, to return players to The Masquerade.
World of Darkness began in 1991 with the publication of the first edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, which billed itself as a tabletop game of “personal horror.” It was one of the first games that let you play as the monsters, in a trend that’d come to partially define the ‘90s in pop culture.

In the lore of World of Darkness, monsters have lived alongside humanity since the start of recorded history, in varying degrees of secrecy. Many vampires believe in a creation myth where they can trace their lineage all the way back to the Biblical Caine, the first murderer. Every major human civilization has been infiltrated by the “Kindred” to some extent, ranging from modern nights where they quietly control society from the shadows, to periods such as the Dark Ages where vampire lords openly ruled entire fiefdoms.

The guiding metric of World of Darkness from the start has been that it’s like modern Earth, but monsters lurk in the shadows at every corner, influencing human society. Some of the original creators used to call it the “Gothic-Punk” world: it’s recognizably the planet we all know, but all institutions are hopelessly corrupt, all skyscrapers have gargoyles, everything feels somehow polluted, and it’s never not raining. In World of Darkness, every city is the version of Detroit shown in The Crow. It’s the perfect background for telling the stories of murder, power, sleaze, and greed that come hand in hand with modern vampires.

Paradox Interactive has owned the rights to World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade since 2015. In addition to reviving the tabletop game with a new fifth-edition book (nicknamed V5) in 2018, the company also started licensing the World of Darkness IP to studios, bringing more unique stories set in the universe. This includes Vampire games such as 2022’s Swansong and 2024’s Reckoning of New York, as well as 2022’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse adaptation Heart of the Forest.

Now Paradox is taking its biggest swing yet, in conjunction with British studio, The Chinese Room. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a long-awaited sequel to the 2004 cult classic Bloodlines.

With just weeks to go until the game’s finally released, we spoke to Alex Skidmore, studio design director at The Chinese Room, and Jason Carl, the brand marketing manager at White Wolf, which was just relaunched earlier this year. Carl is also known to the World of Darkness community as the storyteller for the live-play Vampire shows “L.A. By Night,” “New York By Night,” and “Seattle By Night.”

Set 20 years after the events of the first Bloodlines, you play Bloodlines 2 as Phyre, or the Nomad, an elder vampire who’s been in torpor for 100 years. For whatever reason, your character’s been in a coma for a century, which isn’t uncommon for vampires.

“We leave that [Phyre’s torpor] for players to think about and question the reasons why,” Skidmore says. “Did they do it defensively? Were they forced into it? There are these little conversations around it.”

You can customize Phyre’s clothing, gender, clan, and appearance, but in all cases, you wake up in a country you’ve never been to and a city you don’t recognize.

For some unknown reason, Phyre finds themselves in modern Seattle during a once-in-a-century snowstorm, a full 6,000 miles from your former home. Worse, there’s a strange mark on your hand that prevents you from accessing your full power.

Even with those artificial limits, however, you’re a force to be reckoned with in modern Seattle, as elder vampires are rarer on the ground than they used to be. In recent years, many of the more powerful Kindred have been compelled to travel to the Middle East due to a phenomenon called the Beckoning. That’s left a distinct power vacuum in their former territories.

As a result, Bloodlines 2 isn’t about you working your way up from zero to anti-hero. You might not be at your full power, but Phyre is an established, confident elder. It’s not a question of whether you can survive and thrive in this environment, but how this environment will adapt to your presence.

That raises the immediate question of why Phyre is able to stay in Seattle at all. As a vampire who’s roughly 400 years old (according to Skidmore, Phyre mentions at one point that they’re older than the USA), they ought to be subject to the Beckoning, which means their first move upon awakening should’ve been booking a flight to Dubai. According to Carl, it’s not that simple.

“It’s not an exact science, right?” Carl says. “Many elders experience the Beckoning, but far from all. We cover that in many of the V5 supplements, especially one of our newest ones, Gehenna War. Some elders lie about it and use the Beckoning as an excuse to vanish from the scene, reinvent themselves, or to commit terrible acts that they want concealed under the guise of this conflict. The Beckoning is very convenient for them.”

“It’s definitely not universal,” Carl continues, “and it isn’t clear exactly what triggers [the Beckoning] and how it manifests. Some elders remain completely free of it forever, as far as we know, and some feel the pull immediately… for whatever reason, Phyre does not experience it.”

Phyre might actually have occasion to regret that, as modern Seattle is a city under siege. In the winter of 2024, the supernatural underground of Seattle is undergoing a war on three fronts, between the established vampire elite, the anarchists trying to tear them down, and the government strike team that’s here to kill every vampire it can find.

Seattle has been controlled by the Camarilla, the more ostensibly civilized of vampires’ various secret societies, since its founding over a hundred years ago. While earlier editions of Vampire portrayed Washington as one of several U.S. states that were controlled by the Anarch Movement, vampires who deliberately forsake the Camarilla’s structure and rules, Bloodlines 2’s Seattle has been a stronghold for the Camarilla for over a hundred years.

“[Bloodlines 2’s] Seattle is very much dominated by Lou Graham,” Skidmore says, “who was a real historical figure.”

The real-world Lou Graham was a famous madam in the Seattle of the late 1800s, who ran a brothel in what’s now Seattle’s Pioneer Square district. In Bloodlines 2, she’s not simply a high-ranking member of Seattle’s vampire elite, but is the former ruler of the city’s Kindred as a member of the Ventrue clan. You should expect to spend a fair amount of time with her.

“She does feature in the Seattle Underground tour that you can see in the city,” Skidmore says. “Also, as she’ll tell you in the game, she features in the [version of the] tour in the game as well.”

The legend about Lou Graham in early Seattle was that more deals were done in her “house of entertainment” than in City Hall. That level of influence continues into Bloodlines 2, where Lou serves as the power behind the throne in Seattle’s Kindred underground.

The Kindred have traditionally ruled Bloodlines 2’s through bribery and manipulation, but their primary tool for protection is a centuries-old agreement called the Masquerade. Under the Masquerade, every vampire is forced at risk of death to participate in a worldwide conspiracy that’s aimed at keeping ordinary humans ignorant of vampires’ existence.

“We liked the idea very early on that Lou is almost like the mob boss of Seattle,” Skidmore says. “She owns the police. They’re all part of their informant network and help to enforce [the Masquerade]. So the police will be watching the security cameras for [the Kindred] and help them find Masquerade breaches.”
The World of Darkness has entered the 21st century, however, and it’s considerably harder to keep vampirism a secret in the age of the smartphone. It’s particularly difficult in a city like Seattle, which is just as split between the old and new in World of Darkness as it is in the real world.

As a result, careless players might have a harder time sticking to the Masquerade than they did in the original Bloodlines. If Phyre isn’t careful about using their supernatural abilities in public, they may get to a point where the Camarilla is obligated to destroy them.

“We have a meter that fills up as you break the Masquerade,” Skidmore says. “It isn’t a discrete strike one, strike two, strike three. It’s this meter that fills, and it fills pretty fast, even if it’s just one person. If they see you running up a wall, they’re going to post about it on social media, right?”

“We thought that probably the Masquerade is harsher in Bloodlines 2 than Bloodlines, mechanically, because the world has moved on to this point,” Skidmore continues. “So yeah, you’ve got to be more careful. It’s why that, for almost every action, you have a human version of it – running, jumping – and then there’s a vampire version of it. All those things, when we introduce them, we put a warning that they will break the Masquerade.”

By 2024, the existence of the Kindred still isn’t public knowledge, but human governments have learned of their existence and taken some serious steps towards their eradication. Several major cities, such as London and Paris, have already been swept clean of Kindred by this new operation, which the vampires have nicknamed the “Second Inquisition.”

“Another part of the canon that we reference, and it’s affected Seattle, is the Fall of London supplement,” Skidmore says. “Essentially, all of London’s vampires got wiped out through their use of mobile phones and the hunters being able to track that.”

The center of Kindred power in Seattle, its “Elysium,” is Weaver Tower, which now has an absolute zero-tolerance policy for all electronics. No Camarilla vampire is allowed to carry cell phones or other modern communication devices when they’re in Elysium.

Skidmore says, “It’s an absolute law in Seattle from the Camarilla’s perspective – the Anarchs also support it – that you do not use mobile phones, you do not use the Internet. You do not use anything that the hunters could use.”

In Seattle, those hunters are typically coming from the government-affiliated Information and Awareness Office (IAO), a black-ops team that investigates any suspicious murders or disappearances in the city. Their strike forces are armed with specialized anti-vampire technology like thermal batons, explosive crossbow bolts, and phosphor grenades.

Other recent Vampire games like Swansong have put you in conflict with modern vampire hunters, but tended to focus on their religious aspect, as many hunters are directly affiliated with the Catholic Church. The IAO in Bloodlines 2 is purely built as a military operation and poses a greater threat to Phyre than any other human antagonists.

In addition, Seattle’s Camarilla is in a protracted conflict with the Anarch Movement. Due to political fallout from the rise of the Second Inquisition, the Camarilla is formally at war with the Anarchs.
While Seattle is still firmly under the thumb of the Camarilla, the city has also seen a tremendous influx of thin-bloods – Kindred whose blood is so weak that they barely count as vampires at all – due to the forgiving policies of Seattle’s current ruler, JJ Campbell.

“This is causing conflict and pressure in the city, especially seeing as the Anarchs are using [the thin-bloods] to their advantage,” Skidmore says. “At the point where we come into the game, it’s just coming to a boiling point. The Anarchs and Camarilla… their peace that they’ve had uneasily for decades is at a turning point, and the player can help push it.”

It’s up to you where you want to go with that. You can opt to play Phyre as a Camarilla loyalist who’ll work to keep the city safe for the sect; an Anarch sympathizer who’d as soon kick Seattle’s rulers out a high window at noon; or a scheming elder who’s strictly here to build their own personal power.

You can choose one of six clans for Phyre, which broadly influences their areas of supernatural expertise; for example, players who want to kick down doors and rip off heads can go with the Brujah, while fans of a stealthier approach can make Phyre a member of the Banu Haqim, a notorious clan of assassins.

As per recent announcements, Bloodlines 2 will ship with the ability to pick either the Toreador or Lasombra as starting clans for Phyre, enabling you to either take a heavily social-focused path through the game or destroy your enemies with shadow magic.

Playing Phyre as a Lasombra might actually be the best possible option if you’re aiming for pure culture shock. Until very recently, the Lasombra clan formed the leadership of the Sabbat, a sect that stood in direct opposition to the Camarilla. (If the Camarilla is The Vampire Diaries, the Sabbat is Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark.) However, a large faction within the Lasombra defected to the Camarilla in V5.

“Wherever we’ve made changes to the setting that some players wouldn’t be familiar with, we have tried to make sure that there are explanations in the lore that account for it or at least can imply what has happened,” Carl says.

“Your character, if you remember, has been in torpor for a hundred years,” Skidmore adds. “This has changed during their slumber, so that does get called out in the game if you play Lasombra. That comes up in dialogue and stuff like that, which is pretty cool.”

In addition to Phyre, you also play Bloodlines 2 as Fabien, a Malkavian detective who has recently died and has since become a voice in Phyre’s head. During the nighttime parts of the story, Fabien serves as a sort of “mission control” for Phyre, helping to explain crucial details about the modern world. You can ignore, agree with, or argue with him as you see fit.

“Each early morning when Phyre retires for the day to rest, we play as Fabien and see essentially flashbacks through the events that led up to this situation,” Skidmore says. “That gives us another lens on Seattle, because we not only flash back to not too long ago, before Fabien expired, but to 100 years ago as well. So we’re telling this story of Seattle and its politics over a hundred years through this extra lens of Fabien.”

“That’s the thing you can do with vampires,” Skidmore continues. “You know, they live so long, so 100 years ago, you’re seeing some of the same characters that Phyre has seen today. It’s quite cool.”

Fabien, as a young working-class vampire who works for Seattle’s Kindred enforcer, also provides a different overall experience than Phyre, as someone on the opposite end of the vampire power spectrum.

He’s also a Malkavian, with a distinct set of abilities based on how you chose to play Phyre. As Fabien, you’ve been placed in the Seattle Police Department to cover up Masquerade breaches.

“Effectively, they’ve used their powers to dupe everyone around them into thinking they’re a detective who should be present,” Skidmore says, “even though at some point, someone must realize Fabien’s been there for 100 years. But whenever they do, Fabien will just use Dementation or Dominate to sort that out.”

At the end of the day (night), however, Bloodlines 2 is about Phyre and how you choose to develop their narrative. Seattle is a major presence in Bloodlines 2’s story, but Phyre is always at its center.

“We’re telling a very specific story of World of Darkness in Seattle,” Skidmore says. “That’s where we focused it. It’s set up: its balance, its politics. It’s all focused on Seattle.”

“This is a very specific story,” Carl says. “This is a slice of time that takes place over a discrete number of nights in the city … Seattle reflects the larger vampire conspiracies of the Camarilla and the Anarchs in microcosm, but this is Phyre’s story.”

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will come out on October 21 for the Epic Games Store.