It’s been a long. long wait for people who have been waiting patiently for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Today at PAX, publisher Paradox Interactive announced the game’s new developer, showed off a brief teaser trailer and even revealed a release date time frame.
In a press release, Paradox announced the game’s new developer is the UK-based The Chinese Room. The studio has made a number of smaller but critically acclaimed narrative-driven games in the past, including Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
The announcement trailer shows off a brief amount of gameplay, but Paradox says a full gameplay trailer is coming in January 2024. The game itself now has a fall 2024 release time frame.
The Chinese Room has also posted its own introductory trailer, with team members offering some hints on how they plan to make Bloodlines 2.
Paradox first announced its plan to publish Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. way back in 2019, with developer Hardsuit Labs. The game was supposed to launch in 2020, but the release date got pushed back to sometime in 2021. In February 2021, Paradox revealed that Hardsuit Labs was no longer working on the game and the release date had been postponed indefinitely. In June 2023, the publisher announced that all preorders of the game could be refunded.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Paradox Interactive’s VP Sean Greaney stated “a significant amount of art and level design” from Hardsuit Labs’s work is being reused, but that The Chinese Room is developing Bloodlines 2 using “a new code base with different gameplay mechanics and RPG systems.”
Bloodlines 2 will also still be set in Seattle during the winter holiday season. However, instead of a young and recently turned vampire as the main character, the game will now center on an “Elder” vampire that’s been reawakened after a long sleep.
The game is due for the Xbox Series X and S and PlayStation 5 consoles, along with the PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GoG.com. Based on today’s trailer, it looks like it will not be released for the Xbox One or PS4 consoles as previously announced.