Bloodlines 2 is more "spiritual successor" than sequel to "a competently good game by 2004 standards", say Paradox

rockpapershotgun.com:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 won't be an "open sim" like the 2004 original game, according to Paradox Interactive. Now in development at The Chinese Room, it'll be an action-RPG with a relatively linear story set in the World Of Darkness universe. This obviously plays to The Chinese Room's strengths - they're better known for melancholy or horrifying strolls through broken spaces than the Dishonorable massaging of intricate systems. But it also reflects Paradox's view that the original Bloodlines has been "mythologised" a bit: people love the memory of it more than the reality, and there are aspects of the 2004 game, according to Paradox's deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja, that simply "wouldn't fly today".

All this comes from my interview with Lilja at Paradox's Media Day - unofficial working title, Please Stop Poking Us - last week. To recap my previous article about Life By You, Paradox have spent much of the past two years pushing back release dates, cancelling things, publishing other things in a less-than-satisfactory state, and closing or parting ways with developers - a regular conga line of mishaps that have contributed to a 90% drop in operating profit for the second quarter of 2024.

Bloodlines 2 in particular has long travelled under a cloud of bats. It was announced in 2019 with Hardsuit Labs at the wheel and the original game's lead writer Brian Mitsoda as narrative director. "This is the sequel you have been waiting for," he said at the time. "It is going to be Bloodlines, as you remember it. But better." Alice B (RPS in peace) thought the preview build she saw in 2019 looked ace, offering a familiar morass of factions and approaches but slathered in high-end visuals, with spruced-up combat. I liked what I saw of it myself at the company's PDXCON expo. But then came delays, Mitsoda's abrupt firing, a change of studio in 2021 that led to layoffs, and more delays. So how confident are Paradox that Bloodlines 2 will stick the landing,