ニュース
Hands-on with Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2’s incredible Gamescom demo
L
Laura Kate Dale
Paradox Interactive and The Chinese Room surprised me, sending an extensive demo build of Bloodlines 2 to check out ahead of the game’s release date reveal during Opening Night Live.
The demo they sent us signalled an incredibly confident development team: More than two hours of unedited content from the start of the game, full access to character classes and the open world, and no limitations on how many times we could play through different paths and classes for a full week before Gamescom kicked off.
Set in 2024 Seattle, Bloodlines 2 puts the player in the shoes of Phyre, an elder vampire woken from a 100 year slumber into an unfamiliar modern world. Existing under the Masquerade, an agreement to keep the existence of vampires secret from mortal humans, Phyre awakens with an unexplained mark on her hand and the voice of a stranger living inside her head.
That stranger is Fabien, a former psychic vampire detective who used his powers of memory manipulation, suggestion, and mind reading to solve cases that threatened the security of the Masquerade.
I got to talk with Alex Skidmore, Studio Design Director at The Chinese Room, after playing through the demo to get his input on Bloodlines 2’s development. Given the way Fabien exists in the narrative, a character explored in memories when Phyre goes to sleep, I was curious how he came to be this unexpected passenger in the narrative.
“I think it was about a year and a half in, Fabien wasn't scoring well enough," Skidmore said. "Phyre was the sort of stoic character, I'd say it's almost sort of like a John Wick, or the man with no name who turns up to the Western or something. But Fabien wasn't working. Fabien was a sort of thin-blood character who was very young, who was a bit too close to Phyre, they were clashing, they were sort of too close.
“We took the brave decision, which I'm very glad we did now, but at the time it was terrifying of 'we'll rewrite Fabien, or start Fabien again.'
“Phyre stayed the same, all their scenes and everything. We reworked Fabien and we went 'well, let's make them, you know, it's an odd couple. Almost, almost like a cop movie, right?'
“Fabien is, is very much the light end of the spectrum. Not human, but gets along more with humans. And we deliberately have more interactions with humans. They think he's an actual police officer. So he literally almost has a disguise, where he sort of just struts around the night.
“I think if you played either one of them for too long, you would maybe get sick of it, but they, but together, they really complement each other."
While Fabien is a predefined character, Phyre is player-defined, with the ability to alter their gender, appearance, background, and character class (clan) after a short tutorial section.
Having been asleep for 100 years, Phyre does a great job of helping to ease in players who may not have played the original Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. In the opening hours players have ample opportunities to learn about the game’s setting by asking about the Masquerade, vampire weaknesses, and the general rules of vampire society in the context of someone trying to get caught up on changes to the world around them. Phyre can simultaneously feel like a character with suitable knowledge of the world, but also a justifiable reason for having some gaps in knowledge on the specific modern setting.
Playing as an elder vampire, you’re quickly introduced to your suite of abilities. You can sprint, glide, see through walls with heightened senses, bash people around with brutal melee attacks, throw objects and enemies with your mind, and drain blood as a finishing move to recharge class-specific special abilities.
Prior to specializing in a class, combat is fast-paced and melee-focused, with players dashing, using a mix of fast and charged heavy attacks, focusing on positioning to avoid incoming telegraphed attacks, and choosing whether to attack or drain blood to finish enemies off. Draining is slightly more risky and may open you up to damage, but it is also the primary way you’ll recover health during combat and the best way to fuel abilities that’ll allow you to keep more distance in future fights.
There are six character classes available in this demo: the Brujah, who are fast and swift melee fighters; the Tremere, who wield blood magic; the Banu Haqim, who combine swift attacks with magic; the Ventrue, who mentally control their enemies; the Lasombra, who wield fearful shadows; and the Toreador, who focus on winning the initiative by striking their enemies first in combat.
I chose to play as the Tremere, personally intrigued by their ability to perform melee attacks from a slight distance and their violent and blood-powered spells.
Each character class gets a free passive ability that's totally unique to them. In the case of the Tremere, this means dissolving drained corpses in acid to avoid raising suspicion. Outside of these unique passive abilities, it is possible while levelling up to learn manually active abilities from other classes. However, these become more expensive the further the target class is positioned away from your starting proficiency and any class alliances developed during the course of the adventure.
“It's called clan affinity," Skidmore says. "If your clan naturally has an affinity, and this is the same in pen and paper, then it'll cost you less AP to unlock it. But narratively what Phyre is doing, Phyre had all of these powers a hundred years ago, but the whole tree, that's what Phyre is at elder level.
“We call it awakening them. So she goes to the clan contacts and they help them with their own blood to awaken the ability. To restore the memory of it, because it's been blocked by the mark, essentially."
For the Tremere, these manually activated abilities included the ability to mark an enemy to explode violently when hit with melee damage, and the ability to create a teleportation point that lets you get distance in the heat of combat. These abilities can be recharged by drinking blood from defeated enemies, with more powerful abilities requiring more feeds before they can be reactivated.
One of the first things that was really apparent to me while playing the demo was how gorgeous the art design of Bloodlines 2 is, and how well it scales to lower-end machines. While the game looked and ran great on my main gaming PC, it also runs really well on gaming handhelds like the ROG Ally X. While some of this is raw visual quality, part of it is stylistic choices, like the way that conversations in your head with Fabien are set as silhouettes against a deep red backdrop.
In terms of overall gameplay mechanics, there were some small details that really stood out. One of these was the game’s reactive cursor, a center screen reticle that becomes a larger circle as it is pointed closer toward an interactable object or NPC somewhere in the environment. It’s a really nice and natural way to help the player avoid missing interesting content in levels, and it encouraged me to not just sprint rapidly through areas full of small worldbuilding elements.
I also appreciated the writing in the demo. It is clear that the development team had a lot of fun writing a character displaced in time, but whose attitude toward the world was open to modern sensibilities. For example, when playing as a female Phyre, there's some very cute queer flirting while climbing through the air ducts of a tower that's delightfully written and performed.
I also enjoyed getting to explore the world as Fabien in the sections of the demo dedicated to exploring his past and memories. While we’re told very early on that he used to be a detective, it’s not until playing as him that I really clicked with his characterization. His power set is incredibly suited to his profession, in a way that quickly makes it hard to imagine any other life that could have worked for him.
One thing I was curious about after playing the demo: How much of what was present came from the prior incarnation of the game that had been in development, and how much was created from scratch when The Chinese Room took the reins in 2021?
“This vision of being an elder vampire and going through Seattle, also this whole thing of you switching between two vampires, an elder vampire and a Malian vampire, that is all new," Skidmore said. “A lot of where we used the previous work was in, you know, we are based in Brighton, it was helping us to get a leg up on designing Seattle. I'd say the sort of understanding of Seattle, that authenticity.
“But overall, it's a whole other game really."
If you’d asked a week ago what I thought about Bloodlines 2, my fears would have been a million miles away from how I feel now I’ve had a chance to experience it for myself. This slice of the game felt incredibly confident, like the result of a development team that were given a daunting task and rose to it admirably.
You can find Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 on Epic Games Store. Wishlist it today!
