Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 seeks to take inspiration from Baldur's Gate 3's narrative design, as well as its tabletop roots
Heavy hangs the crown of expectation. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a sequel to the 2004 cult classic RPG by the now-buried Troika Games, and it has a lot to live up to. It needs to fight off the first game's powerful air of nostalgia, while also stepping into the daylight during an outstanding year for RPGs.
I interviewed The Chinese Room (TCR)'s narrative designer Arone Le Bray, who has a lot of experience under his belt. Before TCR, Le Bray was a narrative quality designer at Bioware for nearly 15 years—which means he's worked on games like Dragon Age: Origins, the Mass Effect series, the whole works.
Far from just feeding on games past, Le Bray says TCR's been looking towards current games for inspiration. «Sarah (one of our writers) is a huge fan of Baldur's Gate 3 … we're looking at how we can borrow aspects [from it], or how we can make sure we're not taking giant steps backwards in terms of stories.»
Specifically, TCR is looking towards the sheer evolution of RPG narrative Larian Studios put on display earlier this year. «I absolutely classify narrative as an aspect of gameplay,» says Le Bray. «How can we make the player feel like they've owned their outcomes? How can we make the player feel like they have the agency we want them to?»
That's a high bar, considering Baldur's Gate 3—Gale's uncanny thirst notwithstanding—has done some staggering things with narrative design. There's a hitch here or there, but we're talking about a game which devotes two whole hours of wordage to a single spell. A seasoned studio given a popular licence at the absolute top of its game.
The Chinese Room, however, faces a much steeper wall. For starters, Bloodlines 2 has suffered from an epic tangle of development
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