Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 new developer is The Chinese Room, coming in 2024

thesixthaxis.com:

Paradox interactive has re-announce Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, now with The Chinese Room taking over as the game’s developer.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is now expected to launch in Autumn 2024 across PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

The pitch and story for Bloodlines 2 has now shifted compared to the originally revealed version of the game. Still set in Seattle, there’s a three-way power struggle for power in the Vampire Court, and in an intriguing shift, players will take on the role of an elder vampire, which sounds like a gateway to unleashing plenty of fun vampire powers on hapless lesser beings.

Paradox chose to reboot the game’s development in 2021, and has now revealed that The Chinese Room have taken on the challenge. The studio built up its reputation for excellent storytelling across “walking sims” Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, as well as the cult horror game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. They’re also working on a new horror game set on an oil rig called Still Wakes the Deep.

However, this is a very different studio compared to a the mid-2010s. In 2017, the Brighton-based studio went into stasis as they were between projects, and were later acquired by Sumo Digital in August 2018. Co-founder Dan Pinchbeck took the role of creative director, with the studio re-staffing with Ed Daly as studio director and John McCormack as art director, however Pinchbeck has now departed the studio as of July 17th 2023.

Still, there’s a lot of reputation built around the name (even if they’re now a Ship of Theseus), and with Sumo Digital’s resources behind them and years to build up, there’s bound to be expectations they can marry storytelling with more action-oriented RPG gaming.  Here’s a little