Like an elder bloodsucker awoken from years of quiet slumber, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 has finally stepped into the light after decades of lurking in the shadows. Fans of the original action RPG have waited almost 20 years to once again sink their teeth into its gritty, neo-noir, borderline sultry vampiric underworld. They won’t have to wait much longer, though the shape of this sequel looks to have somewhat mutated since we first glimpsed it. 

While initial development began under Hardsuit Labs, last year the award-winning indie studio The Chinese Room announced it had taken over development. Best known for heavyweight narrative adventures like Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the studio rebooted the development of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 and now expects to take players back into the World of Darkness in fall 2024.

We have a good idea of what we’ll find when we get there: a world that seems equally geared toward returning undead as it is to those who are taking the curse of immortality for the first time.
 

World of Darkness

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines has earned something of a cult status in the decades since its 2004 release. Developed by Troika Games, a short-lived studio set up by several key designers behind the first Fallout role-playing games, it wasn’t a commercial hit. But it did gain close attention for its morally tangled and darkly magical Los Angeles setting, not to mention the quality and density of its writing.

Set in the same universe, itself taken from White Wolf’s long-running tabletop RPG of the same name, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 is introducing a few twists. Rather than a fledgling vampire whose bite marks are still sore, you’ll take the role of Phyre, an Elder Kindred who’s awakened from a 100-year sleep to find her supernatural powers suppressed by an unknown force, an unexplained mark etched into her hand, and an unwelcome voice in her head. Thin-blood vampire Fabian has somehow ended up trapped inside Phyre, and while they may not start out as the best of friends, they must together explore the confounding world of modern Seattle.

The city’s factions and elites have fallen into confrontation since you closed your coffin, leaving you to navigate their power struggles and decide the fate of the city that risks slipping into an all-out vampiric war. And while Phyre’s no newbie to life as a vampire, she is a fresh face to Seattle’s undead underworld. Everybody wants a piece of you, usually for their own end.

In good role-playing fashion, your choices will carry consequences for the fate of Seattle’s underground undead. But The Chinese Room says role-playing will go beyond binary choice systems like light versus dark, paragon versus renegade. Instead, a bigger focus is being placed on navigating the personal demands and anxieties of powerful characters, as well as balancing your relationship with Fabian, who won’t be afraid to share his thoughts on how you handle others.
 

Bound in blood

One of your most important choices will come at the very beginning of the adventure as you choose which vampire clan to align yourself with. The society of undead that make up the world of Vampire: The Masquerade isn’t a stable one. Great vampiric bloodlines, some tracing their origins back to Biblical myth, vie for power and dominance. Each has their own wants, needs, and hatreds, and each will grant Phyre different occult abilities.

Clan Brujah are countercultural punks who enjoy wearing leather jackets and crushing skulls. They’re the rude anarchists of vampire society, descended from thoughtful philosopher types who now prefer to make their arguments with swinging fists than polemical tracts. Rebels with a cause and the supernatural power to back them up, the Brujah like to get up close and personal in melee combat. We’ve already seen one charging attack at their disposal, which enables them to grab enemies and slam them into nearby walls. Subtlety is not their strong point.

Next, there’s the Tremere. Descended from a secret order of warlocks whose attempts to devise a recipe for immortality led them to eternal undeath, they’re a young clan of sanguine sorcerers. Blood magic is their forte. They are not above boiling the blood of their enemies while it’s still pumping through their veins, and one clip we’ve seen shows Phyre extracting her own blood, morphing it into pointed projectiles, and lobbing it at enemies. As you can imagine, many other vampire clans view the Tremere with suspicion and disdain.

The Banu Haqim clan, meanwhile, is a more sanctimonious lot. Arbiters of justice who take it upon themselves to perform the duty of judge, jury, and executioner, they typically follow a strict code and give no quarter to the guilty. More unusually, they also feed on vampire blood and play the role of assassins who hunt from the shadows. In what we’ve seen of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 so far, the Banu Haqim can temporarily pause time mid-combat, enabling Phyre to sprint around incoming bullets and strike enemies before they have a chance to know what hit them.

Finally, the Ventrue are the well-heeded, power-hungry, snobbish aristocrats of undead society. Kings, commanders, and C-suite executives who think leadership is theirs by right, they demand obedience from all others and will treat anyone as a pawn in their politicking. Tradition is paramount, as is total servitude under their watchful, often sadistic rule. The Ventrue are capable of psychically dominating weaker-minded individuals, and should Phyre join their number, she’ll be able to mesmerize her prey. If that doesn’t work, feeding on the blood of weaker enemies will build her defenses, letting her soak up more damage when facing off against opponents of stronger mental fortitude.

The Chinese Room has already revealed that two additional clans will join Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 after launch. The fifth will be made available via DLC for the main game. The sixth, however, will appear in a unique standalone expansion. 

The original Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop role-playing game includes several other clans that could make an appearance, including the fan-favorite Nosferatu. Deformed monsters that look like their cinematic namesake—think all jagged teeth and ghoulish faces—their big gimmick is their hideousness. Too unsightly to show themselves in mortal society without exposing the existence of the supernatural world and pulling down the Masquerade that protects all vampires from the fury of humans, they spend most of their time in the sewers. The Nosferatu were one of the seven playable clans in the original Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, so they could perhaps make a reappearance in DLC.
 

Play with your food

The original Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines wasn’t just known for its rich world-building. Its ambitious genre mix combined the narrative robustness of traditional isometric role-playing games with the action of immersive sims like Deus Ex.

Those roots are still visible in this sequel. The Chinese Room says the first design pillar for Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 is to make players “feel like a vampire.” Certainly the supernatural abilities of the Brujah, Tremere, Banu Haqim, and Ventrue that we’ve seen so far capture the occult powers of these bloodsucking predators in myth. Even outside of combat, exploration is intended to evoke the vampire power fantasy, leading you to navigate the world by doing things that only a creature of the night would.

While the first-person, ability-strewn combat has an air of Arkane’s immersive sims about it—and The Chinese Room has even said that early iterations of the game played a little like Dishonored—you should feel more empowered than in that steampunk stealth game. As an Elder Vampire, Phyre can skulk around in the shadows for an advantage but is ultimately a fearless predator that doesn’t need to hide from trouble. 

Whatever clan you ally with, whether you become an expert in the arcane powers of blood sorcery, learn to loosen up your fists, or strut about as a high-society noble who prefers to manipulate from afar, your prey will soon be your food. Perhaps the bigger question is not how you dispatch your enemies, but who you make enemies with, and which of the factions that have set their sights on Seattle stand to benefit from your hunt.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 is available to pre-purchase on the Epic Games Store now.