...

I'm not sure what you expected ?

Maybe a continuation of the story of the main character of VtMB1 ?

That was never going to happen.

And the other concept, the one that this thread was started with, we knew that that was thrown out.

IMHO it sucked a lot anyway. No guns, only two disciplines per clan, you start as a thinblood, etc.

Starting as an older generation eight vampire instead is so much better.

Don't know about expected, but I was hoping for something that... felt like Bloodlines. Stellar writing, characters, attention to detail, overall atmosphere, and several ways to do pretty much anything, many ways to play it. So far, this seems to mainly be a first person action game.

Agree on the last point though, nice idea to start as an elder, and the thinblood concept was disappointing to say the least.

Hu.



Well, I never seriously expected VtMB2 to be as good as VtMB1 in the first place. VtMB is, together with Baldurs Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, my top three game ever. There was some exceptional talent at work and to expect that again would have been a bit, well, overly optimistic.

Just like I never really expected Baldurs Gate 3 to be this good, but it can totally keep up with BG1 and BG2. It has different strengths but it has some really good storywriting.

So I was only hoping for a good game in both cases. More than what I got with SWKotoR2, which was simply a very unfinished game which would have been in many ways disappointing even if had been finished. The villain for example was horribly obvious. The characters looked super cool but had zero personality. Etc.



And I'm not sure how you got so much from this relatively short sequence anyway.

VtMB1 was also an action game, after all.

And in VtMB1 many quests could only be solved by combat, too. In fact, I had quite a few walkthroughs that ended in failure because I had misskilled the character too much and the battles just got too hard and too frustrating. No longer happends nowadays though.

From what I've seen so far, this could still be a very good game.

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/clan-highlight-brujah

"Clan Highlight: Brujah

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/4NjatFdJiySk7qMfPlRO81/c0df61382478fbe9e412db2412d07586/BrujahHighlight_Thumbnail.png
Rebels, The Learned Clan, Rabble, Hellenes.

The Brujah are known for their impetuous tempers and defiant natures, and the clan contains some of the most violent vampires. Visionaries and brutes both, the Brujah have fallen from their stature as the Learned Clan to a motley lineage of radicals, troublemakers, and firebrands — all as much at odds with each other as with the systems they claim to oppose.

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/4CEoRSaTnjdWQwzLvZ6TgV/776c234ce91fff64dd02d0f9703e308e/Lou_BrujahConversation.png


Playing a Brujah in Bloodlines 2

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/oTEjdx2ClPtfOQX1fsIl0/622bf132ad3a6b48dcd90e93dc9e6edf/Brujah_02_Render.png

If you’re a player who leaves the shadows to the cowards, knows the frontline is where the fun is, and rebels against the establishment, Brujah is your clan.

In Bloodlines 2, Clan Brujah will offer a brutal brawling playstyle with its abilities (in Vampire: The Masquerade, known as Disciplines), getting you into the fray and rewarding you for staying there. The Brujah control the dance of combat by making enemies drop their defenses, knock them around on the battlefield and increase their damage by feeding for powerful finishing strikes.

In social environments, the Brujah are often expected to have a short temper. In Bloodlines 2, certain characters you meet may treat you differently depending on your clan, and while clans have access to angry, violent or threatening dialogue options, throughout Bloodlines 2 you will find unique dialogue sequences for the Brujah. And if you play against the archetypes, characters in-the-know will react.

As a predator of the night, hunting for blood is always a challenge, but the Brujah can often rely on their ability to influence pedestrians’ rage to make them chase you into an empty alley and have a midnight snack.


Brujah Abilities

When you choose your clan, you will start out with a passive ability unique to each clan. You are then able to unlock abilities from the Ability Tree, starting with your chosen clan. Each ability requires spending Ability Points to unlock, which are earned from completing missions, combat and exploration. At the peak of the Ability Tree, you can unlock the clan Perk, a reward to those dedicated enough to unlock all of the abilities for a clan, giving a permanent passive upgrade.

Brutality
Clan Passive

After feeding, become flushed with vampiric strength, temporarily increasing the power of all your melee attacks.

Taunt

Use your supernatural Presence to enrage an opponent or civilian prey, compelling them to attack you. While enraged, the target takes increased damage.

Charge

Surge forward with preternatural speed and rage, grabbing an enemy you collide with to use as a battering ram to knock down others in your path.

Lightning Strikes

Target multiple opponents and unleash an unstoppable hail of punches, with the final strike dealing increased damage.

Earthshock

Slam the ground with explosive force, flinging surrounding enemies into the air.

Clan Perk

Pulverise

Clan Perk

Killing enemies without feeding still activates your Clan Passive.


Abilities Screenshots

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/5C5XgLhfSgtrACVsap5UZS/c998f1284665f1056c5d718bfb44a8e0/Ability-Taunt.jpg

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/PRM9ygXiQeVxUqkYeu4VB/538556445b4ea35bf6f55ed82fa15ede/Ability-Charge.jpg

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/7M8rBjIuY2G2kR7qel0HGh/3889e8b1160fc23134473ec3469e5e58/Ability-LightningStrikes.jpg

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/2QnogCwAwqZku6jb5RtuvD/756f2baead139665623fa56f6baaa8b0/Ability-EarthShock.jpg


Customizing your playstyle

In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, you can play your character in different ways. Brujah are a more brawler type, and the abilities are focused around supporting that. We wanted to make sure that this is not an ability optimization game where you need to go through a multitude of abilities and weigh them against each other. Playing a clan should be straight forward if you want it to be.

While this is true, you can also dive deeper into the customization of your playstyle. This is done by visiting important Seattle vampires that are sworn to assist the Sheriff (you) including offering their Blood to help unlock abilities from their clan. Abilities from other clans may cost more AP depending on how well they align with your clans Disciplines. The Brujah Disciplines are Celerity (speed enhancing abilities) Potence (strength enhancing abilities) and Presence (the supernatural ability to attract, awe, or terrify)) so if another clan has a speed enhancing ability it would cost less AP to unlock than an ability for a Discipline Brujah don’t have, such as becoming stealthier which is part of the Obfuscate Discipline. Unlocking additional Clan Perks will make them stack, so you can collect them all if you wish, elevating your power much closer to elder level.

https://images.ctfassets.net/u73tyf0fa8v1/3JmUdLtreAiL4m6A8IbHMK/1a9f68afc0038b3fa946dedd5c1f74a5/AbilitytreeBrujah.jpg
Image: Ability tree for Brujah. All clan abilities and the clan perk are unlocked. An ability from Banu Haqim has been equipped. Each clan has hundreds of different ability combinations.

While the activated abilities and Clan Perk can be learned from the other clans, your clan passive can not. This means that you can combine features from other clans in hundreds of different ways, but your Brujah playthrough will remain unique from playing as another clan who branches into Brujah abilities."

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/news/whats-next-for-bloodlines-2

"Development Update

Good evening,

Today, The Chinese Room’s Alex Skidmore, Creative Director for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, and Mattias Lilja, Deputy CEO for Paradox Interactive, share an update on Bloodlines 2.

To quickly recap, Mattias and Alex share:

- Bloodlines 2’s release window has been updated to the first half of 2025.
- Paradox and The Chinese Room’s commitment to delivering a high-quality action RPG for Vampire fans, new and old.
- Some of the things they're excited about working on with the additional time.

The Chinese Room and Paradox will continue to post frequent updates, including Dev Diaries, deep dives, and more. We are not going into a quiet period; our teams have been hard at work making the best possible Vampire Action RPG and have lots of cool stuff to share.

Why are you updating the release window?
Earlier this year, Paradox reaffirmed our commitment to delivering high-quality games to our players, and the launch update is a proactive decision derived from this commitment. Though the game is in a good enough place that we could have maintained our planned release window, Paradox and The Chinese Room collaboratively decided to prioritize polish.

What will the additional time be used for?
It will be used to create a quality assurance buffer, giving more time between testing and launch, ensuring we release the game when it’s ready. The extra time gives us an opportunity to adjust certain areas, such as Fabien, and incorporate other community feedback.

We will also use the time to expand the game’s story, and now Bloodlines 2 will have more than twice as many endings as its predecessor.

What’s next?
World of Darkness and The Chinese Room will continue to engage with Bloodlines 2 fans.

We’ll discuss everything from our vampire take on Seattle to social feeding and the different factions in the city. We’ll also introduce you to more characters, giving you a chance to get familiar with the Kindred, who controls the city from the shadows, ahead of the game’s launch.

It has been a long journey, but we’re near the final stages of development and will share the release date once we are confident with the game’s level of polish.

Seattle welcomes you to explore its dark vampiric underbelly in 2025.

- Paradox Interactive and The Chinese Room"

Good.
If they finally could remove "Bloodlines 2" from the title (and replace it with something different) while they're at it - that'd be a sensible thing to do as well.

Also - is this the first time they showed a glimpse of the male player character model? He actually exists, who would have thought.
And if the bit where they're going through different hair styles for female Phyre is of any indication there might be character customisation after all, too.

I dont really get the pessimism of quite a few posters here.

Sounds to me like they are going in the direction of the old Bioware motto "its done when its done". Old Bioware being the pre-EA Bioware that was an actual independent company and had a few big successes with this philosophy. I like it when games follow this philosophy.

I have gone through games which lacked such polish, such as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Vampire: Bloodlines, but I certainly prefer the experience of a polished game.


Just like with Baldurs Gate 3 from Larian Studios, I dont like certain details about Bloodlines 2. In BG3, I definitely didnt like the small four people party; I'm still no fan of that. Here in Bloodlines 2, I really dont like that I cant pick the name for my protagonist.

But as I understand it, one can edit the looks of the character, so the looks Paradox and Chinese Room are showing us dont mean much. But maybe I got that wrong ?!?

They are shooting themselves in the foot by having the Bloodlines lure in the name. No matter what they do, it will disappoint because of that.

Many people would hold that Bioware philosophy in absolute contention. Overcooking the meal tends to leave a soggy or dry mess.

Not to mention, I don't know of many meals that turned out good after their restaurants were burned down, transported to a new one, dumped out, and then made anew by a completely new chef.

There is a very thin line between "it's done when it's done" and "stuck in development" and Bloodline 2 definitely lean heavily toward the later.

The project has been rebooted numerous time, pushed back, got rid of talented writers / designers, changed devs, etc...

You mention BG3, but Larian at is a dev specialized in RPG who worked on multiple successful (and less successful) RPGs for decades so you could expect them to know what they were doing.

Here the current devs are mostly knows for their rather short and ultra linear walking simulators (Dear Eshter, Still Wakes the Deep, etc...) and not exactly for their vast, multiple choices, lot of freedom RPGs that peoples expect(ed) Bloodline 2 to be.

Indeed. But it may sell before disappointing, and that's what they care about.
Wasn't that Blizzard philosophy though?

And we all know how well that's been going for them. The fact of the matter is, Blizzard is dead and Activision (vis) Microsoft is wearing their skin.

I do find that a little disingenuous. Activision-Blizzard's merger was done as a willing merger, AND Blizzard was the larger entity at the time. It's just that the smaller, weaker, Activision took over. But Blizzard was already on a pretty steep downward spiral by then.

It's been over 21 years since Blizzard released at PC video game and that was an expansion. 22 years since an actual new game. Blizzard was already dead when they merged with Activision. They'd already canceled, restarted, and cancelled Ghost by then. They'd already cancelled another real Warcraft title. And they'd already found that their path to success was abusing people with psychologist-designed-money-extraction-schemes (World of Warcraft). They'd already moved into gambling with trading card games as early as 2006. MDY vs Blizzard (that set still-in-use precedent that completely violates the whole concept of the Von Neumann computing architecture where "loading into memory" is seen as a "copy") was already in courts before the merger.

We'll see :)

And while we're waiting, we can play our massive backlog finally :D