Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been a very, very long time coming. In fact, it's been so long, the man who helped get the game greenlit and is now leading Helldivers 2 has been waiting for the bloodsucking sequel to hit a homerun for almost a decade.
2004's original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was a brilliant, sometimes technically compromised RPG that didn't sell anywhere near enough upon release to justify a sequel. It actually led to developer Troika Games' unfortunate shutdown. But it was so interesting and so unique that it eventually grew into a cult classic.
No surprise, then, when publisher Paradox Interactive greenlit a sequel around 2016. What is surprising is how turbulent the sequel's development has been - so much so that it's only due to come out this October after several delays.
Arrowhead Games Studios' (of Helldivers 2 fame) CEO Shams Jorjani was actually involved in signing the sequel, as he said in a recent message to the shooter's Discord channel. "Let's hope Bloodlines 2 sticks the landing [...] I signed the game when I was at Paradox back in 2016."
What happened between then and now? Bloodlines 2 was originally in development at Hardsuit Labs, but five years and three delays later, Paradox announced that the team had been replaced with The Chinese Room, the developers behind Dear Esther and Still Wakes the Deep, with production essentially having restarted.
As you can imagine, that set the project back by years. So, here we are now. At least all that work and pent-up excitement hasn't gone to waste. The RPG is on track to actually launch later this year, and it looks quite good, too.
After waiting over 20 years for Bloodlines 2, ex Dragon Age writer says "the hope is that we would get a new Vampire game in the same line as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Baldur's Gate 3"
